Friday, March 21, 2008

hitting a snag

My dad took some tests today at the Senior Health Center. A while back, the home where he lives told me that the state objected to the home sending out a man whose file said he had dementia with a woman who definitely has it to the senior center on a public bus. It is a door to door mode of transport, it's true, but sometimes, new drivers drop elderly and handicapped people off in the wrong place, and leave them to wander around the city. If that happened, the home could lose its license. Understandably then, they asked us to take my dad to be tested and to find out whether he could be said to have dementia, something everyone, including his regular physician, seriously doubts.
This is a man who memorizes maps, who reads novels hungrily, and who does a Sudoku puzzle a day, some quite difficult. I wouldn't be able to do even an easy one, being awful with numbers. He's almost 92 and has had a stroke, so vascular dementia would not be unheard of, but he also has Tourette Syndrome, OCD, and bipolar disorder. Interestingly, elderly people with such neurological profiles seem to have a kind of protection against Alzeimer and dementia, on the average.
He was very upset after the testing, and the doctor's comments were telling: she said she would discuss his options in a few weeks, after she had analyzed the results and compared them to his previous tests, which were done about 3 years ago, soon after he came to California.
It would be terrible if he and mom could not go to the Center anymore. They would sit 24-7 in their room, watching tv. That is unacceptable. And I cannot manage to take them to the Center myself without going bananas. It is a 50 minute trip each way, and I cannot see myself doing that on a regular basis. Paying a driver is out of the question. It's a problem, not just for me but for them as well.
My dad is facing this possibility bravely; he is getting angry, and I don't blame him. But I am hoping the doctor doesn't say those dreaded words, despite the definite fact of his diminished memory.
He still follows the news regularly, does his gardening, walks for 30 minutes (slowly) on the treadmill daily, and it would be terrible for him to lose that and still go on living, knowing he was losing it all, little by little. He has watched that happened to my mother, so I hope he is spared it himself. But the truth is, I don't know what the doctor will say.
No point worrying about it till then, but I know that won't prevent my worry.

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