Some basic information

That load of laundry is done and now we move on to some basic information. My name is Gilda. I am the eldest of two children and am a sober alcoholic. I have an adult son who lives with me. My sister lives nearby as does my aunt (my father's sister). My father and mother are divorced and my mother is remarried. She also lives in California. My father has not dated since the early 1990's and is single, which in some cases is a blessing, and in other cases is a disaster. As far as helping him to not lose his little empire of savings or blowing his own credit all to hell, this is a disaster. As far as not having a step-parent to contend with, it's a blessing. Now, where was I? Oh yes, I was 'fixing' my sister for my dad. Well, you can imagine how that went. There were many trials and tribulations, but I won't go into that here. I will tell you that life is fragile, love is important, and forgiveness is the most important thing I have to give another human being, and it is the greatest gift I have ever received.

After spending two and one half years living with my father it was time to go, and I moved in with a friend of mine. This gave me some space to get away from the situation, to see it from a different perspective. The losing of the ATM card was becoming a regular issue. I don't think it suddenly stopped, I think my dad just stopped telling me he loses it because it scares me. In 2009 I was able to visit my dad, and see things from this new, distant, perspective, and it did not look a lot different to me. He was still misplacing things all the time. For a while I thought it was because of his penchant for the color black. He has a black jacket, a black bed-spread, a black case for his French horn, a black cell phone and it is in a black case. He has black shoes. I mentioned this to him, perhaps buy things in bright colors that will contrast with all the black. He yelled at me and insisted that all the black had nothing to do with him losing his cell phone on his bed all of the time. Okay, we'll let that go and move along to the next item. Through all of this time, my father has been complaining of headaches. He says they are migraines. I have only had a few migraines in my life, and they are crippling, debilitating and horrid. I feel nauseous, cannot stand light, or any sound at all, and do not touch me, because that hurts too. I don't think his are migraines because he practices the French horn or he vacuums or he watches the TV blaring loud when he has these headaches. The doctors tried a myriad of medications. They have tried Depakote, vicodin, darvocet, percocet, oxyxontin, methadone, fentanyl patches, lidocane patches, and all the anti-inflammatory Nsaids they make. I have seen him go off and on these medications several times over the past 6 years, and most of the time, he is calling the doctor within the 48-72 hours it takes to get the medication out of one's system. He is in the middle of detoxing off of one, and is calling demanding another. He will say one worked, when I was there, and it did not work. He will say something did not work when it did work. I have only seen one medication make any difference in his headaches. It lasted a  couple of weeks, He had almost no headaches at all, and he slept well almost every night that he took that medication. This was just two months ago. The medication was not intended for headaches. It was the Donepezil (generic Aricept). It was the best 3 weeks of the past 6 years. He called his doctor to complain that it was making him drowsy and lethargic (he has had these symptoms for months, not weeks) so they put him on the Excelon patch. He tried that for a few days and called with the same complaint. They took him off of it (or he took himself off of it, it is very hard to know what is really going on when the doctors will not talk to me).

Alrighty then! We've covered my dad has mysterious headaches that have no known scientific cause. Did I tell you he always gets a headache when there is an uncomfortable emotional situation going on? He also had surgery for this, that doctor said he had a deviated septum. Well, shocker, that did not stop the headaches! (That was more than a decade ago). Let me point out here that when I was a child, my father was always complaining of pain in his elbows, his shoulders, he said he had arthritis and bursitis and it was very painful, and he went to the doctor an awful lot, and no, he never had any surgeries to fix those problems, but the pain migrated to his head. So, my conclusion is, perhaps, my father may be addicted to prescription pain medications. He may have been using them since I was very young. The number of years I can go back and remember him needing a pill for his pain is 40 years, and that is a lot of pain pills.

End of an era

Just prior to my returning to California, there had been a frantic series of telephone calls between my father and myself. One very late night, while I slept, my father left me a voicemail message that my sister was in the hospital, that she was dying, and that I had to come home right now. Well, that was not going to happen in a few short hours. I had a lifetime's worth of belongings to pack into a 4-door sedan and drive all the way back to Disneyland. The message was not clear on what was wrong with my sister at all. As soon as I heard the entirety of it, I called my dad back and asked what was going on. He said she was out of surgery and was going to be okay. (Okay, so she is not dying or dead, whew! Thanks be to the Gods and the surgeon and science and stuff) but now he wants me to hurry home because he wants me to get her to stop drinking. (today, I'm a sober alcoholic and so is my sister.) I spent the next several months riding my sister's ass and harassing her into AA meetings, and in spite of my pressure, she managed to get sober. While I was completely distracted by trying to control my sister's life, I didn't notice a lot of what my dad was doing. I was busy and unavailable and that was probably a good thing for all involved.
to be continued... laundry needs doing!

Fall 2006, return to the Golden State

 In 2006 I returned to California, around October, this time of year. I got to my dad's place , a small condo, two-stories, but just a loft really. He was grumpier than usual, and I was tired from the long and heartbreaking drive west. After a few days I began to notice things seemed a little off. I wondered if it was medications that my dad was taking. He always was a complainer, and was never really of good cheer, so that seemed normal to me. There were a few things that were alarming. He began losing his ATM card (or maybe he had been before and I had never noticed it) he'd lose it every couple of months.  Though he has only two cats, he had three litter boxes (in case of a potty emergency that requires flying from one to another litter box I supposed?) With my allergies in that tiny place I was sick all the time with those boxes. It took me almost 6 months to convince him that he needed no more than *two* boxes for two cats.  He was confused about what was going on in television shows (he was watching "Lost" which was confusing enough on it's own) so I blamed his confusion on the shows, the medications, the idea that he might be bi-polar had to be the reason he flew into rages, it had to be. I didn't know any other reasons why he would. He got so frustrated with his laptop one day that he began slamming his fist into the keyboard. This, of course, caused all kinds of havoc with the drives, the sound card, etc. It would have been cheaper for him to buy a new one, but he took it to be repaired.

I will try to make this more than a chronicle of things I noticed, and I may come back and edit this part later. I just want to get down how I felt at the time (a little baffled) and what was going on that I was able to understand, or not understand, you be the judge.

I don't want this job.

This is the job that nobody wants. It's a reality everyone wishes wasn't true, and that many of us ignore until it is so blatantly clear to us, or perhaps someone is harmed, or has harmed another. This is how I am dealing with my father's dementia. I'm not sure where this will go, or how it will go. I suppose I should share some of how we got to where we are, our little family. This is the introductory post, and more will be added as I have time and energy and emotional strength.