Dream last night

[Background: My mom started asking her doctors what was up with her brain a couple years ago, because she was noticing having a lot more trouble than she used to have with keeping track of things. At first they were telling her that she had a couple silent strokes. The most recent neurologist says the strokes probably didn't cause the problems, and he wrote down the diagnosis of "Mild Cognitive Impairment, possible early Alzheimer's Disease." You never know for sure whether it's Alzheimer's, until it progresses to a point where it's clearly recognizable, or else you're looking back from some far future point and realizing it never did progress. In the meantime you basically have to prepare as if it were happening.]

I am at an Alzheimers Conference for Caregivers but the setting is really more like the Dance Flurry, big and spread out over lots of different buildings in a downtown not unlike Saratoga Springs. Mom and Dad are both around somewhere but I'm wandering on my own right now. There is a movie that is being shown at the conference, it's spoken very highly of as a way to better understand what the internal experience of Alzheimers is like over time. It's also supposed to be very depressing and I'm not sure I can handle it. I end up in a conversation with a bartender, whose bar is sort of a concession booth in a hotel lobby that's one of the sites for the conference. She's got mostly booze but she's telling me about this new medicine that she also has, that's supposed to let you experience something very sad without actually getting sad. It's a shot of bright-colored liquid. (I think there were red and green ones, don't know the difference. What she offers me is red.) Mostly what's in there besides the drug is aspartame, which I usually won't go near. She cautions me that the common side effect people have with this is forgetfulness, over a couple days after you take it. But I decide to try it. Kinda feel like I need it.
A little bit later I'm sitting in a lobby area trying to decide if I'm up for seeing this movie. I'm not, really, with or without the funky drug. It's not making me feel less sad, I just feel flaky and out of it and I want to go home. Mom appears and she is all energized and going to all the workshops and taking notes on everything and she's very urgent that I should make sure not to miss this and that and this, and especially that movie. It's very important to her that I see the movie. She's not picking up on the fact that I'm not doing very well. I say yes, I'll see the movie, because I'm not sure what else to say. She bustles off to the next thing. I feel like crap and decide to go home.
I get out to my car and find 5 white men wearing suits and ties in the process of getting into my car and getting ready to drive off. I approach the passenger side and I'm trying to get their attention, knocking on the glass and it takes them a while to notice me, but when I say excuse me, this is my car, one of them says oh sorry, that prius over there must be mine, and they go away. I'm in a hurry and get right into the car and start driving, and realize that I'm still on the passenger side and I can't reach the brake pedal. (Apparently the need to reach the gas pedal doesn't apply in this dream.) OK, this isn't that bad, I can mostly sort of control the car... I'm driving in a downtown area... I see my Dad on the other side of the street, standing outside smoking, and I want to tell him what's going on. I turn across to pull over in front of him -- crap, no brake -- and steer into the curb to stop the car, which works because I'm not going that fast. I start telling Dad (who is apparently untroubled by my strange arrival) about what's been happening, and the dream ends.