Michelle Cottle

But the minute they diagnosed him with Alzheimer's, we knew.

This was his greatest fear.

It runs in my dad's family.

He had watched his younger brother struggle with it for over a decade.

And at that point, you know, the doctors had said that he was no longer a good candidate for major surgery and kind of the aggressive chemo that would be required to deal with the cancer.

But my dad didn't want it anyway.

He would not want to have his body put through all that while his brain was basically betraying him.

So at that point, we knew that everything was different.

But we still had to talk to him about this because the doctor at that point didn't tell my dad what the diagnosis was.

And so my sister and I were left deciding to sit down and break it to our father that his absolute worst fear had come true, which I got to say, do not recommend, like not a great conversation.

But that's when we knew it was different.

And we were in a different world, you know.

So this came in stages.

You know, we started out thinking, oh my God, we've got to help our parents navigate just the basic healthcare system of a complicated disease.

So we started out thinking, okay, we're going to get dad well.

And then it kind of gradually got more and more serious.

But at every stage, part of it was just like...

Not panic, but just like this sense of disbelief at how confusing and chaotic it could be.

Like, we started this text chain, my sister and my brother-in-law and I, to swap daily updates.

So we would have these...