"This is my new 24/7 caregiving job," she says.

When Ivan was diagnosed, Anna found a memory care center. He was picked up every morning and was there for five hours, playing dominoes and checkers, socializing and listening to music. Anna could go to work while Ivan was occupied. But when the pandemic hit, the center had to close and Anna had to quit. Her job couldn't be done from home, and someone needed to take care of Ivan.

Anna and Ivan saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in a 401(k) for retirement, but all their hard work and planning for the future also means that they're now stuck. With money in the bank, Social Security and small pensions, the Romeros don't qualify for Medicaid, which could pay for help for Ivan. For a while, if Anna needed a break, she hired a friend, someone Ivan was comfortable with, for up to $25 an hour. But between that, the mortgage, medication and all the other bills life throws their way, Anna says she has been forced to slowly withdraw from their savings.

"I'm not working anymore, so now I need more money out of pocket to be able to buy food and shelter and everything else. Bills. Everybody got bills," she says.

The husband of the friend she'd been paying to take care of Ivan got COVID-19 and died. Then her friend got it. Anna has some help from her kids, but now she's mostly on her own again. She has started having anxiety attacks. They feel like heart attacks.

"There's a lot of crying days. There's a lot of angry days. You have no idea. You have no idea how hard this is," she says.

Some older adults are facing another problem too. Because of job loss from the pandemic, almost half of 18- to 25-year-olds are living with their parents again, says Olivia Mitchell, executive director of the Pension Research Council at the Wharton School.

"So part of what the older folk are doing is taking care of their children who are back home with them again," she says.

Mitchell says today's seniors are often more in debt than their counterparts were 30 years ago. They've taken on bigger mortgages and have more medical bills. Then, there are student loans.

"In fact, something like 6% of retirees are now having part of their Social Security checks garnished because of student loans they haven't paid," she says.

Some of that student loan debt is for themselves; some of it is for their kids. Anna doesn't have to worry about that — her kids are settled. College is paid for, and they're out of the house.

But she hopes to keep Ivan at home as long as she can handle it. If his dementia gets worse, care could cost thousands of dollars a month, and at that rate the couple's savings would be gone in about five or six years. Then what? Anna has her own health conditions. She had a heart attack in 2001 and has coronary artery disease. And even when she's able to hire someone to take care of Ivan, she's worried. What if they don't understand him?

Anna has joined a number of support groups for women like her whose husbands suffer from early-onset dementia. And she's looking for a memory care center where Ivan's bills might be partially covered by a grant. She's hoping President Biden will release his own version of a health care plan that would provide more generous coverage for patients coping with dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

But she also hopes that when the pandemic ends, she can go back to work just enough to try to ensure that the couple can afford their future.

Copyright NPR 2021.