Most families reach for a fix before they have named the problem. The promise is that she stays in her own bed and her own chair. The problem is the distance between what she can still do on her own and what the house, and the people in it, now do for her without anyone writing it down. Until that distance has a shape, any plan is a guess.
Local option: New Plan Care gives families in the St. Louis area in-home help so a parent can stay home: companionship, help with bathing and dressing, meals, and overnight care. Call (314) 405-0887.
List her ordinary day, hour by hour
Take a sheet of paper and write her day from waking to settling in at night. Include the small things: getting out of bed, washing, dressing, eating, drinking enough water, opening the mail, taking out the trash, changing the sheets, getting to the bathroom at night, answering the phone, getting to appointments, and the medicine schedule. For each line, write who does it now. If nobody does it, leave the line blank. The blank lines are the problem you are trying to solve.
Learn the quiet signs
A gap rarely announces itself. Look for the evidence: a meal that was started and not finished, a pile of unopened envelopes, sheets that have not changed in a week, a bedroom door that stays closed until afternoon, a bathroom trip that comes with less warning than before, or a habit of saying she is fine while the house tells a different story. Also look at the list you keep in your head. If you find yourself checking on tasks you never used to check, the gap has already moved toward you.
Separate what she has let go from what she is losing
Some changes are her choices, and her choices deserve respect. Others are losses she would not choose if they were named to her. Ask her which tasks she wants to keep doing, which she is glad to hand off, and which feel like losing herself. Write her answers in her own words. Those answers, not your list, should set the order of the plan.
Know when to bring it to the care team
Bring the list and the blank lines to the care team once you can name three or more tasks with no owner, or once a single missed task has caused a visible problem. The care team can tell you which blanks a helper can cover, which ones the family must keep, and which ones need someone with more training. A hired or in-home non-medical caregiver can give medication reminders and pick up prescriptions as an errand, but the family, the doctor, and the pharmacist keep the medicine itself. Write that split on the list so nobody has to remember it.
Where to go next
If you are not sure how to start the list, read the order of the series first, then come back to this page. The list does not commit you to any plan. It tells you what the plan has to carry.