Tom's Story

My Brother’s Battle — and What It Cost Our Family

This isn’t a hypothetical. This is what happened to my family.

My parents visited Arizona years ago and I suggested they look into long-term care coverage. I told them what I tell everyone: “You either die slow or you die fast.” In modern healthcare, it’s often slow — and that’s where long-term care insurance matters. My parents declined. Years later, my brother was diagnosed with Frontal Temporal Dementia. His eight-year battle nearly bankrupted our family because there was no insurance. My father later developed dementia too, and my mother couldn’t care for him alone. She wished they’d bought the coverage when I first offered it. These aren’t hypotheticals. This is what happens without planning.

Frontal Temporal Dementia is cruel. It changes a person’s personality, their ability to communicate, their capacity for basic daily tasks — slowly, over years. Watching my brother go through that, and watching my family try to absorb the financial and emotional weight of eight years of care without any safety net, changed me.

When my father was later diagnosed, my mother found herself in the same position — overwhelmed and underprepared. Not because they were irresponsible. Because nobody had helped them understand what they’d face, or how affordable a policy could have been years earlier.

That’s the conversation I now have with every family I meet.