• Keith Alan Pavlick, 53, is moving his parents into assisted living, which will cost $9,000 monthly.
• Pavlick's father has dementia, and Pavlick estimates memory care will cost $14,000 monthly.
• The caregiving and long-term care experience has taken up every second of Pavlick's life.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Keith Alan Pavlick, 53, who works as a real estate agent in Orlando. Pavlick plans to sell his parents' home by next month and move his parents into an assisted living community, which will cost about $9,000 monthly, not including insurance or other medical costs. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

There's a lot more than just the dementia diagnosis. There are a lot of things people don't think about that occur right around the time of a diagnosis, when the elderly person has accumulated bills that they didn't need or bought things that just take up space.

Much of this country has parents who are getting older. The reason we have Social Security and other programs in place is because there is a need for them. Unless you're starting out investing or you bought SpaceX at the IPO, then you're probably not going to be able to take care of your parents when they're that age by yourself. I'm probably going to be selling real estate until I'm dead.

We're supposed to take care of the people who took care of us when we were young, but it's hard on me right now.

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My mom is my dad's caretaker right now

I work as a real estate agent in Orlando. I'm lucky that I make good money. I've had lots of deals and closings recently, but as far as new deals for the next month, those won't happen because I have to focus on my parents' situation.

My dad was a military man. He was in the Air Force doing top-secret military bombing runs in the Vietnam War. My mom, 79, and dad, 80, are both retired teachers, so they have a pension. My dad was diagnosed with dementia in March 2025. He's also a diabetic. In order for him to get the care that I need him to get, we have to transition him from his house into a facility. My mom is his caretaker at this time.

My mom has heart problems. She can still drive, but she's living in fear of what's going to happen to her husband and them financially. I know my mom is cognitively stronger than my dad.

He can't remember his name some days

He's declined so fast that it's alarming. A year ago, he was able to travel and remember things. Now, he can't remember his name or the day. He sometimes goes into "repeat mode," where he has to check the mail every 10 minutes for hours.

In some cases, older people in this situation are sold things that are predatory. In my parents' case, time shares were theirs. They signed a contract for this timeshare with $1,500 in monthly fees, so I'm in a fight with the timeshare about the costs because they sold it to him after he was diagnosed.

A few weeks ago, my dad decided that he was going to get chlorine for the pool, so he left. He took the car keys when my mom fell asleep, and he was gone all day. He couldn't find his way home. He ran out of gas at the gas station about 10 miles from the house. Police took him in the ambulance to the hospital, where they admitted him, and found that he had a case of shingles. He was in the hospital for a week recovering.

A few weeks later, he decided to go out again. I got into the car and made an assumption about which direction he would go. It was like trying to find a ghost. I was able to locate him. He recognized me and followed me home. At that point, I moved into their house.

There was so much hoarding

I knew they couldn't handle that house anymore. I am now taking on my family's entire assets, selling everything, and trying to get them into a situation where they can go into independent living. I plan to make about $25,000 on the closing of my parents' home.

This will probably be an eight-week adventure. There are lots of valuables in there, such as my dad's coin collection or a signed Salvador Dali lithograph, which I'm not comfortable selling. I had to sell my dad's gun that he's owned since the military. Over the last two weeks, I've thrown out over 60,000 envelopes and listed about 60 items on various platforms to sell. I'm hoping people will buy these for pennies on the dollar just to create some space.

They're lucky that their son's a real estate guy because not every family has somebody who can separate themselves from their life and do this sale. I hope there will be a small monthly stipend to help cover the facility costs. If they need extra, I'll have to pull from our family's resources.

I don't have time for my family and friends

My emotional state and my inability to do anything else are stunting everything else in my life. I don't get to see my wife and daughter. My niece is graduating in a few weeks, but I don't know if I'll get the chance to do that. I can't spend time with friends.

The way that they've been living is unacceptable, but a lot of facilities know that and know there are insurance companies that they can gouge. That's why their costs are so high. When you have a bad need for something, people tend to exploit you.

The assisted living facility will cost $9,000 a month for room and board. It's almost all of what their pension brings in. That cost is a discount because of my dad's military background, and I got a confirmation that they will never increase the cost for them while he's there. An independent living facility has a kitchen, appliances, and places where you can come and go, though he's not going to be able to stay in that for very long. If they pass away in the facility, at least I put them in a place that's pretty and clean, and they're taken care of.

That $9,000 number, though, is a mirage.

We looked all over the city and found one place we really liked that worked. The problem was, it's not a memory center. Eventually, my dad will not be able to stay there, because it'll get to the point where he's sitting on the couch, looking at the TV all day, not moving.

What's going to finance all of this is my mom and dad's financial growth over the years, and the little nest egg they've built with their house and collection that we're going to sell. We'll probably have to invest a bit of it somewhere, maybe in a life policy.

With current inflation, insurance costs will probably go up every month. He'll probably have to go to the memory center, where that $9,000 will jump up to $14,000.

It just seems like, with insurance, any time you need a memory, cognitive, or emotional test, you have to get a specialist and get it approved. By the time you get it approved, the condition will have gotten worse.

It's really important that we take care of our elderly, without having to jump through 60 hoops and getting 60 different answers from 60 different people.