EARLY SIGNS, RAPID DECLINE

After Anne’s husband died in 2010, “my brother and I saw some scary changes in Mom,” she wrote in the grant application. “She would leave the stove/oven on (and) use foods which were rotten or almost rotten.”

Anne also spent money to the point of getting into financial trouble, Taylor says.

Excessive spending and money problems are often an early sign of dementia, Gibson says.

After Anne moved in with the family, things got worse.

After falling and breaking her pelvis in the summer of 2015, Anne stopped exercising. She became combative and “began digging into her skin because she was convinced she was riddled with splinters and thorns,” Taylor wrote.

“I am desperately doing all I can, staying completely stressed out and on edge daily,” she wrote in the application. “While I did not work outside the home, what volunteering and household activities I had have all either been ignored or greatly reduced.”

Taylor planned to return to work when her youngest daughter graduated from high school in 2015, but that was impossible, she says.