A Guide for Family Caregivers
A Real Family’s Guide to Caring for an Aging Parent, Spouse, or Loved One — by Steven M. McNally.
Arrives December 1, 2026
“Nobody hands you a job description for this. One day you’re a daughter, a son, a husband, a wife, a niece, a neighbor. The next day — sometimes literally the next day — you’re also the person who knows where the insurance cards are, whether Mom took her blood pressure pill, and what the doctor actually meant by ‘we want to keep an eye on it.’”
From the IntroductionElder care isn’t one problem. It’s dozens of smaller, connected responsibilities — medical, legal, financial, logistical, emotional — all sitting on top of one person you love. When It’s Your Turn is a plainspoken, comprehensive guide for the adult children, spouses, and family members who find themselves holding it all together, often with no warning and no instructions. Not a memoir. Not a pitch for an app. A reference you can actually use — at the kitchen table, in a hospital hallway, or at 2am when you need an answer, not a lecture.
Twelve Parts
Organized the way families actually move through this — from the first phone call to building a system that can be handed off to someone else.
The call, the crisis, and a framework for the first 72 hours — before anything else.
The documents, lists, and information that have to be findable before an emergency, not during one.
Appointments, specialists, medications, and hospital stays — the new rhythm of ongoing care.
Who does everything, who does nothing, and how to divide responsibility on purpose instead of by accident.
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and VA benefits — explained in plain language.
Powers of attorney, health care proxies, wills, and guardianship — set up before they’re needed.
Aging in place, home care, assisted living, and memory care — the honest tradeoffs of each.
Falls, driving, wandering, and medication mistakes — and the real tension between safety and independence.
Why a simple, contemporaneous record protects everyone — and how little it takes to keep one.
What this actually costs you, and how to ask for help before you’re running on empty.
Decline, hospice, palliative care, and the conversations nobody wants to start.
Pulling everything into one system that can actually be handed off to someone else.
From the Book
Nobody hands you a job description for this. One day you’re a daughter, a son, a husband, a wife, a niece, a neighbor. The next day — sometimes literally the next day, after one phone call — you’re also the person who knows where the insurance cards are, whether Mom took her blood pressure pill, and what the doctor actually meant by “we want to keep an eye on it.”
Nobody trained you for this. Nobody voted you into it, exactly, though it can feel that way when you look around and realize everyone else in the family has quietly decided you’re handling it. There’s no orientation packet. There’s no manager. There’s just you, a stack of paperwork you didn’t ask for, and a person you love who needs things you don’t fully know how to give.
This book is not going to tell you that this is a beautiful journey. Sometimes it is meaningful. It is also often exhausting, confusing, expensive, and lonely — and all of that can be true at once. This book assumes you’re an intelligent adult who doesn’t need to be talked down to, and doesn’t need to be told to “practice self-care” as if you hadn’t thought of that.
— Introduction, “What This Book Is”
Coming December 1, 2026
Be the first to know when When It’s Your Turn is available.