My father is 58 years of age, a fresh man healthy physically but over the past few years has show signs of failing memory and a lack of interest in maintaining himself ie work or personally. He has changed from an independent man to one that needs to be shown/told what to do. Personally for me the strong willed intelligent funny man that was my father has changed to one that is now merely a shadow of his former self.
He has forgotten places, names, memories of events and people, has gotten lost when off driving in his car. Forgets things and re ordered things and car services that he would have only have done in the last 3 months. He was always so terrible mechanically minded yet now can't
even change a light in his car?
My question is how do I get him properly diagnosed? He has gone to the doctors on a previous occassion for me where they did a memory examination and breathing test.... nothing too extensive. He passed by the way with flying colours, and then went on to fogetting when my house was!
I was adviced by the doctor, that in order to see further in my fathers 'memory loss' he would have to do a blood test after fasting. For the past 6 weeks my father has got up every morning to go in for this blood test only to come out a few mins later saying that it was too crowed inside in the waiting room and that he doesn't need a blood test. I can't persuade him to get this test done and I really need to somehow get him seen to so that he can hopefully get some medication which might stabilise his progression of memory loss.
He at present is a danger to himself and others while driving and his condition is not seen by anyone other than those who know him.
What do I do now??
Many thanks for taking the time to read this and any advice would be appreciated.
Catherine
Hi, Catherine,
My mom did the same thing - she stalled about getting the testing done with every excuse under the book. The only way that we got her to go to the testing was that I finally went and actually physically sat with her through every step of the way. (She'd get mad if Dad was there alone with her and would accuse him of plotting against her, so I was the "favored" one for this particular situation.) If she started to come up with a scheme to get out of a procedure or an appointment with the doctor, I could make sure she stayed. And if Mom started to argue with me about not needing the testing (or it taking too long), I would calmly (and kindly) say, "Mom, you know I love you a lot. You've told me several times that you know you have memory loss. We don't know what is causing the memory loss, but we do know that there are treatments that potentially could help you IF the doctors can figure out what's going on. To do that, you need to go through this test. And I'm going to stay here to support you while you're doing this because I know how scary this is for you." And then I'd just sit there with her, holding her hand and chatting with her on another topic to get her mind off it. Sometimes we had to repeat the above statement (because she forgot), but for the most part, it worked. Maybe something similar will work for you.
Good luck - and let us know what happens!
Dorian