My father's dementia has been progressing rapidly. He started in-home hospice on February 25th. He had been getting extremely confused and agitated, occasionally punching me when I tried to make him take his pills. He was often having delusions of other people in the room, and for a while was insisting that he was a time traveler who was afraid he had come back too far. At first the lorazepam they provided seemed to do wonders, but it had diminishing returns and he got into the habit of spitting it out immediately. The liquid syringe of Haldol was easier to give but a bit less effective. Eventually we got to the point when he was asleep most of the day except for brief moments of extreme agitation when the medicine wore off, and were advised to give more before those symptoms started.
Dad had bad falls on March 1st and March 4th. When he started hospice they took him off his blood thinners (Eliquis) and diuretics (Furosemide and Spironolactone) because they were concerned of the risk if he fell, but part of me wonders if stopping those medications contributed to the falls by causing his atrial fibrillation to return and making his legs weak like when he fell back in April before starting those drugs
On the 1st I was on the phone with my sister just after getting off he phone scheduling a dentist appointment when I heard a crash and went down to find dad on he kitchen floor. He claimed he has been trying to take off his jacket while also walking backwards with his rollator (to get away from mom as she was yelling at him to shut up during his favorite TV show) when he lost his balance and fell. He claimed not to have hit his head (although we later found a lump on the back we think was from that fall), just scraped his elbow.
He did not walk as well after that fall. I managed to help him to use the restroom a couple times but he did not easily move his legs, and tended to clutch the grab bar to tightly for me to move it. The caregiver my brother hired to hep out a few times insisted he needed to stay in bed and rely on diapers since his legs could not hold him on Wednesday.
He seemed to be doing a bit better on Friday morning when the nurse was here. She managed to help him walk to the toilet when he insisted he needed to use it instead of his diaper. He got very agitated after she left. I gave another lorazpam and then went upstairs to write an update to my siblings once I thought he had fallen asleep. Just as I hit submit I heard two crashes from downstairs. The first was him breaking off the bedrail and knocking it to the floor. The second was him hitting the floor headfirst. There was a big bloody wound on the left side of his forehead.
The Lorazepam kicked in and he slept silent for about 6 hours after the fall. That evening he seemed mostly back to his recent normal, complaining about needing to get up to go to work or use the restroom, but since Saturday he has been basically non-verbal. There were a couple times he mumbled that he needed to go to work or to the bathroom, and he still yelled Help a lot at night, and he could sometimes reply to questions with a "yeah" or "no," but he mostly just moaned and grunted.
He has not been able to feed himself since the fall, but was still chewing and swallowing what I put in his mouth until Tuesday. We think he may have aspirated some of the food and ensure then. He refused to eat or drink anything yesterday.
We were planning to have him moved to inpatient hospice this morning, but the nurse this morning said his pulse and breathing are so weak that she thinks there is a high risk that he would pass away while in transit.
They are instead providing Continuous Care at home. They expect he will die before the end of the day.
My father died at 5:20pm today.
One of my half-brothers and my sister (with her 2 young kids) came over and spent most of the day with us. My sister plans to return with the kids again tomorrow.
One of my double-cousins visited for a few hours but had to leave by 3:30pm to go lead a bible study about an hour's drive away. She also plans to return tomorrow to help console mom, play with my niece and nephew, and to help us clean up the house. (She works for a house cleaning company that specializes in clearing out junk from houses after the owners die to get them ready for estate sales.)
My dad's first wife brought us all lunch and stuck around maybe half an hour.
Our church pastor called while she was here, and per his request I called him back about 30 minutes after dad died.
The cardiologist office called back about an hour after dad's death, saying that they updated the doctor on everything and that he says he think we made all the right decisions. (I'd called this morning and explained the situation, also expressing some regret that I hadn't consulted him before stopping medications that could have been needed for his atrial fibrillation.)
The funeral home came and took dad away around 6:50pm. Five minutes after he left, I finally found the deeds to the funeral plots that his mother had gifted us decades ago.
My 3.5 year old niece asked a lot of questions about why her Papa was not breathing and where they were taking him.
My sister left about 7:15pm and my brother around 7:30pm. He took the will and grave deeds with him, as he is executor of the estate.
We have not worked out many details on the funeral yet, but suspect it may cost more than all my parents' remaining savings.
We will probably need to either refinance or (more likely) sell our house soon. It needs some repairs that we cannot afford, but is still prime real estate on a large lot in a great location adjoining the nature trail of a nice park.
The appraiser who was here on Tuesday notified us this afternoon that its value if sold AS-IS would be $320k. A smaller house downhill next door to the one just across the street sold for $430k in January, but it has a brand new roof, a lot of recent landscaping, and probably interior renovations I have not seen.
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