dad

[arguchik]

my dad was taken to the ER in an ambulance yesterday--my mom called 911, but now she won't tell my sister what made her call. it must have been bad, because my mom has been sternly warned to call the ambulance whenever my dad has one of his "spells" or "bad days," but she never does. she and my dad are all about hiding things from us kids and from their doctors. anyway, the ER doc couldn't find anything medically wrong with my dad, but he was apparently raving psychotically about how he and my mom are definitely going to die in 3 days, that he had the information straight from god, etc. the doc submitted involuntary commitment papers, so my dad went to a psychiatric hospital an hour or so north of grand rapids. he'll be there at least 72 hours.

i hate being so far away. i hate imagining him in a strange place surrounded by strangers with tranquilizers. admittedly, my image of psych wards is straight out of one flew over the cuckoo's nest. and terminator 2: judgment day.

i'm not sure they'll let him go home from there. this isn't all that much worse than some of the other crazy shit i've heard my dad say and do over the last couple of years.

can alzheimer's give a person symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia? because that's what my dad sounds like to me sometimes...

i'm still absorbing and digesting this information. it doesn't seem real to me yet.