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I'm a long time regular poster who uses my real full name and for several reasons, I don't want this thread to show up anywhere if my name gets googled. First time this has ever happened. It's easy to guess and I don't care at all if anyone of you know who I am. In fact, I'd prefer it. This account name is my bands initials. I like guitars. Ok, anyhow, my father has been experiencing some serious mental decline over the past year. It got bad 9 months ago. He called me with a question and then called me an hour later with the same question having no memory of calling the first time. I called him back 15 minutes after this and he had no memory of either of these calls. This was scary as fuck. He was more or less like this for a few days. Went to the ER and got checked out with no answers. After maybe a week be seemed to improve a bit but was missing a week or so from his memory. Since then he has had good periods and bad periods but the trend has certainly been downward. His short term memory is shot, his decision making is shot, his ability to get things done is shot and more often than not, he's pretty confused. He's been getting angry at both himself and other people. He's had to quit or has been let go by a number of people he works for and I have been trying to hold together his remaining jobs but he is really in no position to be working at all. He's driving but I don't think he should be. He crashed his truck a few months ago. On his good days, he's aware of what's going on and on his bad days, it's hard to tell. About 6 weeks ago he went to the city by himself for an appointment and someone called an ambulance because he was confused. I don't think it's safe for him to travel by himself at all and sometimes he agrees. Sometimes he gets mad when it's suggested. As for the actual medical angle. He was checked out at the emergency room 9 months ago and has seen his GP as well as a psychologist. No answers.He had an MRI and I believe a CAT scan, also with no answers. A few days after he got real bad, both he and my stepmom began telling a story that he hit his head at work. This is totally plausible and it certainly explained things. Thing is, this story didn't start for a few days and it's details have changed over time. Including where and when it happened. I was more than willing to believe it was a concussion at first but after 9 months with no improvement, I just don't see it. Not to mention that he doesn't have a number of key concussion symptoms. After the first few months, when it was clear to me he wasn't improving, I started helping him make some appointments, which he wasn't really able to do on his own. I wanted specialists and I wanted people to look into something other than the concussion theory. My step mother freaked out on me for doing this. She insisted that there is nothing wrong and he's getting better. She wouldn't even listen to the words Alzheimers or dementia and told me to stop making appointments for him. Since I have no legal standing, there is nothing I can really do in this regard. If either me or my brother were in charge, We would be going to specialists and getting answers, however shitty they might be. My stepmother is having a very hard time with this for a number of reasons but at this point, she is not helping the situation at all by insisting that he is getting better and not attempting to get him a real diagnosis. She has recently shown signs of coming around to the fact that he's not improving but I think that their relationship is so strained that maybe she doesn't really know. She has been sick and he takes care of both of them financially and I'm sure she is terrified of what will happen. I know she is having a very hard time being around him. So, that's where I am. My Dad is getting worse. Yesterday he told me I should be getting plenty of rest for when the baby comes. We have 2 kids and none on the way. He calls me multiple time a day asking if we have plans. He repeats himself about every 15 minutes and he seems to say some very inappropriate things. More and more he says things that either don't make sense or have some bit of truth but are wrong. More and more he's getting angry and is convinced that we (his family and friends) are out to get him in some way. Last week he screamed and swore at me over literally nothing and in all my life, he's never sworn at me. I've spoken with him four times already today and he is deeply confused. I honestly don't know what to do. I know that he needs help and I know that continuing to pretend that he's getting better is certainly not helping anything. It's also hard on me because my Dad is literally my hero. So much of what I do and believe comes from him. We've had a close relationship for most of my life and he's always been there for me. Thanks for letting me rant. I have spoken with my wife, brother, a therapist and a few friends about this but it feels good to just type it all out.

I have no direct experience with this, but plenty of seeing a parent dealing, and if there's one thing I'd suggest it's to make sure that, in all the tumult, you make time and space for all of you actually dealing with it. It's so natural to lend all your energies to the person with the condition, but there's going to come a point where those energies are best deployed elsewhere some of the time. Don't view that as letting the man down. You're not.

Sorry, MVF. I have no tangible advice, but that sounds really tough. Vent away.

Oh, my heart goes out to you. I'm very sorry.Your story mirrors that of my dad over the past two years. He has dementia, we are fairly certain that it is Lewys Bodies dementia. I don't have time to write more now I'm afraid, but I will PM you contact info if you want to talk or write back and forth. Get him off the road asap.It will be a shock, but it is necessary, and may loosen things up to get more radically involved and move to help him. He may be relieved that the decision has been taken away from him.I saw my dad in June and am going back for Thanksgiving. He's north of Seattle, I'm in Berlin. My brother and especially my sister have moved mountains to help him. He has been in a memory care facility since Christmas and will spend the rest of his years there. I am happy that he is safe.Take care of yourself and thanks for reaching out and starting this thread. It's something that I meant to do too and never got around to. Much love.

hey! Bumping this, as it got lost in the post queue. Haven't had a ton of time for the board lately, but checked in to see if there were any posts that needed approval. best regards to you, mvf. Sorry for the delay.

Best wishes all.My mother is going through this at the moment with her own father. They work together (my grandfather always seemed destined to die at the office just like his father before him - his stated plan was to "consider" retiring at age 100). My grandfather is still nominally the boss of the company but he's been tactfully sort-of cordoned off. The sad thing is that he has become really paranoid and so he will not take the medication which would help him to not be paranoid (and be much happier). He thinks my mother and grandmother are plotting against him, he frets endlessly about the possibility that the factory may burn down, and he's getting steadily worse.Terrible, terrible affliction.

That seems like a sudden onset for Alzheimers compared to my dad, who showed symptoms long before it became debilitating, but I'm not a doctor.I don't have any suggestion for how to deal with the stepmom. With your dad, what they told us was not to remind him that he's losing his memory or confront him about his mistakes. It sounds like you've figured out how defensive he is already though.

I'm really sorry, AJ. You too, take care of yourself and hit me up if you want to talk/chat.I hope to get some time over the next week to write more in the hopes that it may help a bit somehow.

mookie1010 wrote:It's probably changed since then, but there are a couple of things that I'll tell you - arguing with your father or trying to get him "back to reality" won't help. Will probably just make it worse. He will be experiencing his reality and you have to kind of go with that. He will get angry, because being confused without a clear way out of that confusion is maddening. He will often have clear memories of things from long ago and will incorporate that into his reality. Then, suddenly he'll be lucid. Thanks. Yeah, arguing is totally pointless and I really try to avoid it at all. He does get angry. There are times though when I have to at least be firm. For instance, he's been getting late notices on his mortgage and keeps blaming the bank. I finally looked through his checkbook and he just hasn't been paying it. He didn't want to hear this but I sort of had to drive it home and make an appointment to get it hooked up to a direct deposit, which he then refused to do. I currently have no idea if he's paying it or not but my guess is that he's forgetting. Really, the blaming other people thing is a pretty constant, which is completely out of character. When he's more aware, he knows that he is letting everything slide but when he's not, he just blames other people. I've also at least tried to be firm about finances. He's been almost recklessly spending money at times. I've tried to get him to basically run any purchase over $100 with either me or my brother but I know he isn't doing this. My stepmother is basically useless in this department. She seems to always be in massive credit card debt and I believe that my dad literally handles all of their finances. He doesn't have much money and I fear he's going to somehow either blow what little he has or get scammed out of it. As for the old memories, he is definitely talking more and more about when he was younger. I've heard a number of stories from him recently that I never heard before and it's actually the only nice thing about all of this. Yesterday he was telling me about seeing Doc Watson live. Said he saw him about 10-15 times in the early 60's. My dad saw an absolute ton of amazing shows in his youth and has never ceased to amaze me with it but somehow never mentioned this. He's also been talking a lot about when he was a teenager and seems to be going through some old photos as he's been texting my brother and I pics from his childhood and early adulthood. Some are quite cool actually. total\_douche wrote:They checked his folate intake, right? Please tell me they ruled out pseudodementias.[/quote] I'm no longer in contact with his doctors so I have no idea. With my stepmom sticking with this stupid concussion story, I just don't know what people think. He had cat scans and and mri and they ruled out stroke. He saw a psychiatrists a few times over the summer who is an old friend of mine and he told me he was very concerned and said that my dad basically needed a team to figure out what was going on and that my stepmom had canceled any further appointments with him. I'm not currently aware of any medical appointments he has lined up and I know that they canceled several with a specialist in the city. I assume because she was bringing up the idea that it isn't a concussion but I don't honestly know. Thanks everyone for letting me vent/discuss here.