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Clinical lead & founder
Ashlee Skabla Velez
APRN, ACNPC-AG
Ashlee is a board-certified Acute Care Nurse Practitioner — Adult-Gerontology with deep clinical experience in hospice, dementia care, and the CMS GUIDE Model. She started Memory Lane after watching too many families navigate dementia alone — figuring out diagnosis, behavior, benefits, and end-of-life decisions with no single place to return to.
Every article on Memory Lane Care is written or clinically reviewed by Ashlee. The goal is to give caregivers the same information she gives families at the bedside — in plain language, with concrete next steps, and grounded in current clinical guidance.
Credentials & licensure
APRN
Advanced Practice Registered Nurse
ACNPC-AG
Acute Care Nurse Practitioner — Adult-Gerontology (board certified)
Licensure verifiable through state board of nursing on request.
Areas of expertise
- Dementia & Alzheimer's care across the full disease trajectory
- CMS GUIDE Model (Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience)
- Hospice & end-of-life care
- Acute geriatric care
- Family caregiver education & coaching
- Care planning, advance directives, and family meetings
Articles by Ashlee
96 clinical articles written or reviewed by Ashlee.
GUIDE
- How to balance work, caregiving, and dementia as a family
- Am I eligible for Medicare GUIDE?
- GUIDE pre-screeners — saving 30 minutes at the first visit
- Finding a GUIDE provider in your state
- GUIDE — your questions, answered
- After you're enrolled in GUIDE
- Respite vs adult day
- Skilled nursing vs memory care
- When to call hospice
- Home health vs hospice
Paying for Care
- Understanding Medicare Respite Options for Dementia Caregivers
- VA Aid and Attendance — the most-missed benefit for dementia families
- What Medicare covers for dementia care
- Medicaid HCBS waivers
- PACE — full-spectrum care for adults 55+
- Long-term care insurance claims for dementia
- The Medicare Hospice Benefit
- Medicare vs Medicaid
- Cost of memory care
- Selling the home to pay for care
- Caregiver tax breaks
- SSDI for dementia
- Medicaid asset spend-down
- Medicaid 5-year look-back
- Applying for VA Aid & Attendance
Learning
- What is dementia?
- The stages of dementia
- Alzheimer's vs dementia — what's the difference?
- Lewy body dementia
- Frontotemporal dementia (FTD)
- Vascular dementia
- Mild cognitive impairment
- Early warning signs of dementia
- Early-onset Alzheimer's
- UTIs in dementia: the overnight crash you can fix
- Eating, refusing food, and swallowing safely
- Caregiver burnout: the warning signs
- Anticipatory grief
- Falls in dementia
- Incontinence in dementia
- Pain in dementia
- Hospital delirium
- Caregiver guilt
- Caregiver isolation
- Dementia medications
- Caregiver anger
- Dementia and vision
Behavior Guidance
- Sundowning — why afternoons get hard, and what helps
- Wandering — keeping the door, the car, and the night safe
- Refusing care — what to do when bathing or meds become a battle
- Agitation — what's underneath, and what calms it
- Hallucinations and false beliefs in dementia
- Bathing refusal — what's really going on
- When dementia turns night into day
- Aggression — staying safe, staying connected
- Repetitive questions — staying patient with the 50th "what time is it?"
- Paranoia and accusations
- Shadowing
- Exit seeking and 'I want to go home'
- Refusing medication
- Catastrophic reactions
- De-escalating aggression
- Day-night reversal
- Wandering prevention checklist
- Anger in dementia
- Middle of the night confusion
Resources
- Home health vs hospice — they sound similar; they're not
- Where to find respite care that families actually use
- Adult day programs
- Telehealth for dementia families
- Dementia-friendly home design
- ER visits with dementia
- Finding dementia-friendly businesses
- Legal documents checklist
- Bathing in dementia
- Dressing in dementia
- Mealtime routines
- Dementia-friendly bedroom
Treatments
Hard Conversations
- When it's time to stop driving
- Should we tell mom she has dementia?
- Power of attorney — the conversation with a clock
- When siblings see it differently
- Moving to memory care — knowing when, choosing where
- End-of-life wishes — saying it while they can still say it
- Taking the keys — the line, and what's on the other side
- Telling them they can't drive
- Telling kids about dementia
- When to stop treatment
- Sibling conflict over care
- Pre-planning the funeral
Want Ashlee to walk you through it?
Book a free 15-minute walk-through with a Nurse Practitioner — no obligation, no sales pitch, just clarity on what to do next for your family.
Editorial standards
- Every article is written or clinically reviewed by Ashlee Skabla Velez, APRN, ACNPC-AG.
- Clinical guidance is grounded in current CMS, NIA, Alzheimer's Association, and peer-reviewed sources.
- Articles are dated and updated when guidance changes.
- Memory Lane is in beta and not yet HIPAA-compliant — content is educational, not a substitute for clinical care.