131 "he's not your father anymore"

I look back through this blog and smile sadly at some of my posts, where my dad did things that were kind of goofy and funny and we laughed a little at him, but in a loving way.
My dad is not funny anymore, not in the least.
He is incontinent, combative, possessive and completely inarticulate. And that's on a good day.
If he's not watched constantly, he goes in his pants. But now there's a twist. He won't take the dirty pants and underpants off. He won't shower. He sleeps fully dressed, in pee-soaked clothes. My mom is at her wits' end. Even if she could get him to wear diapers, how would she change him if she can't even get him to take off underwear soaked with pee or worse?
Sunday we had just gotten home from hiking at Sleeping Giant when my mom called for us to come over immediately. They were out in the yard and my dad attacked my mother, screaming at her that she'd stolen his money. (What money? Who knows?) Their neighbor saw or heard or somehow realized what was going on and rushed into their yard to pull my father away. In the melee the dog bit the neighbor (not badly), probably protecting my father.
We got there to find the kindly helpful neighbor with a slightly bloody leg, my father with his "mean face" on and fists clenched, ready to rumble and my mom in tears.
Typical Sunday.
My father turns to look at us as we walk up the sidewalk and demands to know, "Why are they here?" I finally do what I said I wouldn't do. I say, "I'm your daughter. Don't you know who I am?" Blank stare. My husband starts trying to talk to him and calm him down, but the mean face is getting worse and the fists come up. Remembering what several people have said to me about giving him things to hold, I take both his hands in mine and try to smooth out his fists. He yanks his hands back and fists them again like he' s going to go for me. I almost wish he would. My husband steps in, grabs my father, and starts saying emphatically that we're there because we love him and we want to help him but he can't hit people. Of course we have said this to him so many times and he won't learn. As Will is talking, my father is looking around him making the mean face at me and my mom is apologizing a million times to the neighbor for the dog. In return the neighbor apologizes for not realizing what was going on sooner and getting there quicker. Nothing is being accomplished.
The neighbor leaves. I sit on the steps. Will is still giving every version of his "do you want to live here with the cat and dog? Then stop hitting your wife" speech to my dad who is not listening. My mom explains that my father thought she stole his money. I give my father $3. He makes the mean face at everyone and then squirrels it away in his wallet.
The sad fact is that Sunday was my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. We should have gone out to a nice restaurant and celebrated. But there is no way.
My dad has my mom's engagement picture next to his bed. She saw him looking at it and asked who it was. He said, "my wife." And then he admitted knowing the picture was of her. So he knows that she's his wife. But he acts like she's his jailer.
I told my mom to leave, go anywhere, shopping, walk in the park, Sunday drive, just to get away. She went out shopping for about 90 minutes, leaving us to sit with my dad while he watched a ball game and pretended we weren't there.
In grandma news, we brought our new kitten Sputz over her house a few weeks ago to visit. She thought he was "very wild" but he was actually well-behaved. He ended up laying on the table sleeping while we did the puzzle. (At our house, the cats sleep on the kitchen table all the time--they have a bed there by the window--we never eat at our table.) Since all Grandma did was complain about the kitten, I won't bring him anymore. I thought that was the end of the story.
A few days later, something happened with my parents' cat. My dad let him outside without his leash and when my mom went to retrieve the cat, for whatever reason he freaked out and bit her hand pretty badly. It was swollen and infected. She took some antibiotics and it got better. End of story with that, too, right?
No. Grandma saw Mom's hand before it was healed and got it in her head that my fuzzy cuddly Sputz bit her, not crazy Jasper, and said she didn't want Sputz coming over again (which he already wasn't) since he'd bitten my mom so bad! My mom couldn't get her to understand that Sputz is a very good kitten and he did not bite her.
Back to dad.
So Sunday we have dinner as usual with grandma. My father leaned over and either karate chopped my mom's arm or pinched it (he does both, I didn't quite see which this time) and once again my husband explained IT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE TO HIT OR HURT PEOPLE.
Blank stare.
We get ready to leave. My mom collects most of the empty soda cans in a bag. My dad's can is empty. She tries to take it. He resists. She gives up for the moment. We all go outside. My husband and I get in our car and start to back out of the spot. My mom tries again to get the empty can and my dad whacks her. My husband stopped the car dead, rolled down the window and yelled at him, getting the mean face in return.
In the car on the way home, I said, "I hate being mean to my father." My husband replied, "he's not your father anymore."
His rages always about "his" things. You are trying to take something from him (his soda can, his filthy pee-stained underwear) and that makes you the enemy in his mind. Or he thinks you have taken something that either he never had or he just can't find or is confused about.
And it's not just my dad. This was in News of the Weird a few weeks ago. It's mainly meant to be a humorous column, but this section didn't strike me as funny:

At a Toronto nursing home in May, a 69-year-old resident angrily kicked a 79-year-old fellow resident, causing him to fall and fatally hit his head. The victim had taken up with a female resident, thinking she was his wife, but the jealous younger man thought the woman was his own wife. She was actually married to neither; all three had Alzheimer's disease. (No charges were filed.) [The Star (Toronto), 6-21-07]

"That's my wife." "No, that's my wife." Kick. Thump.
In other news, I somehow came across this on the web: Project Lifesaver. I am probably going to explain it badly, but it is a GPS project aimed at dementia/Alzheimers, autism and Down's Syndrome people. They get a wristband which looks like a watch that has a GPS beacon in it. If the person goes missing, they check that person's GPS beacon frequency, dial it into some special machines and go looking. They sent me a nice DVD for free with some written material and asked me to give it to the local police, which I did. Whether they will sign up for it, I don't know. No police station in Connecticut has yet, although the Project Lifesaver guy who sent it to me said Stamford might. They can network the GPS info with the Safe Return data.
If you haven't got this in your area, write to them, get the info package and bring it to your police station. The Wallingford police had never heard of it, although they knew about Safe Return. I also found that my dad is not flagged as a dementia patient in their computer so I had them do that. I'm not sure why, since they have his safe return info.

130 "Get in the shower"

Monday my mom called, frantic, saying "get over here and deal with your father."
He couldn't find the bathroom, couldn't ask for it, and pooped himself. Fine, no reason to make a big deal, right? But he refused to remove his soiled clothes or take a shower. My poor husband was in the bathroom with this smelly wreck of a man for a good half hour. He started off asking nicely and then progressed to threats (I will cut your clothes off with scissors) and yelling (take off your clothes! Get in the shower!). I just sat there in the living room like a useless lump, knowing that going in there would make things worse --remember how he freaked out when he peed himself a few weeks ago and I was there?
I can't say how much it sucks--you've heard it all, and if you're in this situation, you already know.
Here's another perspective: a friend of mine saw my dad recently. She had known him before he was diagnosed, not well, just as a friend's dad. This is what she wrote me when I told her about the above incident:

I can’t even say how I feel about your father. Seeing him that day ... just opened my eyes to what “Alzheimer’s” is/can be. I probably shouldn’t say this but I start to get all teary eyed when I think about him/it. I just can’t even image how that must be for him. In Monday’s case all he sees (lack of “knowing”) are people yelling at him & not understanding why these “people” are there and upset at him.

I just don’t get it/understand/know why things like this happen. What the hell are you/your mom etc supposed to “learn” from this. Isn’t that what they say “You learn something from your life experiences”? ahhhhh………. I’m just going to stop there because I think it’s something you could go on & on about.

My dad is having more and more trouble articulating even the most simple things. I've decided to bring my camera over there tomorrow and take pictures of everything he looks for: pens, pencils, wallet, keys, dog, cat, toilet, etc, and put them in a photo album so he can just point. To be reduced to that....it breaks my heart and more than that, it makes me so damn ANGRY. Anger makes me want to rant, and like my friend said, once you start ranting on it, you can't stop, because nothing makes the outrage go away. There is no panacea for this rage.

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Last weekend, I took my dad with me to see some ragdoll kittens at a breeder in Cheshire, Willow Pond Ragdolls. Linda was very kind, not upset that I showed up towing my whole family (well, me and my parents) or that my dad was mentally impaired. He was reluctant to hold the kittens ("too small") but held one of the mama cats and enjoyed watching me sit on the couch and play with them--she's got 8, 2 litters of 4 each born about 10 days apart. How do you pick? I fell in love with one of the littler ones, a seal point. He was the size of the palm of my hand and when I held him to my face and said "I'm going to eat you, you're so cute" he rolled over so I could scratch his belly. I will be going there again this weekend, to see which one I'll actually end up buying.
I already bought one, from Bluberri Cottage Cattery in Ledyard, where the breeder is also named Linda. He is the cutest, sweetest, smartest kitten I've ever owned, a seal point mitted with a blaze on his nose. I named him Chocolate Moose, the breeder named him Andy and my husband named him Sputnik Gauntlet. We call him Sputz.
We still have Nutter. He'll be 14 next week. He's got an ear infection, and of course he's still got lung cancer. Sputz loves him, jumps on him, licks him, follows him around. Nutter is not amused, although he is happy enough to eat Sputz's premium kitten food and lay on his window shelf. Once Sputz has a friend his own age, I hope he will calm down a little and they won't gang up on my poor old kitty.

128 "don't hit her"

I'm not writing as much, not just because I am busy with other things, but because my dad doesn't DO anything anymore. He hardly speaks. He picks his skin, stares at his hands, pees on himself, gets violent when he's frustrated.
Last Sunday, I don't know what set him off, but he started poking at my mother at the dinner table, smacking her arm. My husband grabbed my father's arm and started saying, very firmly, "Don't hit her," over and over, finally saying that if he kept hitting my mother, he'd end up in a nursing home. My dad sat there sullenly like a spoiled child, and then he went to the bathroom for a while. (He has no problem finding my grandmother's bathroom.) When he came out, he went and stood near the back door, wanting to go home immediately, so my mom packed up their stuff and the dog and took him home.
As soon as they were gone, my grandmother freaked out, started crying, getting all dramatic. We had to spend half an hour calming her down. She fusses at my father like he's 3--always wanting someone to wipe his face, fix his plate, he's using the wrong utensil or eating with his hands. I tried to explain to her to LET ALL THAT GO. None of that is important. He can't understand why he's being fussed at and corrected and frankly, who cares? I don't care if he eats with his hands or spills food on the table or puts gravy on his salad. I do care when he smacks my mother, or me, or lashes out in other ways. He only grabs and pinches her arms, not her face (so far), or once in a while her side or back. But it's wrong, and annoying, and it pisses me off to see her bruised. But when he is like that he is so strong--my husband wasn't there the night he flipped out in the restaurant. It's like a dual personality.
When I see him for lunch on Fridays, he recognizes my car and me (not as his daughter, or as "Bert" but as someone he knows) but after shaking my hand, he doesn't talk to me at all. Sometimes he doesn't even LOOK at me again, until we're leaving, and then he wants to know "when are you coming again?"
My mom told me that on Saturday, when she started to go to my grandmother's, my father said he didn't want to go there anymore and that if she made him go, he'd leave and walk home. Clearly he remembered was that he got yelled at there, therefore he doesn't want to return. He doesn't associate being yelled at with hitting my mom. Of course once he got there, he was fine and didn't go home. He was okay on Sunday too, didn't refer to the incident in any way (and did behave).
Friday night, my mom and I were playing a video game in the basement (I joined the Game Club at Big Fish games, so we can buy them for $6.99 rather than $20). My dad came downstairs in his usual confused way. We invited him to sit down and play the game with us. He didn't want to. He went into the other room and stood where the cat usually sleeps on the shelf, but the cat wasn't there (he was on a different shelf). My mom went into that room and showed him where the cat was. She came back and sat with me. We could hear my dad talking to the cat. Then he started swearing as if he had broken something--I don't remember the exact words, but basically oh shit-oh no-look at that-damn it. Actually my first thought was that he had hurt the cat, I don't know why. I don't think he would hurt the cat, he loves the cat.
My mom went in there and he had peed on himself. Not taken it out and peed, just let go where he was. I deliberately sat there and kept playing and ignored it, knowing he was embarrassed. Yelling at him for that does no good. He didn't want to change his clothes or take a shower. Finally my mom got him upstairs and got his pajamas on him, but he wasn't washed. She said he claimed that I was "laughing" at him for peeing himself. (I wasn't. I would never.) He came downstairs again and sat on the stairs watching us play the game, or sitting with his head down. He knows it's wrong to go in his pants and he gets very upset. But we think sometimes he can't find the bathroom. If he would do the little-boy thing and hold himself, it would be a clue and we could get him to the bathroom (there's even one downstairs, not 10 feet from where he peed on Friday).

126 Circling the Drain

Haven't written for a while. Nothing in the news about AD that caught my fancy. I see my dad, but he hardly speaks anymore, so not many amusing anecdotes to relate.
Here's the best of a paltry bunch: I took him to the bird vet with me a few weeks ago. He told the receptionist I was his wife. He started a conversation about one of my birds with someone in the waiting room and continued it with the technician in the exam room as if they were the same person.
My remaining cat, Nutter, has lung cancer, and he's really my focus right now, for the time he has left and I haven't been working on anything else except the novel my friend and I are writing.

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A couple of weeks ago, my mom took my dad to the doctor to get a new/different prescription for his violent outbursts. I don't remember the name of the drug he prescribed, but he wrote it up for 1.5 mg. When my mom went to fill it, it was only available in 5 mg--nothing smaller. She borrowed my pill splitter and tried giving him half a pill (2.5) which basically just made him almost catatonic.
But the pills have a worse side effect, one that's continuing even though she stopped the drug.
Incontinence.
Maybe it's just a coincidence, who knows. He has been having a problem finding the bathroom at night and peeing in the hallway and dining room. But then my mom found him in the basement, where the cat has his little hideaway, urinating on the floor. She yelled at him to stop, and instead he just let go and peed down his leg, on his pants. When she kept telling him to stop, he simply pooped his pants, right there. I asked, "did he fart and poop came out?" (that' s happened before) and she said no, he closed his eyes and grunted and filled his pants.
As soon as he realized what he had done, he became very upset. My mom cleaned him up, got him clean clothes and thought that was the end of it.
But he did it more than once, including in the bed, and he's also hiding the evidence--she finds "surprises" in the laundry hamper.
He continues to use the bathroom, though. I'm not sure if that's a normal progression or not. It's not something people want to talk about. And he won't wear Depends. I told my mom to just stick a maxipad in his underwear but she said he won't do that either. And now if he's got any poop in his underwear, even just a skid mark, he gets all upset and has to change all his clothes. So he knows it's wrong to have poop in the underpants.
That's all pretty bad, right? Can't suck more than that.
Oh, yes it can.

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Yesterday, instead of lunch, I had dinner with my parents, because I had a physical therapy appointment. My husband met us there. We had a perfectly nice dinner. Toward the end, my dad had to go to the bathroom. My mom brought him and waited for him. She was gone a long time so my husband went to see if he had to go in the men's room and get my dad, but they were on their way back. My mom said a man came over to her while she was waiting and offered help. I guess his wife had Alzheimer's and he recognized the signs. It's nice that there's people like that in the world. I was at a restaurant recently and I saw a man and his wife and it was clear to me that he had it. Alzheimer's is like a secret club that no one talks about...but when you DO talk about it, you find out almost everyone's a member. And boy are the dues steep.
My husband had to leave, and I stayed with my parents while we finished dessert. The waitress brought the check and my mom handed over her credit card. It came back declined. This started a wave of events that really had to be seen to be believed.
My mom was upset that her card was declined. She had just paid the bill, and she had made purchases on it the day before and that very morning. I didn't have my purse with me and of course my dad doesn't carry a wallet anymore. My mom had no cash. I was debating taking the car back to the house, getting my purse and coming back to pay, but the waitress said they could take an ATM card, which my mom has.
At some point during this discussion, which wasn't very pleasant, my dad snatched the (dead) credit card from my mom and said it was his and refused to give it back. He read her name off it "Ann Shirley Rizza, that's me. This is mine!" He was shouting. We tried to calm him down. "That's not your name, that's not your card, give it back." He started punching my mother. (Remember, this is Friday night rush-hour at 5:30 in a crowded restaurant.)
Usually he responds to me, but to my shock he made what my mom calls the "mean face" (which is this really hideous grimace, primitive, like something a chimpanzee would make) at me and started hitting and punching me. By this time he was out of the booth and in the aisle. Everyone was staring. My mom started crying. All the while my dad was shouting that it's his and he won't give it back. I was trying to get him to come outside with me but he wouldn't come, kept fighting me, punching me, punching my mom when she got up too. The manager came over. He had no clue what to do. My mom begged him to call the police. He wouldn't.
My dad wouldn't let go of the credit card, wouldn't sit back down, wouldn't stop yelling or fighting, wouldn't listen to reason or threats. My mom told me to go and call the police.
So I did.
I called the police on my own father.
I had to say "My father is punching my mother and punching me in the restaurant and you have to come and make him stop." Those are not words I ever in my life thought I would have to say. By then of course I was crying too. It was just so awful, so embarrassing, and I was so angry and hurt and upset.
Not one, but two police cars came, probably in under 2 minutes, sirens on, lights flashing. By that time my mom and the manager had gotten my father to the doorway of the restaurant (I went outside to make my call and wait for the police).
These were not the nice cops who come and find him when he's lost. These were "we have no time for this and we aren't taking your shit" cops.
My father starts babbling, making absolutely no sense, to the cops. My mom and I were trying to explain what happened. Two people were sitting on a bench, waiting for a table, watching and listening. The woman started to laugh, very loud. I just looked at her, thinking "what a rude bitch" but my mom turned on her and started yelling, "it's not funny, he's got Alzheimer's!" The woman said, "I wasn't laughing at you" but she WAS because her and the guy with her weren't having a conversation. They were sitting and watching us. I thought my mom was going to punch this rude bitch right in front of the cops, and wouldn't that have been jolly good fun?
The cops moved the whole thing along--crazy yelling Bob, crying Ann, silent Bert, confused manager, cop1 and cop2.
I would say, conservatively, that it took a half hour to get my dad from the front of the building to the back, where my mom's car was parked. My mom told my dad right out that she was going to tell the cops to bring him to the hospital and she'd leave him there. At some point someone got the damn credit card away from him, I don't know who or when or how. Wasn't me.
The police took a statement from the manager, who really had no clue. He thought we were fighting over the bill. He went back inside, probably to get drunk. Wouldn't blame him. I felt like it and I hardly ever drink.
My mom had parked just about as far away as one can park and not be in the lot for another business. I realized that at the rate the group was moving, it would take an hour to make it to the car. I took the keys and went and got the car. My dad watched me, pointed at me, still yelling, as I got in the car to drive it up a few rows.
I pulled up, realizing that I didn't have my driver's license and I was in front of cops and decided I didn't really give a shit and they weren't going to give me a ticket--just like if you drive your drink friend home and you haven't got a license with you they won't give you a ticket for that.
My father was trying to tell the cops something about how the card was his, and the cop said, "I'll talk to you when you're sitting in the car." He opened the back door, got my father into it with that special cop-move (even though my dad always sits in the front seat, so that upset him). The cop leaned in, put the seatbelt on my dad...and then shut the door over his protests and ignored him. Very neatly done.
The cops took all our information (my mom said, "you've already got a file on us!") and let us go. My mom said, "give me that list, I can't do this anymore."
I said, "neither can I."
I went to my email on her computer and printed out the list of nursing homes.
My dad is only 66 years old.

(BTW, the credit card was shut off because my mom bought a $20 video game online that morning and the bank figured her card had been stolen, even though she had bought video games online before.)