{"id":2181,"date":"2021-07-10T13:47:28","date_gmt":"2021-07-10T20:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/?p=2181"},"modified":"2021-07-10T13:47:28","modified_gmt":"2021-07-10T20:47:28","slug":"fathers-day-july-10-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/10\/fathers-day-july-10-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Father’s Day – July 10, 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
Daddy and I went to the 2020 Phoenix Open before COVID.
He spent the week with us and it was wonderful. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I am my father\u2019s daughter. The eyes, the smile, the way we take pleasure in a good laugh, a good friend and a good turn of phrase. We are problem-solvers, he and I, but we are faced with a problem for which there is no solution, only grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May, we moved him into Brookdale Senior Living Shreveport – Memory Care. We celebrated his first Father\u2019s Day there in June. My mother helped him shower and dress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMake a touchdown,\u201d I said, repeating his gentle coaching from more than 40 years ago when I was a child and he helped me get dressed for church or school. Daddy complied, thrusting both arms in the air, and Mom pulled the long-sleeved shirt over his head.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today is his 75th birthday, and the man that finished among the Top 5 in his age group at the 2012 New Orleans Half-Marathon is slipping away from us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I’m healthy here, but not there,” he says, pointing to his heart and then to his head. He says he \u201csmashed his brain and it doesn\u2019t work.\u201d It\u2019s how my father, the mechanical engineer, explains how his current world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vascular dementia is not Alzheimer\u2019s dementia. While both involve physical damage to the brain, the cause of Alzheimer\u2019s is still debated \u2014 amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles and something about tau proteins \u2014 but vascular dementia is clearly understood: progressive damage caused by brain bleeds that seep into the different regions controlling thought, balance, memory, learning. Sometimes the cause is stroke. Sometimes, aneurysm. Tiny blood vessels in Daddy\u2019s brain began leaking \u2014 Why? No one knows \u2014 but his iron-rich blood left microscopic metallic deposits in its wake, starting in the area where language forms. The alien invaders first stole his words, as he stumbled around \u201cthe white thing for my nose\u201d to find \u201chandkerchief.\u201d As the damage progressed, it drew a shroud across the route back to the house and then the way to the bathroom and now, sometimes, my name.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four years ago, we received a diagnostic description of the strange patterns on the MRI and the cause of his lost words: Superficial siderosis. A rare, progressive and fatal condition. Two years ago, his Barrow neurologist, one of the world\u2019s leading authorities on dementia, diagnosed a mild cognitive impairment \u2014 not Alzheimer\u2019s, to his great relief. She gently warned us that it would progress, but that we could try to slow the inevitable end if he ate right, exercised, attended speech therapy and stayed socially active. A year-and-a-half ago, he had, in the words of his Mayo-trained neurosurgeon, \u201cthe million-dollar workup.\u201d She cried when she delivered the verdict: That there was no hope at the end of her scalpel.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then COVID. Then seizures. Now memory care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two months ago, he had to leave home. Despite her best efforts, my mother could not continue to care for him there: He kept waking up in the middle of the night, turning on all the lights and wandering about the house. She could not leave him alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now she tucks him in at night in his twin bed in the little apartment with a view of the courtyard and the birds that gather there. His new home is only 1.6 miles from his old one. He feels safe there, and we are grateful for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is different now \u2014 a little unsteady on his feet, more than a little uncertain in his thought \u2014 but my Daddy is still there. My nephew introduced \u201cPops\u201d to his girlfriend and said, \u201cI finally got a girl to talk to me!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daddy laughed out loud at that one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His sense of humor is still intact, and sometimes he cards on his fellow residents: “They\u2019re so old!” he says. Even though his face is creased with worry that he doesn\u2019t understand his current state, that the past is vanishing from his mind and that the future is too scary to imagine, he still laughs, and smiles that warm and friendly smile. My smile.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t ask him if he remembers something from long ago: It frustrates and upsets him and reminds him of what he has lost. Instead, we talk about the past with him as a full participant \u2014 which he was \u2014 and we meet him where he is. Sometimes confused. Sometimes afraid. Always gentle, always kind, always happy to have a laugh.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Always my Daddy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
For Father’s Day, we made him a shadow box for his apartment with pictures of the whole family and a short biography. He likes it much better than the old nameplate.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am my father\u2019s daughter. The eyes, the smile, the way we take pleasure in a good laugh, a good friend and a good turn of phrase. We are problem-solvers, he and I, but we are faced with a problem for which there is no solution, only grief. In May, we moved him into Brookdale … Continue reading Father’s Day – July 10, 2021<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2181"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2184,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181\/revisions\/2184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}