I'm going to start my Pop-ism early... He loved to help and teach people. He really enjoyed passing along anything that he learned. He researched everything too which is a trait that he passed along to me. He was diagnosed with Esophageal Cancer in '97 and had a new surgery where they removed his entire esophagus. He had a rough time but recovered fully and then would tell anyone who wanted to know or listen his story. He believed like I do, if you can help someone with your experience, then it offers something positive to an otherwise difficult situation. I honestly believe he would be happy that I'm sharing his story.
It all started over a decade ago, so he would have been in his late 60's, I was in my mid-20's . When he was 55 he took early retirement from his job as a mechanical engineer and became a boat mechanic. He prided himself on remembering customers and boats and that is where he first noticed something was off. He would always remember a person that dropped off their boat as soon as they walked in the door to pick it up. More and more frequently he wouldn't recognize them at all. That embarrassed him. He went to the neurologist and after a multitude of tests he was diagnosed as being in the very early stages of Alzheimer's Disease. I'm sure there were other symptoms. For instance, he started using post-it notes ALOT. Those super sticky ones. He had a ton of them, EVERYWHERE. One time my dog Attila (a Vizsla), jumped on my parent's bed, ran to his bedside table and scoped up a ton of post-its in his mouth. I will always remember that sight, Attila in play pose on the floor by the bed with post-its everywhere and a mouth full of them.
Dad did what he could to slow the progression of the disease. He started playing the morning Sudoku that was in the paper. It became a morning ritual of my parent's and whoever was in the house when he cut it out of the paper and copied it. He started playing the Brain Game on the Nintendo DS. He tried some of the drugs that were out there. But I remember that some of those has nasty side effects or were contraindicative to other medications he was on. And all seemed well for years.
Then the day came that it really dawned on me that things were progressing. I went out for a run and dad decided he would ride his bike with me. I can't remember how far I ran, but I remember he was stopping to wipe his nose and when he stopped, he forgot to put his foot down and fell over. His days of riding the bicycle were over. I think it was around that time that he was diagnosed with Impaired Cognitive Disorder. And there were a lot of changes.
Next he started having trouble organizing things and his thoughts. Getting dressed in the morning was a struggle. He had lists everywhere to tell him what order to complete tasks in. He started not recognizing places, like Disney, that he had been to hundreds of times. That was the end of my parent's travels. Somewhere during that time he voluntarily handed over his car keys and driver's license. He would also over focus on small things. Watching TV and reading books became difficult for him.
Over the next two years after that, although his decline wasn't drastic, it was too me. Since I visited sporadically, sometimes it would be months between times that I saw my dad. I would notice major changes that no one else realized because they saw him everyday. Then there was the trip that he didn't know who I was almost my entire visit. It was before Christmas of last year. Christmas sucked. At our normal Christmas Eve party with the family, he wasn't recognizing anyone. Christmas morning he was confused and started throwing away his gifts because he didn't understand and didn't need them.
By April, I knew my family needed more help. So I spent a week in Jacksonville. That was rough. Really rough. My dad was a stranger. I still loved him with all my heart, but there were only small glimpses of the man that raised me. While I was up there we set up a company that provides in home care at a reasonable cost. After some trial and error, Shauna entered our lives. She was a life saver to my mom.
But things continued to progress... finally it came to a point where he was uncooperative and almost catatonic at a Dr's appointment. His Dr. decided to call 911 and start the process of getting him into a facility. That was the start of a very rough time but we've come out on the other side and we have him settled at nice facility in the Memory Care section.
To me, the most annoying aspect of the disease, is the patient's ability to fake it. He can make you believe that he knows exactly who you are and give you responses that he thinks you are expecting to hear. This makes it so not everyone can see the symptoms as they progress. So when I go and visit him and talk to him, there are instances that I'm never really quite sure whether he recognizes me or not.
So that's a very broad summary of events and the disease over the last 10-12 years. If anyone reading this has any questions about a particular time period, please don't hesitate to ask. I'm definitely not an expert, but as my story shows... I've experienced a lot.
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