Caregivers NEED and Can Enjoy Vacations

A little late, but I keep my promises. And since I promised to post how things were going with my dad, here it is. I am editing though, to make it a current narrative, rather than reposting what I wrote a couple of months ago.

I had set up an appointment with the head of geriatric medicine the hospital (I am omitting names here) Actually, I set up TWO appointments, one for my mother and one for my father, so he wouldn't feel I was ganging up on him. He did anyway, but that's another story. Anyway, having the head of geriatric medicine look at my mother wouldn't hurt her at her age (she's 82), and anything to get my father to go.

At first he agreed to it, then he tried to get out of it, saying that he's fine and doesn't need to go. I basically told him, "tough, you're going." Today he tried to get out of it by saying he'd drive himself. I'm pretty sure he never would have arrived, so I didn't let him get away with that tactic either. He was surprisingly malleable though. I would have expected more of a fight, but maybe on some level, he wanted me to convince him.

He was difficult from the get-go. He was supposed to fill out the med history forms in advance and didn't. Actually, he refused to do it before he got there. I tried. He forgot his insurance cards. But we got there. And he's argumentative with me in the office. He'd deflect questions off to me, then get mad at my answers, so I left the exam room and basically let him hang himself.

The upshot: The doctor diagnosed him with manic psychosis. Or as she put it afterwards "He's crazy." The good news is she said it was treatable. She set us up with a Psychiatrist which we had to get him to the next day under the pretense is that he was being set up with a marriage counseling appointment with this psychiatric office. He refused to go with my mother so we set up "individual appointments." Actually we didn't. I just needed to get him there. The office squeezed him in the next day because I didn't want it to wait too long and have to go through the song and dance again. I couldn't risk him changing his mind. And because sitting on this for that long would have been very, very hard.

The appointment went o.k. at first. He balked at the place being called the "Geriatric Program" because at 79, he didn't consider himself "geriatric." To him that means decrepit and in a wheel chair. We me with the doctor in a small, but private office, where he asked him a battery of what I'm sure were a standard psychiatric exam. One of the questions, which he kept repeating, was to remember three words. "Daisy, seven, happiness." He'd ask later what the words were. My father would consistantly remember only two. When asked later he'd get frustrated, say it "wasn't important" or just plain get angry. By the end of the exam, this doctor, too, diagnosed him as manic psychotic.

Unfortunately, this doctor had the bedside manner of a lead balloon. He basically told my father, on the first visit, and without having established a rapport, that he was delusional and needed medication. THAT was brilliant. Leave it up to the delusional psychotic to decide what's best! Well, my father got angry, upset, and walked. out.

Now instead of him getting help, I had an angry senior citizen on my hands who was even MORE resistant to getting help.

This was a couple of months ago. Fast forward to the present.

A couple of weeks back, my father was getting really bad with my mother. He would be calling her "whore" and other things I won't type here. He had done this in the past as well and things went into a full-fledged screaming match. My brother called the police (this hadn't been the first time), but this time, when they came to the house, and listened to his rant on my mother, and saw this four foot ten, nearly 83 year old "whore".... well they finally took him in against his will for evaluation.

Finally! Though I didn't like the thought of my father in a mental facility, I was glad that he would finally get the help he needs. I spoke to his doctor, and I spoke again to the head of geriatric medicine, who assured me that he was "where he needed to be."

The problems arose when he refused treatment, and even refused tests. They would not do anything against his will, and his will was firmly against getting help. Of course HE was fine and the REST of us need help! We now had to start proceedings to try to get him help against his will. He went and retained a vulture... I mean lawyer... who pretty much didn't care what the medical professionals had to say and put up roadblocks at every turn. He took advantage of the fact that the first doctor that saw him was away on vacation, and that the doctor at the facility was now at another location and he had a new doctor who only saw the "reasonable" Dad, and not Mr. Hyde (to borrow from Jaqueline), and he is now getting released tomorrow.

It gets worse. He will not come home, afraid that my mother and brother will "do it to him again." and is instead going to my uncle's three room apartment to stay with my uncle and my late stage Alzheimer aun't until he can find a place of his own. He has again escaped getting help, and my uncle helped him do it. He couldn't get out until he had a place to stay, and my uncle continues to make excuses for him. I have to continually remind him that he gets his information regarding the rest of us from a guy who is psychotic and he cannot always take him at his word. My father may believe what's coming out of his mouth, but it isn't based in reality.

I tried to talk to his new doctor, but he always is conveniently "on the floor" and I never get a call back. The socail worker, who I DID manage to get on the phone only had two words to say to me--"HIPA Law" (or however that's spelled) them from telling me anything, even though he is my father! Anything from this point forward will require a court order. So basically the medical professionals are trumped and hamstrung by judges and lawyers who may know what is "legal" but not what is "right".

So proceeding will start for division of assets and all the lovely stuff that comes with a break-up. I will continue to seek a means to get him help but the way things now are, it will be very very hard. Once he leaves my uncle's I probably won't know where his is if he has his way. When I went to visit him at the facility tonight, to try to convince him to stay home, he accused me of going there to "get information" and basically attacked my character and disowned me.

I hate lawyers.