A Daughter's Story of her Father's Alcohol-Induced Dementia
All Home Care Matters
Enriched Life Home Care Services
5.0 • 88 Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2023
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
All Home Care Matters was honored to welcome Mary Ellen Spangler as a guest to the show to share her story.
Mary Ellen shares her story of finding out that her father who was successful was slowly dealing with health issues that the family was unaware of at the time and these issues would later lead to homelessness for her father.
This is Mary Ellen's story and what she went through trying to help her father with what was diagnosed as Alcohol-Induced Dementia.
Mary Ellen is 31-year-old copywriter from Rocklin, California. She was born and raised in Rockin, California and has no plans to leave the beautiful state any time soon. Writing is her greatest passion, but she is also an educator at heart and has her Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology as well as a CA teaching credential.
In her free time, Mary Ellen is an avid reader, hiker, and love's to spend as much time with her family as possible.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to All Home Care Matters, the show where we discuss all things home care with discussions on important age-related matters and topics. |
| 0:10.1 | Brought to you by Enriched Life Home Care Services, the number one rated home care provider in Michigan by Top Rated Local. |
| 0:26.6 | Hello. local. Hello and welcome back to all home care matters. If this is your first time visiting us here at the show, we want to say thank you for taking |
| 0:30.1 | time out to be with us today. |
| 0:32.0 | We appreciate how valuable everyone's time is, and that's why we try and make each episode |
| 0:35.8 | here at all whom care matters, |
| 0:42.8 | something that will hopefully matter to you. Today, we're honored to welcome writer and family caregiver Mary Ellen Spangler. Welcome, Mary Ellen. How are you today? Good. Thank you so much |
| 0:49.5 | for having me. I'm happy to be here. Our pleasure, our pleasure. So when I introduced you, I said family caregiver, Mary Ellen. |
| 0:56.5 | Why don't you share with our viewers and listeners what family caregiver was for you |
| 1:01.9 | and kind of what led you to who you are today? |
| 1:06.2 | Yeah. |
| 1:07.0 | So my role as a caregiver kind of naturally fell into my lap. I was a caregiver from a legal |
| 1:14.5 | standpoint primarily for my father. My parents were divorced and I'm the oldest sibling. So it kind of |
| 1:21.8 | naturally fell into my lap. But I feel like it was the right fit as far as me being prepared to take on that |
| 1:30.8 | kind of role. So I'm glad that it worked out the way that it did. But essentially, my dad |
| 1:36.8 | suffered from alcohol-induced dementia. We didn't ever get a clear-cut diagnosis, which is one of the things that I really kick myself for. |
| 1:47.0 | But without a doctor's official diagnosis, it's still quite clear that what he ended up taking his life was dementia. |
| 1:54.1 | So that was really the root of it all. |
| 1:59.6 | Now, you'd mentioned throughout your life that you'd witnessed your dad's |
| 2:03.9 | struggles with mental health, particularly after being denied from medical school. How did that |
| 2:10.3 | shape, how did that experience really shape your perspective on mental illnesses and ultimately |
| 2:15.8 | influenced your decision to study psychology. |
... |
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