I got the dreaded call last Friday afternoon.  It was my dad’s doctor.  “It looks like your dad has had a massive stroke.  He is unresponsive.”

Okay, I am the idiot.  I was shocked.  Why is that idiotic?  Well, my dad is almost 93 years old and has had vascular dementia for a long time.   The usual end game on vascular dementia is a massive stroke.  But still I was surprised.

Anyway the doctor was really nice.  He told me that they had gotten him into his bed and that he looked very peaceful.  We talked about how I did not want dad to be sent to the hospital and that the doctor agreed that it was not the thing to do.  We talked about calling in hospice but decided that we could wait until Monday.  (Calling hospice at 4:30 on Friday afternoon seemed to be a useless activity.  It could wait until Monday)  The doctor did mention that it could be a TIA (transient ischemic attack), which is usually a warning sign that a massive stroke could be on its way.  If it was a TIA then dad would wake up in the next 3-4 hours.

I got off the phone with the doctor, shed a few tears and started making calls.  I have two brothers and two sisters.  These calls are not exactly a quick process.  Each sibling was surprised but agreed that we knew it would come some day.  We just didn’t expect it that day.

My daughter and her boyfriend were here so we went over to see my dad.  On the way into the building, we ran into the doctor. He told me that he had spent the last 1/2 hour sitting at my Dad’s bedside.  He thought there was some eye movement when he said Dad’s name but that was it.  He told me that dad had lasted longer than he ever thought he would and that he was “one tough old guy”.

We went up to dad’s room.  The nurse stopped me on the way in and told me how sorry she was.  We got to the room and my dad did really look peaceful.  It was odd to see him in bed – he has been sleeping in his lazy boy chair for the last year or so but other than that, he just looked like he was sleeping.

We stayed awhile and then went home.  Before I left, I took my Dad’s ring.  He has worn this ring almost as long as his wedding ring.  The ring is silver and has a three dimensional face on it.  It was not on his finger when we got to the room.  After we found it, I thought I would take it for safekeeping.

We got home and I made the round of calls again.  I told everyone how peaceful he was and that the doctor had said it was a possibility that he could get restless and the he had left some medicine to cover that possibility.  I even called a few other relatives just to let them know.

My daughter, her boyfriend and I ate dinner and then just sat around the table talking.  At about 9 p.m., the phone rang.

He woke up.  He is fine.  He called three times between 10 and 10:15 p.m. looking for his ring. Just shows you that the old adage is correct.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Thanks for reading.

Posted on September 29, 2012 by Carol Early Cooney | 8 Comments

Dad – Here and Yet Not

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Carol Early Cooney

My dad called last night

Mom and Dad celebrating Dad’s 90th birthday. Hats courtesy of artistic great grandchildren.

This is not unusual.  He has been calling more frequently lately.  Sometimes he calls early enough that I answer the phone but most times it is around 2 a.m.  It took me a long time but I now have the ringer turned off the phone in my bedroom.

My father has a delightful cocktail of vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s.  As we say, due to the vascular dementia he cannot make a decision that makes sense (calling at 2 a.m.) and with the Alzheimer’s, he won’t remember what he did anyway.

The first question that people ask me  when I tell them that my dad has dementia is  “Does he know you?” The answer to that question is more complex than you would think.  If you asked him, he could tell you my name and that I am his daughter.  As long as you didn’t look too much deeper, that works great.

Lately it seems that I own a bar.  (I don’t) He is sure that I bought a building and there was a bar in it and I own and work in the bar.  My family and friends think this is a great idea.  They all want to work there.  He also seems to have forgotten that I am married.  He seems genuinely surprised when I tell him that I ate dinner with my husband.  I have been married for 32 years.

As you may guess, this is a hard road.  It is hard because the disease has taken parts of him away.  His social graces are lost.  He cannot take social cues.  He is generally sweet but he can lose his temper and it is not possible to reason with him.  He cannot tell if it is 2 a.m. or 2 p.m.  You would think that he could get an idea by looking out the window but that doesn’t  work.

It is also hard because you wish that the people who work with him now knew the man that I knew.  You wish that they knew that if he were “himself” he would not say or do the things he says and does.  Even harder than that, is that you wish that you still had the man that you knew.

I will confess that I find a lot of the things that go on to be rather humorous.  My father has developed an obsession with certain products.  He likes Charmin toilet paper.  He has announced that only the Charmin in the 12-pack “does the job”.   There is a rather infamous family story about how my son was called about a toilet paper emergency.  He picked up a 9 pack of Charmin and took it over to my dad.  I will spare you the details but Michael will never respond to the words “Let me show you…” the same way again.

Dad lives in the “Memory Care Unit” in a wonderful “senior living facility”.  He is very happy there most of the time.  He talks about how the people who live on the floor with him are either half nuts or completely nuts.  It is sort of like when he talks about how the other people are old.  (they are younger than him)  Reality does not enter our lives often.

My dad had been a salesman.  One of the things that has really stuck with him is his ability to use the phone.  I keep thinking that it will be lost soon but he keeps on calling.  He is also friendly and personable most of the time.  Most of time, if you will listen, he will tell you a story.  The stories are a bit more fiction than truth these days and he does get lost telling them but he still likes to tell his stories.

Vascular dementia is sneaky.  At first, I think that we knew there was something not right but we attributed it to my dad being selfish.  Over time it became obvious that it was not selfishness. He didn’t know that what he was doing was wrong.

From what we have experienced, vascular dementia also is like being at the top of a 20 story staircase.  There are times that the losses are nothing but a few stairs  and then other times that it seems like he falls down a few flights of stairs.  The changes can take place in a day.  He has been pretty stable for the last nine months or so but he seems to have suddenly lost another flight or so.  Hence the increased calling at night.

I wonder how long it can last.  I feel guilty because I don’t want him to be like this.  I hate for “my dad” to disappear more and more.  I don’t want him to end up the way he will if the disease progresses and he lives.  It is like watching a terribly sad movie and hoping that something will change for the characters.  That they can be saved.  There is only one thing that will save him but that ending will be the saddest of all.

Posted in Miscellaneous Thoughts | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Carol Early Cooney

I grew up baking chocolate chip cookies.

It was a social thing.  Friends would come over to the house and we would make cookies.  Actually it is a pretty great thing to do.  Look at the advantages – it smells great, it tastes great, and it is easy to talk while you are doing it.  Then you get to sit and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

My Mom was not much of a cook.  She was a great person but cooking was not really in her range of accomplishments.  But she could make a great chocolate chip cookie.  Her cakes were crooked, her pies non-existent, but her cookies were really good.  She baked cookies until she was 88 years old.  In later years, she would bake a batch and put them in the freezer so that there would be some for the grandchildren (and perhaps her children).  Let me admit in public – we ate the cookies while they were still frozen.  Yes, we would finish dinner and sit around the table and eat frozen chocolate chip cookies.  They were good and there was always more conversation if there were cookies.

I have carried on the chocolate chip cookie tradition with my children.  When they were small we would bake cookies together.  As they grew, they would bake with their friends.  There are actually family stories about things that happened while baking chocolate chip cookies.

One of the best stories happened the day my son discovered that the recipe for our homemade chocolate chip cookies could be found on the back of the chocolate chip bag.  He was stunned.  What!  Our family recipe for chocolate chip cookies is on the bag?  He was sure that we had a recipe handed down through generations for the cookies.

Guess what?  We do.  It just happens to be on the bag.

Go bake some cookies.  Put some in the freezer and try them in a few days.  Bring them out when you are with friends and see what happens.

Thanks for reading!

Posted in Miscellaneous Thoughts | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Hello world!

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Carol Early Cooney

Welcome to WordPress.com! This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it.

Happy blogging!

Posted in Miscellaneous Thoughts | 2 Comments