I’ve been taking a break from this nightmare since January, for the most part. Since Dad attacked me on Thanksgiving, I’ve just been handling some of the finances, and not dealing with him personally, except for an appointment with his vascular surgeon, which I should probably document in another post. Dad has recently slipped further down the rabbit hole, and I will have to jump back into the game, and I’m trying to emotionally gear up for that. My Sister has been a lifesaver, and between her and her kids, things have been as stable as they could be under the circumstances.
I guess, for the record, I wanted to give an example of some of his delusions. He is worse now. The reference below was back February, a few things that he said to one of my sisters, who had bought him a tape recorder to record his thoughts (he really is not able to work the machine now). She described the stories of the day this way:
I guess he rambled on for a long time about when mom died. In his story he was there that morning, held her hand as she passed, closed her eyes, cleaned her up and then took a taxi home. [Note: he was not there when Mom died, nor did we bring him to see her.]
In his story on one of the nights he also had a fight with the ‘big german male nurse’. He had jumped over the counter and had pinned his arm behind him after he had slapped mom. Dad said that he made the nurse ‘give up’ and apologize to mom for slapping her. (he did mention that maybe he dreamed that, but tended to believe it was true) . [There was no such nurse there, but there was a female nurse that spoke German with Mom, who was Austrian. He has many stories of how he rescued Mom from (nonexistent) abuse.]
Mom often understood when she didn’t understand or was hallucinating, or we could tell her when it was the dementia, at least until near the end. This is not the case for Dad.
Down the Rabbit Hole and Back 