Caregiver Journal

The phone call came at 4:12 PM on a Tuesday.

It was a state trooper, calling from a Walmart parking lot in a town I’d never heard of. “Ma’am, we have a Margaret Kessler here. Is she your mother?”

I dropped my coffee. “Yes — is she okay? Where is she?”

“She’s safe, ma’am. She’s in the back of my cruiser with a bottle of water. We’re in Mansfield, Ohio. She doesn’t seem to know how she got here. She has your number on a card in her wallet.”

I sat down on the kitchen floor. Mansfield is sixty-two miles from my mother’s house.

That morning, at around 9:30, my mother had gotten in her car to drive to the Kroger four blocks from her house to pick up bread, milk, and a can of cat food for Whiskers. That’s it. A trip she’d made every week for the last forty-two years.

Six and a half hours later, she was in another county.

The trooper later told me that a Walmart employee on her smoke break had noticed an elderly woman sitting in the driver’s seat of a Buick, engine off, just staring at the steering wheel. The woman had been there, motionless, for at least an hour. When the employee approached and gently asked if she was okay, my mother said: “I think I forgot what I’m doing here.”

That night, after I’d driven six hours round-trip to bring her home, after I’d sat with her at her kitchen table while she shook her head and said over and over “I just don’t understand how I ended up there”, after I’d finally tucked her into her own bed and turned out the light —

I sat in my mother’s living room and asked myself the question that I’m still asking eighteen months later:

What if next time, nobody finds her?

Most people never connect what’s on their plate — or in their cup — to what’s happening in their mind. But research now suggests that certain everyday foods and popular beverages — particularly those high in refined sugars, artificial additives, and ultra-processed ingredients — may quietly interfere with the brain’s ability to maintain focus, recall, and mental clarity over time. Highly refined breads made from processed white flour, for example, are among the most commonly consumed foods linked to rapid blood sugar spikes — a pattern that, over time, researchers have associated with increased mental fatigue and difficulty sustaining focus.

In addition, certain natural foods traditionally associated with overall wellness have also been studied for their potential benefits to brain health. Honey, for example, contains antioxidant compounds that may help combat oxidative stress, while ginger is often linked to improved circulation and reduced inflammation in the body. Bananas are also recognized as a nutritious food that provides important vitamins and minerals, including potassium and vitamin B6, which play a role in supporting normal brain function and energy metabolism. Although they are not miracle solutions, ingredients like these have attracted growing interest for their possible role in supporting mental clarity, memory, and concentration when included as part of a balanced diet.

On the other hand, some commonly used medications have also been associated with effects on memory, concentration, and mental clarity — especially when used for long periods or without proper medical supervision. Certain medications for anxiety, insomnia, and allergies, for instance, may cause drowsiness, cognitive slowing, and difficulty focusing. Research also suggests that the excessive use of some pain relievers, antidepressants, and medications with anticholinergic effects may negatively influence cognitive function over time. While many of these medications are important and safe when properly prescribed, experts emphasize the importance of responsible use and medical guidance, particularly when symptoms such as brain fog, memory lapses, or persistent mental fatigue begin to appear.

My name is Sarah. I’m 56 years old. My mother’s name is Margaret — everyone calls her Maggie — and she has lived alone in the same Cleveland house for forty-two years. The house I grew up in. The house my father built the back porch on with his own two hands.

She doesn’t want to leave. She doesn’t want assisted living. She doesn’t want to move in with me — we tried that for six weeks after Dad passed and it nearly broke us both.

“I have my routines, Sarah. I have my garden. I have my church. I’m not ready to be put away yet.”

And the truth is — she isn’t. She still cooks her own meals. Still hosts her bridge club every other Wednesday. Still gardens. Still reads three books a week.

But she’s 82. And after the Walmart parking lot incident, her doctor used three letters that have changed our lives ever since:

MCI. Mild cognitive impairment. The waiting room of dementia.

Mansfield wasn’t the first sign. Just the loudest one.

After Mansfield, I went home and started reading.

What I learned terrified me.

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 6 in 10 people with dementia will wander at least once — and many will do it repeatedly. Wandering can happen at any stage of the disease, including the very early stages, when the person still seems fine to everyone around them.

And here is the part that haunts me:

If a wandering senior is not found within 24 hours, up to half of them will suffer serious injury or death. Not from the dementia itself — from exposure, dehydration, traffic accidents, falls in unfamiliar terrain, or simply from getting too cold or too hot or too lost to be saved in time.

The phrase the Alzheimer’s Association uses for this is “critical wandering.” Every year, tens of thousands of older Americans become missing-person cases — not because anyone took them, but because their own minds led them somewhere they couldn’t come back from.

My mother got lucky in Mansfield. The Walmart employee noticed. The trooper was kind. She had her wallet with my number on a card my brother had laminated for her years ago.

I lay in bed that night and realized something that made my stomach turn:

Mom got home because of a coincidence. Because a stranger on a smoke break happened to glance at a parked car. Because the trooper was patient enough to call instead of just driving her to a hospital. Because the laminated card was still readable after eight years in a wallet.

Coincidence is not a safety plan.

First, the daily check-in calls.

I called Mom every morning at 9 and every evening at 7. My brother Mike took weekends. We had a system.

The problem? Mansfield happened between my morning call and my evening call. She left for the grocery store at 9:30 — right after we’d hung up — and I didn’t know she was missing until the trooper called at 4 PM. Six and a half hours of unknown.

Phone calls aren’t a tracking system. They’re a guilt-management system. They make us feel better. They don’t make her safer.

Then, Find My iPhone.

I bought my mother an iPhone (her old flip phone didn’t support tracking) and showed her how to use it. Set up Find My, added myself as a family member, taught her to keep it charged.

It worked great — until the day she left it on the kitchen counter. Twice in the first week. Then a third time. “Sarah, the phone is too heavy in my purse. I can’t carry it everywhere I go.”

And here’s the part nobody talks about: a phone tracker only works if your loved one remembers to bring the phone. Memory loss is the exact reason you need tracking. Memory loss is also the exact reason it gets left behind.

Then, the Apple Watch.

This one almost worked. I bought her an Apple Watch, paid the extra $10/month for cellular service, and taught her to wear it.

Three problems emerged within a month:

One: The battery only lasts about 18 hours. She had to charge it every single night. She forgot. Often.

Two: She couldn’t figure out how to use it. “Sarah, I can’t see the screen. The buttons are too small. I keep accidentally calling Carol from my bridge club.”

Three: The Apple Watch wasn’t built for somebody with memory loss. It was built for tech-comfortable adults who want a fitness tracker. There were no alerts when she went somewhere unexpected. No way for me to call her if she was lost — she had to call me.

$429 sat unused in a kitchen drawer next to the unused Life Alert pendant my brother had bought her years before.

Then, the medical alert pendant.

I tried again. Different brand this time. $49.95 a month, $599 a year, two-year contract.

She wore it for eleven days.

By day twelve, I noticed she’d “forgotten” to put it on after her shower.

“Sarah, it makes me feel like I’m being monitored. Like I’m a patient. I’m not a patient. I’m your mother. I don’t want to wear a flashing red pendant around my neck that announces to every visitor that I’m one bad day away from a nursing home.”

That’s when I learned a hard truth that I think most adult children don’t understand:

Pride is a real safety risk.

Our parents have spent their entire adult lives being competent — raising children, holding jobs, paying mortgages. The thought of becoming someone who has to be monitored, alarmed, watched, alerted… it’s humiliating to them. So they take the pendant off. They leave it in the drawer. And then they wander.

I was running out of ideas. I was running out of patience with my own anxiety. I was running out of reasons to believe my mother could keep living independently.

And honestly — that last one scared me more than any of the others. Because I knew how she would handle being told she had to leave her house. It would break her.

Until my sister-in-law Karen mentioned something at Easter dinner.

Karen is a hospice nurse. She’s seen everything. When she talks about elderly safety, I listen.

We were on the back porch after dinner. I was telling her about Mom — the Mansfield disappearance, the abandoned Life Alert, the iPhone left on the counter, the unused Apple Watch.

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said:

“Sarah, the families I work with don’t use Life Alert anymore. Most of them haven’t for two or three years. There’s a different category of device now — built specifically for people with memory loss.”

I leaned forward.

“It’s a small wearable that goes on the wrist or clips inside her clothes. Real-time GPS, all day, every day — you can see where she is from your phone any time. If she leaves a familiar route or arrives somewhere she’s never been, you get an alert immediately. Not six and a half hours later.”

She paused.

“And the part that matters most for someone like Maggie…”

“You can call her on it like a phone, and the device auto-answers without her doing anything. So if she’s confused, lost, scared — you don’t have to wait for her to figure out how to call you. You just call her, and you’re talking to her, through her wrist.”

I felt something in my chest unclench for the first time in months.

“What’s it called?”

“AngelSense,” she said. “Look it up tonight. I’ve recommended it to nine families with a parent showing memory loss. Every single one of them tells me the same thing: they finally sleep at night.”

I sat at my kitchen table with a glass of wine and read about AngelSense for two and a half hours.

It was created by a father whose son was on the autism spectrum and prone to wandering. He couldn’t find anything on the market that did what he needed, so he built it himself. Today, the same technology is being used by tens of thousands of families to protect children with autism, adults with Down syndrome, and seniors with dementia.

It’s the only consumer GPS device I could find that was actually designed for people with cognitive impairment — not athletes, not commuters, not gym-goers wearing it as an afterthought.

Here’s what it actually does, in plain English:

1. Real-time GPS, all day. You open the app on your phone and see exactly where she is, on a map, updating every few seconds. Not “last seen two hours ago.” Right now. This second.

2. Auto-answer two-way speakerphone. This is the feature that sold me. You can call her from your phone, and the device auto-answers — she doesn’t have to press anything. You start talking, she hears you through a clear speakerphone, and she talks back. If she’s confused or lost, you’re in her ear within seconds.

3. AI-powered wandering alerts. The device learns her normal routines — the routes to the grocery store, to church, to her bridge friend Linda’s house. If she goes somewhere she’s never been before, or stays somewhere too long, or takes an unexpected route, you get a push notification immediately. You don’t have to be watching the app.

4. Indoor location, not just outdoor. Most GPS trackers go silent inside buildings. AngelSense uses Wi-Fi signals to keep tracking her inside her own home, the senior center, the doctor’s office — you can see what room she’s in.

5. SOS button on the device. A simple button she can press if she needs help. It calls you and any other family members you’ve added.

6. Multiple guardians. My brother Mike, my daughter Lauren, and I are all set up as guardians. Whoever is closest, whoever is awake, whoever notices the alert first — we can all act. The weight isn’t just on one person.

7. ETA notifications. If she’s on her way home from the grocery store, the app tells me when she’ll arrive. If she doesn’t arrive when expected, I know within minutes — not six and a half hours later.

8. Designed to actually be worn. Comes as a clip-on wearable that hides under clothing, or as a watch — whichever your loved one will accept. The company reports a 95%+ wear-compliance rate, which is unheard of in this category. Compare that to the Life Alert pendants that sit unused in drawers across America.

And the company itself: their support team is staffed by people whose own family members use AngelSense every day. You’re not calling a script-reading call center. You’re calling another family caregiver.

An Apple Watch is a fitness tracker that can also call 911. AngelSense is a wandering-prevention device first, second, and third. Every feature was designed for somebody who may not remember how to use it. That difference matters more than I can explain.

Every other device requires the wearer to press a button to get help. That’s exactly the wrong design for somebody with memory loss. A confused person can’t troubleshoot a button. AngelSense flips the model: you initiate the call, the device picks up automatically, you’re talking to her in seconds. The first time you do this and hear your mother’s voice come through her own wrist, it changes how you carry the worry.

I don’t have to sit and refresh the app all day. The system learns Mom’s normal patterns — her route to Kroger, her bridge club Wednesdays, her church on Sundays. If she goes somewhere unexpected, takes a wrong turn, or stays somewhere too long, my phone buzzes within minutes. Not hours.

If she walks into a CVS, most GPS devices lose her. AngelSense uses Wi-Fi positioning to keep tracking her indoors — you can actually see what part of the building she’s in. The doctor’s office. The senior center. Her own bedroom.

My brother Mike, my daughter Lauren, and I all see the same alerts. Whoever is closest or available responds. The weight of caregiving doesn’t fall on one person’s shoulders alone. If Mike sees the alert before I do, he handles it. If I’m in a meeting, Lauren sees it.

Some seniors will wear a watch. Some won’t. AngelSense comes as a clip-on wearable that hides under clothing or as a sleek watch — you choose what your loved one will accept. 95%+ of users actually wear theirs every day. That number is unheard of in this category.

This sounds like marketing fluff until you actually call them. The company hires support staff whose own loved ones use AngelSense daily. When you call about a problem, you’re talking to somebody who has lived through exactly what you’re going through — not a script-reading call center on the other side of the world.

You set up everything from your own phone. You hand her a watch (or clip a small device into her clothing) and tell her, “This is so I can call you and check on you.” That’s the entire conversation. She doesn’t have to learn an app, charge a phone, remember a password, or press a button.

Week 1: She Actually Wore It.

This sounds small. It is not small. The Life Alert pendant had a non-wear rate of 100% within two weeks. The Apple Watch had a non-wear rate of 100% within four. AngelSense had a 100% wear rate from day one.

I asked her about it after the first week.

“Sarah, it’s a watch. I’ve worn a watch every day since 1962. This is just a more useful watch.”

That was the entire conversation.

Week 2: The First Real-World Save.

Mom drove to her bridge club on a Wednesday afternoon. Same drive she’d made every other Wednesday for eleven years. Should have taken her twelve minutes.

Forty minutes after she left, my phone buzzed: “Mom is at an Unknown location.”

I opened the app. She was three streets past Linda’s house, parked at the curb of a road she’d never been on.

I called her through the watch. The device auto-answered. I heard her breathing.

“Mom? It’s Sarah. Are you okay?”

“Sarah? Where are you? How are you talking to me?”

“I’m on the watch, Mom. The new watch. Listen — you’re three streets past Linda’s. You took a wrong turn somewhere. Can you tell me what street sign you see?”

She read me the sign. I pulled up the map, told her where to turn around, and stayed on the line with her for the four minutes it took to get to Linda’s driveway.

Linda came out to the car. I heard them hug through the watch.

Mom told the story at bridge that day. Linda called me that evening, crying, saying it was the most wonderful thing she’d ever heard of.

Weeks 3 and 4: Something I Didn’t Expect Happened to Me.

I started sleeping through the night.

For eighteen months — ever since Mansfield — I’d been waking up at 3 AM, every single night, with a cold knot in my chest, reaching for my phone to check whether Mom had called.

By week three with the watch, I noticed I’d slept until 6:15 without checking my phone once.

I told my husband Tom about it at breakfast.

“You’ve been sleeping different,” he said. “Quieter. I noticed last week. I didn’t want to say anything in case I jinxed it.”

I didn’t realize until that moment how much weight I’d been carrying.

It’s a fair question. The answer is uncomfortable but simple:

Life Alert spends an estimated $35 million a year on television advertising. Their commercials run during daytime news, soap operas, and game shows — the programming that reaches frightened seniors and their adult children. They have an enormous voice in the marketplace because they have an enormous monthly-recurring-revenue business to defend.

AngelSense started as a project by a single father trying to keep his autistic son safe. It grew through word-of-mouth in caregiver communities — autism support groups, dementia caregiver forums, hospice nurse networks. You hear about it from your sister-in-law the hospice nurse, or your friend whose mother just got lost, or an article like this one.

The medical alert pendant industry collected over $8.4 billion in subscription revenue last year. A device that actually works for people with memory loss — that solves the “wandering” problem instead of just monitoring “falls” — is an existential threat to that business model.

Read that again: the device that actually works for the modern dementia-care reality is rarely the one being advertised on TV.

It came through the AngelSense app. She had figured out the SOS button entirely on her own — not for an emergency, just to try it.

The recording was thirteen seconds long. “Sarah, this is your mother. I am at Linda’s. We are eating sandwiches. I love you. Goodbye.”

I was in a meeting. I read the alert, listened to the voice message, and excused myself to the bathroom for ninety seconds.

That little message is everything I have wanted for the last two years.

Not the absence of my mother getting confused — I can’t prevent that. Memory loss happens. Eighty-two-year-old brains do eighty-two-year-old things.

What I wanted was the certainty that if she got lost, I would know. Immediately. Not six and a half hours later when a stranger noticed her in a parking lot.

I think about all the things I tried before this — the calls, the iPhones, the rejected pendant, the unused Apple Watch, the $1,800 my brother gave to Life Alert for a service my mother refused to wear. I think about Mansfield. I think about all the parents and grandparents who didn’t get found by a kind employee on a smoke break.

And I think about every adult child I know — my brother, my friends, my coworkers, every person I’ve had a quiet kitchen-table conversation with about an aging parent — who is exactly where I was two years ago.

If you’re reading this, and your mother or father lives alone with even the early signs of memory loss, and you’ve been telling yourself “there’s still time”:

There might not be.

I waited eighteen months. We almost didn’t get her back. Don’t wait.