parents

my sister jan and i went to the doctor with our parents today. the appointment was for dad to have a cognitive evaluation, which was administered by the nurse. two years ago he scored 27 out of 30 possible points. they asked him stuff like, "what year is it?" "what season is it?" "what month is it?" "what's the day/date?" "write a sentence for me," along with asking him to follow some simple spoken and written instructions. this time they omitted one question (i'm not sure what question, or why they omitted it), and he scored 14 out of 29. he had no clue what year it is; he thought it was spring; the only reason he knew the month was because my mom had just told him his birthday is this month; and he had to look at his watch to figure out the day/date. he followed both the spoken and written instructions ok, but when the nurse asked him to write a sentence, the only one he could come up with was "how now brown cow?" i watched him write it. he capitalized the first letter of each word, and didn't punctuate the sentence. the nurse left after she was done administering the test. while we were waiting for the doctor to come in, my sister and i quizzed our dad about a few things. we asked him how many kids he has. he said, "i think we still have 5, don't we dear?" (i.e. he didn't remember that his eldest daughter had died in 1985.) we asked him to tell us all of his kids' names. he couldn't remember a single one. with some heavy hinting and prompting from mom, he managed to dredge them up, but when he got to my sister barb...mom gave him the hint that the name started with the letter "b," and he started guessing b-names until he came up with barb. he didn't realize he had hit upon the correct one until my sister said so. ok, so when the doctor came in, he started out by talking about the results of the cognitive eval. he then asked my dad to introduce him to everyone else in the room. he didn't remember my name or jan's name, and he introduced my mom as "my wife." (in other words...he didn't know her actual name, either.) of course, when he hesitated over naming jan and me, my mom tried to jump in and give him hints again. i told her to let dad come up with it on his own, but he never did. he told the doctor, "i had it 10 minutes ago, but i don't remember now."

so the doctor ordered further tests--my dad had some bloodwork done today, and will have an MRI in early october, along with a follow-up evaluation by a gerontology/dementia specialist.

interestingly...during my dad's appointment, the doctor got a feel for my mom's level of impairment too, and at one point he said, "we should evaluate her pretty soon, too." yeah. that's what we thought. she goes in on thursday.

(((sigh))) it was one thing, to have an intellectual understanding of how cognitively impaired my father has become, from the "safe" (but guilty) distance of seattle. it is another thing altogether, to sit face-to-face with him, and to see his face go completely blank when i ask him if he knows who i am.

we went out for lunch after the doctor's appointment. mom asked me for the 3rd or 4th time today, "when do you go back?" (meaning back to seattle). sunday morning, mom. we asked dad if he remembered what happened a few years ago on 9/11. he hadn't the foggiest idea. he was just mad that we were making him eat a hamburger instead of letting him go home and make himself a peanut butter sandwich, like he does every other day.