No More Walking for Dad

Quite a bit of time has passed since my last update on my dad, so I thought that while I had a few minutes I should probably give an update.

The last update was about three weeks ago. At that time we had just entered my dad into the hospice’s In Patient Unit (IPU) to try to get his meds figured out. He was there for a week, and he’s been home for the past two weeks. What a roller coaster ride those two weeks have been.

Long story-short, he’s been a handful these last two weeks. The only reason I’m now able to have time to write this is because he’s bedridden at this point, sleeping most of the time, and pretty much incoherent in those periods when he isn’t sleeping. It’s only a matter of time before he succumbs to something…we’re guessing within the next couple of months, but it could be years (no one has a good timetable for this form of cerebral degeneration). With him confined to bed, we are freed from having to constantly monitor him in-room to ensure he doesn’t go wandering. Most of the time we now monitor him electronically, which enables us to wander about the house.

Right now, our only goal is to keep him as comfortable as possible in whatever time he has left. Since there’s a standing DNR order we’ve all agreed to, there isn’t an option for treating this disease for which there is no treatment. It’s now just a waiting game of us watching him decline and eventually die. That’s not as bad as it may seem to some. This form of dementia is even more dignity robbing than the more common form of mental degeneration that most of you are familiar with: Alzheimer’s disease. Is it hard watching someone you’ve loved your whole life go through the dying process? A little. Mostly we just want his suffering to end. This is no way to put a coda on an otherwise good lifetime. He hasn’t really remembered us or his own past in many months. Shoot, at this point he doesn’t always remember how to make his limbs move.

For the near term, we are going to be trying to keep him calm and safe. He’s scheduled to return to the IPU in a couple of weeks to give us a bit of a break during Thanksgiving. After that, who knows? The next respite break isn’t until after Christmas, but it’s anyone’s guess if he’ll still be here at that time.

Don’t feel sad for us. We’ve had a good year or two to mourn the man we were losing. Sadness isn’t really part of our lives at this point. It will be when he does die, but right now we’re just tending to the things that need tending to. I don’t think the transition for us will be too traumatic. Like I said, we’ve mourned for a while now. This isn’t a sudden change. I’ve been running the household for almost two years now, so my father’s passing will mostly be a matter of paperwork as he really hasn’t been here in any real sense for a while. Will it be strange not having him around? Yeah, a little. But I think the journey will have been so much more difficult than the destination that any practical or emotional difficulties won’t be too hard to deal with. (I studied the death/survivor process in college, so I’m pretty sure I know what to expect.)