Yesterday I awoke to a series of text messages telling me that my father had fallen and he was in the ER getting checked out. Fortunately, he was ok. But then he fell again this morning. We have been extraordinarily lucky that he hasn’t broken any bones in his falls. But he has been collecting bumps, bruises and gotten stitches twice.
My father has been getting weaker and can now barely walk around the apartment with his walker. He went to visit my brother earlier in the week, and his aide had to bear all of my father’s weight to get him to the car. The wheelchair is now mandatory for trips out. But, I still have some hope that this is just a bad patch and he bounce back enough to walk around at home. There is a real possibility that I am being overly optimistic in that hope.
I have a trip booked east for about a month from now. I am now wishing it was much sooner. At the rate my father is deteriorating, a month can be a very long time. On the other hand, my brother lives 20 minutes away from my parents and he feels as helpless as I do.
We are now at the point where 24/7 care is really required. My mother has finally admitted that she is not physically strong enough to pick my father up from a fall. And she is just losing too much sleep keeping an eye on my father overnight.
At the same time, she is very resistant to having a steady stream of people in her house at all hours of the day and night. I can’t say I blame her for that. The apartment has a very small second bedroom that she could make into her own space. But, I don’t think she is yet ready to declare the remainder of the apartment shared space.
In some ways it would be easier to move my father to a memory care facility. But he doesn’t even like attending the memory program at the local Y. He says it already makes him feel institutionalized. My brother and I are also fearful that if we were to place my dad in a home at this point, he would likely deteriorate even more quickly than he is now.
For the moment, I am not sure where we go from here. We are kind of stuck with the status quo until my mother agrees to 24/7 care. But daily falls in someone as frail as my father is just not acceptable. I know if anything really bad ever happens in the middle of the night, my family will call me on my landline to wake me up. I dread getting that call. In the meantime, I have made checking my phone first thing in the morning a part of my daily routine.