Dad

It's all very surreal. Especially from a distance.

My father is in the late stages of Alzheimer’s. As far as I can tell, he has been for the best part of five years.

 

He was a rock to me: an intelligent and wise man. Complete integrity and an impeccable sense of fairness. Alzheimer’s took away his mind. Slowly, scarily, ruthlessly. All that remains is the shell of the man I love and respect so much.

 

He lives in a specialised home near Paris. I live in London. He cannot communicate. We are strangers to him, albeit harmless strangers. I cannot say for sure if he still has any ability left to string ideas together or if it is all a jumble of feelings and fleeting shadows of memories. I just don’t know. The saving grace for us is that he has not been in pain or distressed.

 

Until now.

 

On Valentine’s Day he broke his leg – his femur. It took three days for him to be operated on. Three days of pain during which it would appear he was only allowed fairly rudimentary pain killers. It must have been hell for him – a thick fog of pain and incomprehension.

 

In all honesty, I was hoping he would be able to slip away during the anaesthetic. It makes no sense for someone in late stages of dementia to have to go through massive pain. Ultimately what we all want is for Dad to go peacefully.

 

Now he is in a hospital with no points of reference whatsoever. While his sense of routine is probably skeletal if there at all, this is just too cruel. He needs oxygen and has yet to eat properly since the operation two days ago.

 

Three possibilities arise:

1.     we lose him at the hospital;

2.     he can longer walk - in which case he will go into palliative care;

3.     he can walk and he will have to undergo re-education and return to the home: another fall a strong possibility.

 

Not the greatest trio of eventualities.

 

My poor sister is the only family member who is in Paris at the moment, so she has had to deal with all the admin and comms with the hospital and the rest of us in the UK. She has been doing incredibly but obviously it has taken its toll on her – seeing her father living through such trauma. A traumatic experience in itself for her.

 

Alzheimer's really is a vicious bastard.

 

This is in no way linked to the usual subject matter of the blog.  At a push, you could argue that it does touch on the unfairness of life. I needed to write it though. For my dad. For me.