{"id":6418,"date":"2017-07-24T10:13:07","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T17:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/?p=6418"},"modified":"2017-07-24T10:17:43","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T17:17:43","slug":"dad-update-comfortably-numb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/?p=6418","title":{"rendered":"Dad update: comfortably numb"},"content":{"rendered":"

**My dad is a 74ish… maybe he\u2019s a 75-year-old,\u00a0 with dementia diagnosed about six years ago.\u00a0 His symptoms align somewhat with Lewy Body and his scans show vascular problems.\u00a0 From time to time, I keep track of how his symptoms are progressing.\u00a0 In the beginning, I thought doing so would teach me some secret I needed to know about my dad before he died, some beauty about life cycle.\u00a0 So far, it\u2019s taught me that if I end up inheriting his diagnosis, I need to figure out a way to kill myself, and I need to remember to do it before I get too fuddled to know how.\u00a0 So, I dunno. Maybe this is only the midway of my lesson.\u00a0 Things could still look up, right?**<\/strong><\/p>\n

We visited my parents last weekend, and it was surprisingly peaceful.\u00a0 My father is decidedly more impaired.\u00a0 Most of the time, he floated through the house like an errant balloon \u2013 circling my mother, scanning each room like a man who\u2019s misplaced a book, then wandering off to the back bedroom, presumably to sleep.\u00a0 Previously when we show up, he\u2019s wanted to talk, needing attention like toddlers do, unable to settle down until he saw you focused on only him.\u00a0 This visit he only engaged in conversation once.<\/p>\n

I tried to speak with him a few other times, but it\u2019s surprisingly difficult to start a conversation with him. Questions like, \u201cHow are you doing?\u201d confuse him, and concrete prompts such as, \u201cDid you bike today?\u201d are few and far between.\u00a0 Even these seem to throw him into disarray, as if the concept of \u2018today\u2019 must be dug out of a wrecked filing system.<\/p>\n

One time I smiled with prolonged eye contact, an invitation for him to talk.\u00a0 He eyeballed me.\u00a0 \u201cWhat?\u201d\u00a0 he demanded after a moment.\u00a0 Which?\u00a0 Good point, I guess.<\/p>\n

Contents of the one conversation:\u00a0 He used to be a good doctor, but he\u2019d had a \u2018strake\u2019 (stroke), and his brain, no good.\u00a0 But! (Handing us a workbook on singing lessons) he had a good voice.\u00a0 His mother had put him in (some singing type function as described by hand gestures and broken sentences.)\u00a0 He could be useful by singing.<\/p>\n

There have been several iterations of this idea as my father has lost function, so that over the years I\u2019ve understood the core of his personality is a desire to be useful.\u00a0 Watching him hardscrabble to hold on to anything has broken my heart.\u00a0 The worst: he was so proud of having 0 \u2013 blood (Universal donor!\u00a0 Saving lives! Going into the hospital again!) but eventually could no longer give blood because he was not able to answer the questions giving informed consent.\u00a0 The nurse cried when she told him.<\/p>\n

But for some reason, this time my father\u2019s struggles were not so bad.\u00a0 Perhaps all the earlier versions, I could feel him holding on by his fingernails, the weight of dementia ripping him from the nailbed,\u00a0 his determination to keep holding on.\u00a0 This last visit felt as if he were in free fall.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if that makes sense.\u00a0 He will always want to be useful.\u00a0 He is so far gone that he can\u2019t hold onto that painful failing for more than a passing moment.<\/p>\n

Also on the plus side, he is nonviolent, and although he seems out of it, does not appear to be distressed.\u00a0 Mom says his hallucinations have gotten so frequent and weird (e.g., there’s a man in bed with them at night) that he is more likely to trust Mom’s statement it’s a hallucination, thus limiting their middle-of-the-night searches to prove\/disprove hallucinations (this was common when he heard babies crying or an alarm going off.)<\/p>\n

My mother is hiring someone to stay with him for 4-hour stints during the day so she can go out and do things.\u00a0 In bittersweet good news, I think she has cared for him until some part of her is satisfied she did her best.\u00a0 I don\u2019t get the whiffs of agony from her that have been present before, but a stronger sense of her boundaries, that she\u2019s going to save some tiny part back for herself.<\/p>\n

In distressing news, my funny, sweet, sister Middle (the only one of my siblings who lives in the same town with my parents) has gained quite a bit of weight, and is expressively angry even in casual conversations.\u00a0 There are too many factors at play \u2013 stressful job, small kids (one with medical issues), life — for me to say her witnessing the decline of our parents is hurting her health, but I am worried this might be true.<\/p>\n

My mother still manages to make dinner for Middle\u2019s family on weeknights, and so they see a lot of each other.\u00a0 This is different than my experience with my mother, who told me I was an orphan shortly after my Dad\u2019s diagnosis came through.\u00a0 I\u2019ve spent a lot of time thinking about why Mom chose to cut me out and keep my sisters closer.\u00a0 On the surface it might seem like she loved me less, but I think some part of it was her trying to save me.\u00a0 Or maybe that\u2019s my mental gymnastics.<\/p>\n

But after seeing Middle this visit, I\u2019m reconsidering if I owe something to Middle for staying close to our parents so I didn\u2019t have to.\u00a0 Or if it\u2019s fair of me to pull Middle aside and tell her she doesn\u2019t have to stay.\u00a0 Mostly, I feel like it\u2019s not my place to interfere.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what Middle needs to get through this.\u00a0 But it\u2019s unexpected to worry she\u2019s being poisoned by approximation to Ground Zero.<\/p>\n

UNRELATED<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve recently found The New Yorker\u2019s fiction podcast, as read by the author, and I have a bit of a crush on Curtis Sittenfeld right now, particularly with her reading style, which seems to convey how she\u2019s in the middle of telling you a subtle joke.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a link to one of her reads, \u201cGender Studies\u201d which is NSFW.<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

**My dad is a 74ish… maybe he\u2019s a 75-year-old,\u00a0 with dementia diagnosed about six years ago.\u00a0 His symptoms align somewhat with Lewy Body and his scans show vascular problems.\u00a0 From time to time, I keep track of how his symptoms are progressing.\u00a0 In the beginning, I thought doing so would teach me some secret I …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dad","category-fight-with-my-mom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6418"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6424,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6418\/revisions\/6424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}