I Am Sandwiched Between Hot Flashes and My Mother's Dementia Appointments — This Is What a Week Looks Like
Educational Review: Her Parents Help Editorial Team
Content Type: Research-Informed Caregiver Support
🇪🇸 Versión en Español disponible aquí → Estoy atrapada entre los sofocos y las citas médicas de mi madre con demencia: así es como luce una semana.
Introduction
For the woman who cannot tell anymore whose memory is failing — hers or her mother's
It is 5am on a Tuesday.
Most people are asleep. My alarm has not gone off yet but I am already awake — not because of insomnia, though that is a whole separate conversation — but because I know what today is. Today is my mother's doctor appointment. And I have learned, through hard experience, that if I do not start preparing her at least three hours before we need to leave, we are not going to make it.
Three hours. For a 10am appointment.
This is what a week looks like now.
Tuesday — The Appointment
She does not know she has an appointment. She never knows she has an appointment. I learned a long time ago that telling her the night before only creates twelve hours of anxiety and arguing. So I wait until the morning of. And then I brace myself.
"Mom, we need to go to the doctor today."
"I don't have a doctor's appointment."
"Yes you do. Dr. Garcia. 10 o'clock."
"No I don't. Nobody told me that."
And so it begins. The gentle insistence. The patient explaining. The firm but loving redirection. The twenty minutes of back and forth that goes nowhere because she genuinely does not remember and I cannot make her remember and arguing about what is true only makes both of us more upset.
So I try something different.
"Mom, do you want to go to Walmart after?"
"Walmart? Yes. I need a few things."
"Great. We just have to make a quick stop first."
She is in the car in fifteen minutes. Dressed. Purse in hand. Ready to go.
I am not proud of the Walmart trick. I am also not ashamed of it. It works. She gets to her appointment. The doctor gets to see her. I get one more week of knowing that someone with medical training has laid eyes on my mother and confirmed she is okay.
We arrive. The appointment goes well. She is charming and funny with the doctor — she always is, which is why the doctor is sometimes surprised when I describe what our weeks look like. We leave. We go to Walmart.
And somewhere between the paper towels and the bread aisle I turn around and she is gone.
Not gone gone. But gone — disappeared into the store the way she does, drawn to something that caught her eye, completely unaware that I am now doing that half-jog you do when you are trying not to panic in public. I find her in the card aisle, holding a birthday card, reading it carefully.
"Look at this," she says, holding it up. "Isn't this sweet?"
It is sweet. I stand there for a moment — heart still pounding from the thirty seconds I thought I had lost her — and look at the card she is holding out to me like a gift.
"It's beautiful, Mom."
We buy the card. We go home. Tuesday is done.
Wednesday — The Dish
She is staying with me for a few weeks. Her other home — the one she alternates between, the one with my sibling — needed a break. So she is here. In my kitchen. In my mornings. In my thoughts even when she is not in the room.
I am standing at the sink. I have something in my hands — I am about to do something, I know I am about to do something, the thought is right there on the edge —
"Do you need me to wash this dish?"
I look up. She is holding a plate. The plate is clean. I washed it this morning.
"No, Mom. It's clean. Thank you."
I turn back to the sink. What was I about to do? It was something. Something I had been thinking about doing for the last ten minutes. The thought is gone. Completely gone. Like it was never there.
"Do you need me to wash this dish?"
I take a breath.
"No, Mom. It's clean."
She puts it down. I try to reconstruct the thought. Laundry. Was it laundry? I think I was going to put something in the washing machine. I start walking toward the laundry room —
"Do you need me to wash this dish?"
I stop walking.
Here is the thing that nobody prepares you for. The thing I could not have understood before I was living it.
Standing in my kitchen, I genuinely could not tell whose memory was failing.
Was it her — asking the same question three times because her brain genuinely does not retain the answer?
Or was it me — unable to hold onto a thought for more than sixty seconds, unable to remember what I had been doing, walking from room to room like I was searching for something I could not name?
Both of us. Untethered in the same kitchen. Circling the same clean dish.
I walked back to the sink.
"Yes, Mom. Go ahead and wash it."
She washed the dish. I stood there and tried to remember what I had been about to do.
I never remembered.
The Part Nobody Talks About
Perimenopause brain fog is real. This is not a character flaw or a sign that you are losing your mind. It is biology — the fluctuating estrogen levels that affect memory and cognition, the sleep deprivation that compounds it, the cortisol from chronic stress that makes it worse.
And caregiving is one of the most sustained sources of chronic stress a human being can experience.
So here is what is actually happening in that kitchen. I am running on broken sleep because she was up at 2am and I heard her moving around and I got up to check on her. My cortisol is elevated because every day involves some version of problem solving under emotional pressure. My estrogen is fluctuating because that is what perimenopause does. And my brain — my beautiful capable brain that I have relied on my entire life — is struggling to hold onto a thought for more than thirty seconds.
And hers is too. For completely different reasons.
We are not the same. I want to be careful to say that clearly. What she is experiencing is a disease. What I am experiencing is a hormonal transition that with the right support and attention is manageable.
But in the kitchen on Wednesday afternoon, standing at the sink with the thought I had lost and the dish she had already washed twice — we were the same. Two women in the same kitchen, both searching for something we could not quite hold onto.
That moment is what nobody prepares you for.
Thursday Evening — Why Am I Here
She has been quiet most of the day. Good quiet. Comfortable quiet. We watched something together in the afternoon. She laughed at the right moments. She knew who I was. It was a good day.
Then at dinner she looks up from her plate.
"Why am I here?"
I put my fork down.
"You're visiting, Mom. You're staying with me for a few weeks."
She looks around the kitchen like she is seeing it for the first time.
"Where is my car?"
"You don't drive anymore, Mom. Remember? The doctor said it wasn't safe."
"He did not say that. That is not true."
Deep breath.
"He did, Mom. We talked about it. It was a few months ago."
"I don't remember that."
"I know."
She is quiet for a moment. Then —
"I want to go home."
I explain. She listens. She seems to accept it. We finish dinner. I clear the plates. She helps me — she always wants to help, and I always let her because the wanting to help is important, the dignity of contributing is important.
Twenty minutes later she looks up.
"Why am I here?"
We have this conversation four more times before she goes to bed.
Each time I explain. Each time she listens. Each time something in her releases and she is okay again — for twenty minutes. For thirty. For an hour if we are lucky.
I do not lose my patience. Not because I am a saint. Because I have learned that losing my patience does not help her remember and it does make both of us feel worse. So I breathe. I explain. I find something to make her laugh. And for a moment — that beautiful fragile moment — she is here with me and we are okay.
Then —
"Why am I here?
2am — My Turn
I wake up at 2am. Not because of her this time. Because of me. Because the heat rolls through me like a wave and suddenly I am sitting up in the dark, covers kicked off, waiting for it to pass.
Hot flash number four of the night. Or five. I have lost count.
I sit in the dark and I think about the week. The appointment. The Walmart. The dish. The why am I here. The explaining and the laughing and the explaining again.
And I think — why am I here?
Not in the lost confused way she asks it. In the 2am philosophical way that exhausted women ask it when the house is quiet and there is finally space to feel the weight of everything.
Why am I here in this season of my life, sandwiched between my own body changing and my mother's mind changing, trying to hold it all together without losing myself in the middle of it?
And then I remember.
Because she needs me. Because I am her daughter. Because when she looks at me on the good days — the clear days, the days when she is fully herself and she takes my face in her hands and says you are such a good daughter — those moments are worth every 2am, every repeated question, every Walmart, every dish.
Because nobody else was going to show up the way I show up.
That is why I am here.
I kick the covers back on. The hot flash passes. I lie back down.
Tomorrow is Friday. She has no appointments. Maybe we will go to Walmart.
If This Is Your Week Too
You are not alone. Not even a little bit.
The sandwich generation — caring for aging parents while navigating your own midlife changes — is one of the least talked about and most universal experiences of women in their 40s and 50s. We are all in some version of this kitchen. We are all standing at some version of that sink, trying to hold onto a thought that keeps slipping away, answering some version of why am I here for the fourth time before dinner.
Her Parents Help and Her Midlife Wellness Help were built for exactly this woman. For you. All of you — the caregiver and the woman going through her own changes and the daughter and the wife and the one who woke up at 2am wondering why she is here.
You are here because you are extraordinary. Even when you do not feel like it. Even when you cannot remember what you were about to do. Even when the dish is already clean.
You are here. And that is everything.
Navigating your parent's aging while your own body is changing.
See where you stand as a caregiver.
Or check in with what your own body is going through right now.
Understand where you are in your hormone transition.
Related Articles
Why Brain Fog Happens During Menopause: Understanding Memory and Brain Function
Hot Flashes During Menopause: Why They Happen and What Helps
The Sandwich Generation Survival Guide — For the Woman Doing It All in the Middle
Looking for support navigating both? Visit our resource library for caregiving guides at Her Parents Help and midlife wellness resources at Her Midlife Wellness Help. Both built for the whole woman.
The information on this page is for educational purposes only. Her Parents Help and Her Midlife Wellness Help are properties of Her Midlife Wellness LLC. hermidlifewellnesshelp.com
References & Sources
Family Caregiver Alliance. Caregiver Health and Wellbeing. caregiver.org
North American Menopause Society. Cognitive Changes During Menopause. menopause.org
National Institute on Aging. Alzheimer's Caregiving. nia.nih.gov
Harvard Health Publishing. Menopause and Memory. health.harvard.edu
Alzheimer's Association. Daily Care and Dementia. alz.org