Hi there. I'm so sorry this has happened to you so young, to both of you (acj2002). Though I'm very impressed you're here so soon, and that you're seeking out help in those who might understand around you, that's more than I've done up until now. My mother was diagnosed a year ago, when she was 54, and I was 27 so still, not as young as you are. I still live at home though so I still feel as though I am very much living it. I lost a parent too when I was 9, so I can perhaps identify with those feelings as a child, though I've found being older, this time, and so much more aware has been far more difficult. Anyway, like you, for years she had been showing signs and we've all displayed our own ways of denial in what it could have been. It was hard work getting her tested, having to convince her, and the diagnosis was probably her worst nightmare. She lived with the knowledge for a bit, and we would do our best to comfort her and find an optimistic outlook we could which is normal practice I suppose. But then she would start finding letters, looking through mail, and keep reliving receiving the diagnosis for the first time 2, 3, 4 times; as I suppose she would keep forgetting. So now it feels like a secret my family has around her, about her, which feels terrible. I've been told it's nice that she doesn't know what's happening to her, but I struggle to see it that way. It's just turned my stepdad and I into agents of restriction for her, and she doesn't know why. Though she forgets and repeats, her personality also changes. All of her filters have gone, she can be belligerent and she can be snide, and to try and steer her back to amenability sometimes takes more patience than I think I'm capable of. I felt like I was stuck between either for guilty anytime I would take myself away, or I would do the opposite, out of martyrdom. But I've learnt to accept being selfish sometimes and not beat myself up for it. As long as it doesn't cost those I'm in this with notably. I've found with this, though familial sentimentality makes me really uncomfortable for some strange reason, just listening or being empathetic towards my stepdad has been really important. Realising those idyllic hopes for your retirement are over before it's barely begun, I can only imagine how hard that must to adapt to. Sorry, anyway, I think the thought of your parents being in danger is traumatising. And then as the symptoms change or develop, once you've gotten used to managing a symptom, they shift and change, and each time it feels like a new trauma. But I feel like if I'm here, and I know it's not just me, and that I've got back up? In any kind of metaphorical, ephemeral, practical, spiritual way..I'm already in a better place than I was. Hopefully.