It always happened in the darkness just before dawn. The call would come and we would go. With each mile we were lost in our thoughts of daddy and why did he have to go through this. It would be an act of kindness on his part, but a fearful event for another dear person.
As had been my dad’s habit for many years, if he woke during the night or early morning, he would always go into my mom’s bedroom to make sure she was okay. He would gently adjust her covers and then quietly leave. He adored my mom. As dad’s illness progressed he was no longer able to do this loving act for mom. When he moved to a facility, a little over three months before he left life behind, for some strange reason he began his nightly ritual again. But this time mom wasn’t there. It was a dear little lady whose room was next door to dads. He would awake, walk into her room, and proceed to cover her up. I will never know if he thought she was mom, or if from somewhere deep in his mind, he just remembered this ritual he had performed a thousand times. Needless to say the little lady would awaken terribly frightened and hit dad and scream. The nurses would be there instantly and lead dad back to his room, but by state law, the facility had to send him to the hospital for evaluation. This meant transport him by ambulance to the hospital and put him into yet another strange place with people talking and moving around him that he did not understand. We would arrive at the hospital to find this dear man lying in a room staring at the ceiling with absolutely no life in his eyes, holding his covers tightly. We would just gather around him talking in low voices and hugging him. After a while we would see his mouth form a slight smile and he would finally close his eyes to sleep. You hurt so badly you know your heart is being ripped into many pieces.
Dad usually stayed in the hospital for another day and night and then be returned to the facility. The nurses there felt so terribly bad that dad had to go through this. They really liked my dad and were very good to him. Of course we understood their position, and certainly felt bad that he frightened the lady. It was just something else dad had to endure that we had no control over. That’s one of the harshest realities of Alzheimer’s disease. Everyone seems to lose control.
When these incidents occurred, dad was in the latter stage of the disease. He no longer knew our faces, but there seemed to be something about our voices that soothed him and nearly always made him smile.
Dad would go back to the facility and we would go back to our daily lives. We would visit with him and then go home. But we knew that another night, just before dawn, that call would come again.
Sunny
The pain of what you have gone thru and the wait for the next call. god Bless you!
Sunny... thank you for sharing that very personal part of your Father's ordeal. You have just answered for me some of the things I've seen occur at Mom's facility that I have heard about or seen. You know the people involved really don't mean any harm or even really understand. It's very hard. In Mom's facility having door locks is optional... after a few days there, we had them installed on Mom's room because having people just able to go in and out all the time was very disturbing to her.. but it seemed an easy enough solution to just put the lock on. So far so good for her. That simple thing might have saved your Dad a lot of grief. Poor fellow... so sorry he had to endure that. And all of you, too.
posted by Luv60s
about 1 year ago
Sunny, another good post!
What a sad thing to be doing so loving and be "punished" for it. I realize their position also but we have gone through this several times with Ma Katie too. She has mini seizures in which she passes out. They take her by ambulance and she wakes up on the way and the hospital sticks her and says there is nothing they can do and sends her back.
The trauma of it takes several days to get her settled down. I know they "have to" but GEEZ! We even tried signing something and the ER room said he would sign something that there was nothing they could do for her
but their procedure is to call the ambulance.
Thank heavens it hasn't happened in about three months and she seems to be getting into a routine.
God love ya for sharing and helping us see things through the other eyes!
