parkinsons - the roy way

Before deciding to move my dad here in September, we had a lot to think about. We started considering the move around March, when he had to go to a hospital for dehydration and lost a lot of strength. His care needs increased and he needed to have more home health coverage at my aunt’s house to help him through each week. So from March until around July we researched and discussed, and I waffled constantly not sure which way to go.

One key part of the discussion was whether or not he could even physically be comfortable in our place. We rent a home in Hanover due to the small town being extremely high priced with very low inventory, plus my wife still working toward tenure, which keeps us in a temporary mode.

The only way in for him is through the back sliding door (he uses a walker and moves slowly due to high risk of falling). The other ways into the house have big steps and simply not an option.

So the first thing I needed to to do once we committed to this move was to dig up a rocky path on the side of the house to the back deck and make it smooth. You can see the before/after in the photo, but since this is a rental I did it relatively quick and cheap. I think it came out nice though and seems to be holding up ok. Still have winter to test it, but so far it’s better than the rocks.

One symptom relatively common in people who suffer from Parkinson’s is hallucinations. My dad has had varying levels of visual/auditory hallucinations for the past couple of years. At some point, he was taking some medication to try and reduce them but I think the side effects were worse. At least for the past year, he has simply managed by evaluating and deciding which things are likely not real and ignoring, not letting things get to the realm of delusion, but now being with him daily I am hearing about them much more frequently and some are definitely freaky.

When he lived near Tulsa and I traveled down to visit and/or care for him, he would sometimes mention the hallucinations, but typically in a way that was clearly designated as “This happened, but no big deal.” The weirdest one included a little girl who came into his room late at night and sat down on the floor to watch TV. He didn’t know who she was or where the thought came from, but didn’t seem bothered at all. While I just imagined horror movie scenes.

Now we’ve had:

A mysterious figure banging on the window waking him up at 5AM in the morning. Notably, the window was also part of the hallucination, projected onto the wall where a framed painting was hanging.
Our cat Molly came into his bed and cuddled with him at night, when in reality she can’t push his closed door open. Also, I apparently entered the room and pet Molly for a bit, then left the room.
For about 45 minutes one night, he had a conversation about accounting with some imagined person in the room. When I later asked him about it, he wasn’t sure what I was referring to but was not at all surprised. (Earlier in his career, he was a CPA and handled books for people/companies).

Now I just kind of use my own signals to decide what reality he is witnessing. It hasn’t been a problem at all, but does kind of keep me on my toes.