Dementia Decoded

If you’ve ever caught yourself snapping after being asked the same question for the tenth time, only to immediately ask yourself, "Am I a terrible caregiver?"—you are far from alone. In this episode of Dementia Dakota, host Jen Fink sits down with board-certified physician, health coach, advocate, and author Dr. Frank Spinelli. Together, they take a deep, compassionate dive into one of the heaviest and most unspoken emotional burdens in caregiving: the difference between caregiver guilt (I did

What if the key to slowing—or even reversing—cognitive decline isn’t a new pharmaceutical drug, but a physical setting on a wearable device? For decades, billions of dollars have been poured into biological and chemical treatments for memory loss, often leaving caregivers with high costs, difficult side effects, and limited options. In this episode of Dementia Decoded, host Jen Fink sits down with Chuck Papageorgiou, engineer, tech pioneer, and CEO of neuroM Therapeutics, to explore a completel

What happens when a real-life financial heist unfolds inside your own family—at the expense of someone you love? In this jaw-dropping episode, we sit down with technology and finance veteran Charles "Chip" Wallace, author of The Caregiver's Game: Unraveling Financial Deceit in the Shadows of Dementia. Chip shares the terrifying true story of how an in-home caregiver used pandemic isolation and his mother’s cognitive decline to execute a systematic, multi-million dollar theft right under the nos

What happens when living alone isn’t safe anymore, but moving into a facility is off the table? In this episode, Dan Deak, founder and CEO of Home Halo, joins us to share how his mother’s unexpected fall inspired a dignity-first, non-medical in-home care model. Navigating care for an aging parent who prizes their independence is one of the toughest challenges family caregivers face. Most agencies impose rigid shift minimums and high turnover, making parents feel institutionalized in their own l

Family Dynamics + Downsizing: Surviving the Legal and Emotional Estate Minefield Dementia care is hard enough. But when you add a house full of 47 years of physical belongings, a vague estate plan, and mismatched sibling dynamics, a difficult transition can instantly turn into a family crisis. In this week's episode of Dementia Decoded, I sit down with Heather Nickerson, a former CIA intelligence analyst and the co-founder/CEO of Artifcts.com. Heather’s entire career pivoted from national secu

When managing an Alzheimer’s or dementia journey, we meticulously audit medications, medical files, and care schedules. But how much time do we spend auditing the physical space where all that care happens? In this episode, I sit down with veteran architect Martin Kimmel, principal and co-founder of Kimmel Architecture, to pull back the curtain on how geriatric environments are engineered. The hard truth is that physical architecture is never neutral—it is either a proactive tool that supports