I feel so lucky. My situation is hard, but it isn't as hard as it could be, for so many reasons. I'm lucky because:
-- My mother is almost always friendly and nice and supportive and upbeat.
-- She's oblivious to her condition. It's hard for us -- my brother and me. But she feels good and, even though she's in a nursing home, doesn't know anything is wrong.
-- She's in a nice nursing home. Nobody else would be qualified to care for her. My own family already is flying into smithereens, even without the presence of a 75-year-old with dementia.
-- She is financially secure. About 10 years ago, I talked her into getting long-term-care insurance. I highly recommend this for all middle-class aging people. I only made a point of it with her because I was writing a lot of personal-finance stuff back then, and I kept talking to PF advisors who would bring up the importance of LT care insurance. So I talked my mom into getting it. Thank God!!! For now that insurance, for which she paid $1800 a year for maybe six years, pays more than her $70,000 a year nursing-home expenses.
LT-care insurance is not for either the very rich (who can pay for their own nursing care) or the very poor (who might struggle to meet the premiums, and in any case will get government help). But for middle-class people, it's ... well, it's the only insurance I've ever seen that even pays back the equivalent of what you've paid in, let alone many many times more.