Flooooorida and the parental units
I'm down here again, not for fun but to check in with my parents. Also, my mom is having an endoscopy/biopsy Monday and asked my sister and me to come down because she's nervous. I just hope she gets the results before we both leave. Lori has been here since Wed and leaves Wed. I leave next Saturday.
The flight was surprise surprise! in to West Palm an hour early, so my sister and mom hadn't left the house yet. But the wait was pretty short. We stopped in at a horrible sports bar for dinner on the way home.
My sister and I caught up on my dad's condition/progress/treatment in Whitehall --my sister has been fantastic--it's been awful and frustrating dealing with this stuff from up north. My sister was calling for information for a few weeks--since he went into the long term facility--to see if he was getting speech therapy, why he wasn't, and how to get it for him. But being down here for a few days she's already spoken to everyone at the facility and has persuaded my mom to pay for a private speech therapy session for 15 minutes a day for a week. The thing is, the facility speech therapist didn't feel he was making any progress (most of her info was from the short term rehab center where that speech therapist (my sister and I feel) did not make the best use of her or our father's time--which is putting it politely. Anyway, IF he is cooperative after two days, we will continue to pay for it for a week. It's $35 a 15 minute session. And if we and the speech therapist perceive any progress, we're hoping we can get the VA to approve payment for it again.
In the meantime, my sister got a printout of all the meds my dad's on. This is something we've been asking my mom to get from Whitehall since he moved there, to no avail. She just....won't....ask questions. I went over it this evening and discovered to my horror (once I checked it out all over the web) that he's on a drug named Risperidone, which is an anti-psychotic for adolescents with schizophrenia. It can be used for elderly who demonstrate psychotic behavior--which, my dad doesn't and never has. It's also dangerous in the elderly. The Mayo clinic says in an article form November 2009: "This medicine should not be used for behavioral problems in older adults with dementia."
Which is exactly what they're using it for: "dementia with agitation and delusions"--now my dad does have mild dementia and he does get agitated aka angry in real life parlance but he most certainly does not have delusions.
So first thing to do tomorrow when my sister and I get to Whitehall is discuss taking him off the meds asap.
The flight was surprise surprise! in to West Palm an hour early, so my sister and mom hadn't left the house yet. But the wait was pretty short. We stopped in at a horrible sports bar for dinner on the way home.
My sister and I caught up on my dad's condition/progress/treatment in Whitehall --my sister has been fantastic--it's been awful and frustrating dealing with this stuff from up north. My sister was calling for information for a few weeks--since he went into the long term facility--to see if he was getting speech therapy, why he wasn't, and how to get it for him. But being down here for a few days she's already spoken to everyone at the facility and has persuaded my mom to pay for a private speech therapy session for 15 minutes a day for a week. The thing is, the facility speech therapist didn't feel he was making any progress (most of her info was from the short term rehab center where that speech therapist (my sister and I feel) did not make the best use of her or our father's time--which is putting it politely. Anyway, IF he is cooperative after two days, we will continue to pay for it for a week. It's $35 a 15 minute session. And if we and the speech therapist perceive any progress, we're hoping we can get the VA to approve payment for it again.
In the meantime, my sister got a printout of all the meds my dad's on. This is something we've been asking my mom to get from Whitehall since he moved there, to no avail. She just....won't....ask questions. I went over it this evening and discovered to my horror (once I checked it out all over the web) that he's on a drug named Risperidone, which is an anti-psychotic for adolescents with schizophrenia. It can be used for elderly who demonstrate psychotic behavior--which, my dad doesn't and never has. It's also dangerous in the elderly. The Mayo clinic says in an article form November 2009: "This medicine should not be used for behavioral problems in older adults with dementia."
Which is exactly what they're using it for: "dementia with agitation and delusions"--now my dad does have mild dementia and he does get agitated aka angry in real life parlance but he most certainly does not have delusions.
So first thing to do tomorrow when my sister and I get to Whitehall is discuss taking him off the meds asap.