Letty

Letty’s mother, who had dementia, has since passed on, but Letty still cares for her father. Letty herself is suffering from health issues on top of the support she provides to her parents, and finds it difficult to find the time and the ability to travel to and from clinical appointments.

Letty lives in a rural area in Arizona and has a hard time finding caregiving supports and services. Her calls for information have gone largely unanswered, and when she does find caregiver training or supports in larger cities such as Tucson, she often doesn’t have the resources to travel that far. If more caregiving training was made available online, Letty feels she’d have a much easier time accessing it and learning how to best be supported in her role.

Letty has also described the challenges she has experienced in obtaining needed resources for her parents’ care. She was unable to obtain a replacement Medicare card for her mother, who had dementia and could not remember the answers to her security questions. She’s had trouble getting oxygen for her father, a life-sustaining resource, because she couldn’t afford the up- front payment. When her mother passed, Letty could not access a bank account her mother held because her father, who is still alive, also has his name on the account. Though her father could access the account, he would need a driver’s license, which he cannot get without traveling to the DMV, something he no longer has the ability to do.

Letty has been fortunate enough to receive in-home medical help from a doctor who visits her parents. Letty attributes her ability to be a successful caregiver to the help she receives from her in-home doctor. Without this help, she doesn’t believe she’d have been able to take care of her father for as long as she has.