About this site, and how we write
Nobody Warned Me is for the adult daughter (and plenty of sons, partners and friends) who ended up running a parent's dementia care, usually without much help, and usually without anyone explaining what was coming.
What we try to do
- Answer the question you searched for, near the top of the page, in plain words.
- Give you words you can actually say, because "redirect her" isn't advice until someone tells you what to say next.
- Skip the sainthood. Caregivers lose their temper, resent their siblings and sometimes wish it were over. That doesn't make anyone a bad daughter.
- Send you to real help when a page reaches the edge of what general information can do: the doctor, an elder-law attorney, the Alzheimer's Association helpline.
How the guides are written
We'd rather tell you plainly: the guides and the book are written with the help of AI tools. A person doesn't sign each page as an expert, and none of it replaces your parent's doctor.
To make that safe to read, every guide follows the same rules:
- Medical, legal and money facts come from established sources, mostly the Alzheimer's Association, the National Institute on Aging, Medicare.gov, the Family Caregiver Alliance and the VA. Each guide lists its sources at the end.
- We never suggest medications or doses. Questions about medicine go to the doctor.
- Anything that varies by state, like Medicaid rules or powers of attorney, is described in general terms with a pointer to someone who can answer for your state.
- The caregiving situations described are drawn from what caregivers commonly report in support groups and reviews, paraphrased, never quoted from private people.
If you spot something wrong or out of date, we want to fix it.
The pen name
The book is published under the pen name Nora Haldane. Nora isn't a doctor or a nurse, and the book doesn't pretend she is.
