I Thought My 89-Year-Old Parents Were Doing OK Until I Went Home For Christmas
What do you do when your parents are too stubborn to help themselves?
When I moved from Ohio to Mexico a few years ago, my family was doing well. My brother and sister had busy careers and my son was in college. My parents were relatively healthy and able to live safely on their own. I hadn’t been to visit my parents in several years. As far as I knew, they were still able to live safely on their own.
Boy, was I in for a shock. After a couple of days, I realized that this situation was a disaster waiting to happen. I think my dad was suffering from mild dementia. He was having trouble remembering some things, but would usually remember them after he thought about them for a few minutes. The most dangerous thing happening was that my dad insisted on driving to the Dairy Queen almost every day to get a chocolate milkshake.
The first night I went with him, he seemed OK. He did ask me if we lived on Church Street when I was in high school. I said no, we lived on Applewood Drive when I was in high school. I asked him if he lived on Church Street when he was in high school and he said yes. Next, he asked me if I remembered World War 2. I said that I did. After thinking a minute, he said that he didn’t know how that could be possible, since he was just a kid himself. I said I remembered reading about it. That trip to the Dairy Queen was OK.
I had only been there a couple of days when it was -2 degrees Fahrenheit and my dad told us he was going to the Dairy Queen. He was only wearing a T-shirt and jeans jacket that was not even buttoned up. I went and sat in the truck with him while he warmed up the engine and waited for the snow to melt on the windshield. He had no hat or gloves. I kept asking him if he wanted a coat and he said that he was OK. I was on the phone with my mom, telling her what was happening. She told me to tell him that she had a boiled egg for him, to get him to come back inside. My dad got out of the truck with it running, but I saw that it was going to run out of gas pretty soon, so I turned it off and went into the house. My dad yelled at me for turning off the truck and I yelled back that it was going to run out of gas.
After sitting in the house for a few minutes, he insisted on going to the Dairy Queen. I was afraid that he was going to run out of gas and get stuck outside, but he made it to the Dairy Queen and back. When he got back, he said that it was really cold outside. We reminded him that we had tried to tell him that. My dad also told us that he had stopped to buy gas. He asked me how I knew that it was -2F outside. I told him that I looked it up on the internet. He said OK and went to his room.
I started snooping around a bit to figure out what else was happening. I don’t think my dad was taking his medications. I asked my mom and she said that she didn’t know. My mom is more mentally capable than my dad, but this is all getting to be too much for her to handle. I told her that maybe we should take away Dad’s car keys, but she said that she didn’t want to fight with him about it. As it turns out, my dad still has some fight left in him. More about that later. He was also drinking whiskey. My mom told me that she had seen him have three whiskeys the day he insisted on driving to the Dairy Queen in freezing weather.
Meanwhile, I texted a few friends and talked to my brother about how my parents were a disaster waiting to happen. My brother said that they were doing OK. My sister said she didn’t want to insult them by treating them as if they were incapable. I wish somebody had been more nosy about what was going on and insisted that they have more help.
I called a home care service and talked to them about coming a few hours a week. My parents are still controlling their own money, and my mom said that she did not want to pay for the service. Because I made that call, a life-alert service called to ask if we were interested. It was about five hundred US dollars a year. My parents are wealthy people and could easily afford to do this. Again, my mom said that she didn’t need this service. She asked me what would happen if they got the service and they died. She was worried that her kids would have to pay for it. I told her that five hundred dollars is no big deal and that she is more important than five hundred dollars. I was really frustrated and discouraged after this. I said I should just go back to Mexico because nobody else seems to care about what is going on there. My mom said that I didn’t mean that, and she was right.
The next day, the weather was nice and warmed up a lot. The snow and ice melted. Even though I haven’t had a driver’s license for a few years, I took my mom’s car out for a drive to look around town for a while. As it turns out, it was I good thing that I practiced driving her car, since I had not driven at all for more than seven years. I stopped driving due to poor eyesight, but after three eye surgeries, I can see much better now and can get my license again. There has been no need since I don’t own a car and transportation in my town in Mexico is cheap and easily available. It was nice to get out and get a break from my parents’ problems.
However, my relief was short-lived. When I got back home, my dad had fallen and hit his head outside in the garage after going to the Dairy Queen. There was still a chocolate shake on the garage floor. As soon as I walked in, my mom told me what had happened. A neighbor man had seen my dad in the garage and helped him to get inside to his room. When I got there, he was asleep in his chair. I asked my mom if we should let him sleep with a head injury. She said she wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t sure either. He came out to the living room to eat dinner and seemed to be doing OK. I did see him put his hand to his forehead a couple of times. I wondered if he had a headache.
After dinner, he went back to his room. About an hour had passed when he yelled loudly for my mom to come. My mom went and talked to him and then asked me to call an ambulance. She was so nervous that she was having trouble dialing the phone. I called 911 and asked for an ambulance. They came within a few minutes and took my dad to the local hospital. Even though I didn’t have a driver’s license, I thought I was the more capable person to drive us to the hospital. When we got there, Dad was in a bed in the Emergency Room being evaluated. He was talking fairly well and was mostly aware of what was going on. They were asking a lot of questions about his health and other information. My mom and dad are both very hard of hearing, so I tried to help answer the questions.
At the emergency room, they took a brain scan and found that he had bleeding on the brain and needed to be transported to a hospital in Columbus. We asked if they could send him to Grant hospital in Columbus because my brother is a doctor there. They ended up sending him to Grant hospital by helicopter, and my brother and his son met him there at about two in the morning. That’s when they called me and my mom to tell us what was happening.
The next morning they did another CAT scan and my dad was still fairly alert and talking pretty well. However, by the third morning, the bleeding had gotten worse. My dad needed surgery to fix the problem. He was scheduled to have surgery at about three in the afternoon. My son Chris came to pick me up and take me to the hospital to be with my dad.
Unfortunately, it was also Chris’ birthday and he was in for one of the worst birthdays a person could have. We had car trouble on the way to the hospital and had to leave it at Firestone for repairs. We took an Uber to the hospital while the car was in the shop. We got there about twelve o’clock and my dad was having a lot of trouble talking and kept trying to stand up as if he was restless. I had the feeling that he was trying to “escape.” I am not sure if he knew who we were at that point. He kept looking at me as if I was familiar but never said my name.
At about one-thirty, they moved him to a pre-op room, and Chris and I went with him. While he was there, he was confused and scared. He kept trying to stand up. Chris and I told him over and over that he was getting ready for surgery and that it was not safe for him to stand up. Chris told him that he was his grandson, but I am not sure that my dad really understood. For about the last hour before surgery, Chris and I were trying to hold him down to keep him from standing up or pulling out his wires. My brother even took a break from his work to sit with my dad and try to calm him down. They were not able to give him a sedative, because it would interfere with the anesthesia. We finally got a break when my dad was taken off to surgery. I waited in the waiting room during the surgery while Chris went to pick up his car at the Firestone. My brother texted me a couple of times during the surgery to tell me that it was going well. My dad survived the surgery and was sedated and intubated for the night.
Chris and I were really tired and hungry by this time. We decided that there was nothing more to do for the time being. We went and had a good dinner at a restaurant and talked about what had happened. I was scheduled to fly back to Mexico the next morning and was wondering if I should cancel my flight. I was really worried about my dog who I had left in Mexico with her dog walker. I decided to go back to Mexico and maybe go back to Ohio in a few weeks to help out.
As of this morning, I am back at my home in Mexico and my dog, Mitzi, was really glad to see me. Her dog walker took good care of her while I was gone. My dad’s surgery was a couple of days ago. As of this morning, my brother reports that he is speaking in complete sentences and seems to be at least somewhat aware of what’s going on. The only problem is that he is insisting on going home and won’t sit still. He is still trying to get up and go home. My brother wasn’t sure yet how to handle this situation. We both know that he is not capable of safely going home.
It has been therapeutic for me to write all of this down. One lesson that I learned from all of this is that when your parents are not making good decisions, you shouldn’t worry about being too polite. My parents have been insisting that they don’t need help for a long time. It was hard to talk to them about their private business like money, but someone had to do it.
I may be going back to Ohio to help in the next few weeks. As of now, I am waiting to see what happens. I will probably write another article about what happens after this.
I hope that you have found this story to be interesting or helpful in some way. Thanks for reading.
