My live-in-the-basement MIL has mild dementia, [View all]

and things are starting to get worse faster. I know it will mostly fall on me to look after her, even though I also take care of our disabled adult son.

She's forgetful about common-sense things. For example, she looked out the window, and came upstairs to tell me we have two moons tonight, and I should take a look. Of course we don't have two moons, but I didn't want to embarass her. She has vision problems, she says, so I checked out the window to see how bad her vision had gotten. I then had to explain that the double-paned windows were creating a false image of the moon on the glass.

On a Sunday, she asked if that was her day to go to her doctor appt. I told her it was Sunday. That meant nothing, in terms of her remembering that doctors don't typically schedule checkups on a Sunday. I had to explain that to her.

Today, some mail was returned. She had made a payment on her WalMart account, made out the check to WalMart versus the bank that issues the card. She lost the mailback envelope, so she tried to copy the address down on a clean envelope, but she basically stirred the PO Box number with the zip code and wrote patches of numbers that make no sense for either number. Furthermore, she has over $5000 charged, but she only made a minimum payment. I have no idea yet what the interest charges are, and how big the late fee will be. I hope they close her account and allow no further charges.

I think we need to freeze her credit.

My husband and I need to be on her two bank accounts if they want me to pay her bills for her.

I'm not sure what else we need a PoA for, just a health care PoA and advanced directive. She has no assets, just 2 accounts with low balances, a SSI check, and two life insurance policies.

Any other ideas? What else do I need to do?