He is doing much better. By Christmas most of the repercussions of the medicine was out of his system. He still is having some hallucinations but he is aware of the lack of reality to them, so we feel he is about on track again with “normal”. I believe the hallucinations are not related to the medicine.
I went out a while ago and gave him his afternoon snack and we were attempting to recall our limited German; between the two of us we managed okay. His is usually better than mine because he studied it formally in high school and I learned just enough to get by while living in Germany. Today, I out did him, but only because it is horribly overcast day and he was extra sleepy.
I am a little concerned about his eyes though, he seemed to have lost some more of his vision during the time he was on the drug. This might be the place I stand on the soapbox and yell, “Please!! Do Not overmedicate!!”
I will try to reintroduce reading in a day or two and see what happens. In the past year he has read a stack of novels and I hate the thought of his loosing that ability. He has enjoyed the mental stimulation.
My brother called while I was there and it is always interesting to listen to Mom talk about Dad to others. Dad and I often sit and listen to these conversations together and discuss what she says about him (and us) as if we were not in the room.
Now, that we have gotten to the root of the weakness and loss of confidence (see the previous posts on the medicine) Hubby is back to getting Dad into the standing frame as regularly as possible. This homemade apparatus made from a horse girth and come-a-long was praised by the last physical therapist that visited with Dad, so much so that she took pictures and was in hopes of passing along the design to others, basically it assists a non-ambulatory patient in standing up in order to strengthen the core muscles in the body, without the 10K price tag. Hubby gets Dad in it and stands there and chats with him about “guy things” for the duration of the time, usually between 30 minutes to an hour. This does other things like straightens out his legs, stretching muscles that he does not like stretched and it also puts weight on his feet which helps the blood flow.
There are lots of other things going on in my head but I just wanted to restrict this post to updating on Dad.