Some of you talking about Alzheimer's.
My father had dementia. It hit him hard in the last two years of his life. He was always a forceful person but when he became extremely paranoid and unable to think clearly we had to have him hospitalized. The Doctor in charge of his care said “I will not discharge this man to go home. You (family) are not equipped to give him the kind of care he needs. The only way I will release him is if he goes to a facility that can care for him properly.”
In short, he had become angry and dangerous. There's a lot more to it but that'll keep it short.
The whole ordeal had stressed my mother very heavily. After he went into a nursing home and after a few ordeals, he seemed to resign himself and settle in. After things reached a state of “normal” my sister took my Mom out of state to visit her sister, whom she hadn't seen in years. They stayed there quite some time and it was very good for my Mom.
While they were away, my Dad got gout and became bed ridden. Then he got pneumonia. I got a call in the middle of the night, he had been taken by ambulance to the hospital and the nursing home rep indicated to me that I needed to go there right away, the implication being that he wasn't going to last much longer.
I got there and he was lights out, unresponsive, but stabilized, like sound asleep. After a while I went home.
When I went the next day...this is kind of surreal...he was sitting up in bed and when he saw me his face lit up with a big smile. This is a man who on most days didn't know who I was. We spent hours talking and I'm telling you that man was 100 percent all there. He asked me about my friends from childhood by name, wanted to know how they were doing, asked me so many things like he was trying to catch up. He told me stories I've never heard about his friends and what happened to all of them, as if he was sharing things he felt were signifcant: their military service, their families and where they lived... None of it was just idle chat, it was all purposeful conversation. Very good natured, pleasant and warm. We went on and on for hours. Finally he was tired and so was I and I went home.
Sadly, when I went back the next day he had descended back into the dementia. I have no explanation for any of this.
They got him over the pneumonia and the gout and he went back to the nursing home. My Mom and sister came home, and they absolutely did not believe me when I told them about this. No way. I asked, why would I make that up? So they just said well they had him on some feel-good medication in the hospital so he'd be cooperative and he was just happy because of the drugs. They never believed me that he had a day where he was cognizant and coherent.
And then...after he had cheated death by pneumonia, back at the nursing home he was physically well if not mentally. One evening he had dinner and then told the nurse he was going to his room to lie down. When bedtime came, she went to see if he needed help getting to bed and he was gone. His body was there on the bed fully clothed, as if he was sleeping but he had passed on. No sign of distress. He just apparently went to sleep and that was it.
Somebody said he just wanted to die on his on terms.
