Dr. Debora Dunbar, 61, is a nurse practitioner living in Wallingford. She’s an expert in early-onset Alzheimer’s, writes Paula Span for The New York Times.

Her husband, Jeffrey Draine, 60, was diagnosed in 2017.

On Thursday mornings, Dunbar talks with Julia Sadtler via Zoom about caring for their husbands. 

Phillip Sadtler, 80, was diagnosed just two years ago.

Both men are patients at Penn Memory Center in Philadelphia.

Sadtler has a lot of questions about what’s ahead.

“The sense of being overwhelmed can be crushing,” said Ms. Sadtler, 81, a retired school admissions director.

Caregivers of a loved one with dementia face high rates of anxiety and depression. Things change socially when friends don’t come around anymore, and they have a harder time looking after their own health.

It’s also financially and physically demanding, lasting years.

That’s why matching newcomers with dementia caregivers who have been down that path in the mentoring program is so beneficial.

“I remembered how absolutely terrified I was at the beginning,” said Susan Jewett, who proposed the mentoring idea to Penn Memory after her husband’s death in 2020. She thought, “Maybe I could be useful to someone who is earlier in the process.”

Find out more about the Penn Memory Center mentoring program in The New York Times