For caregivers

Just diagnosed. Now what?

Aging Sidekick walks you through the first 30 days after a dementia or Alzheimer's diagnosis — legal, medical, daily care, and what to tell the rest of the family.

Aging Sidekick complements, not replaces, your healthcare team. In an emergency, call your local emergency number.

An adult child sitting with a newly diagnosed parent, reviewing a printed plan together
How Aging Sidekick builds your plan

A diagnosis is the start of a plan, not the end of one.

In the first month after a dementia diagnosis, the questions stack up faster than the answers — who has POA, which doctor sees them next, what medications change, what to say at the next family meeting. Aging Sidekick walks you through it, one step at a time.

A caregiver reviewing a printed care plan with her parent at the kitchen table
How it works

A 15-minute voice intake. Eighteen assessments. Ten Life Plans.

Talk it through once. Aging Sidekick builds a profile, draws on a library of 18 assessment templates — including Legal, Financial, and End-of-Life — and writes ten plain-language Life Plans you can act on.

  • Voice intake — 15 minutes — builds the profile while you talk
  • 18 assessment templates — including Legal, Financial, and End-of-Life
  • 10 Life Plans — including Medication Schedule, Legal Checklist, and End-of-Life Checklist
See it in action

Three screens from the product

Aging Sidekick voice intake — a 15-minute conversation that builds the care profile

Voice intake — 15 minutes

Aging Sidekick Legal Checklist — one of the assessment templates highlighted for a new-diagnosis family

Legal & End-of-Life assessment

Printable family-meeting agenda — one of the gated assets a new-diagnosis caregiver can download

Printable family-meeting agenda

What kind of dementia is it?

Dementia is an umbrella term. The plan you write for the next few years often depends on which kind your loved one has, so it helps to ask the doctor for the specific name and to write it down.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common type. Short-term memory tends to slip first, and word-finding becomes harder over time.

Lewy body dementia often comes with vivid dreams, visible movement changes, and good days and bad days that swing more than families expect.

Vascular dementia tends to step down in stages, often after a stroke or a series of small ones. Things can hold steady for a while between steps.

Frontotemporal dementia often shows up first as a personality or judgment change — not memory loss. It can be misread as depression early on.

Sources: Alzheimer's Association · National Institute on Aging · Mayo Clinic · alzheimers.gov.

Why POA matters today, not someday

Power of attorney is a legal document your loved one signs while they still can. It names someone to make financial or health-care decisions if they later cannot. Signing it early — while the diagnosis is fresh but cognition is still intact — keeps the choice in your family's hands, not a court's.

A few practical notes. Most families need both a durable financial POA and a health-care POA (sometimes called a health-care proxy or advance directive). They are usually separate documents. State law varies, and an elder-law attorney can draft both for a fraction of the cost of a contested guardianship later on.

Find a local elder-law attorney through NAELA — National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys.

In their own words

What caregivers tell us

Built on trusted sources

Built with input from senior-care professionals

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Free download

The first 30 days: 12 things to do, in order

A printable, plain-language 12-step checklist for the first month after a dementia diagnosis — the legal, medical, daily-care, and family-conversation steps in the order most caregivers wish they had done them.

The first 30 days: 12 things to do, in order

A printable, plain-language 12-step checklist for the first month after a dementia diagnosis — the legal, medical, daily-care, and family-conversation steps in the order most caregivers wish they had done them.

Free download

The next family meeting — printable agenda

A one-page, plain-language agenda for the conversation that has to happen: who has POA, who pays what, who tells the grandkids, and who shows up to the next appointment.

The next family meeting — printable agenda

A one-page, plain-language agenda for the conversation that has to happen after a dementia diagnosis: who has POA, who pays what, who tells the grandkids, and who shows up to the next appointment.

FAQ

Caregivers ask these the most.

Do we really need a POA right away?
It is the single most-asked question in the dementia caregiver communities. POA needs to be signed while your loved one still has the legal capacity to sign — many families wait a few weeks longer than they should. An elder-law attorney can draft a durable financial POA and a health-care POA together; NAELA has a directory.
How do I know what kind of dementia my parent has?
Ask the doctor for the specific diagnosis in writing — Alzheimer's, Lewy body, vascular, frontotemporal, or another type. If you only have "dementia" on the discharge note, request a follow-up with a neurologist or geriatrician. The Alzheimer's Association and the NIA both have plain-language guides on the differences.
How do I tell my siblings, my kids, and the rest of the family?
A short family meeting works better than a group text. Pick one person to lead, write a one-page agenda, and stick to it: the diagnosis, what changes now, who is taking on which role, and when to meet again. Our family-meeting agenda above gives you a printable template you can hand out.
Is this an emergency?
Aging Sidekick is a planning tool — not a medical adviser. For sudden confusion, slurred speech, a fall, or other emergencies, call your local emergency number. For the day-to-day questions of the next few weeks, the planning tools and your follow-up appointments are your first calls.

Start your plan free — takes 15 minutes.

120 minutes/month of voice on Premium; 15 minutes on Free. No card required.