Daddy's Birthday

Daddy had his 78th birthday on July 28th. Thank you to everyone that sent him cards, he really enjoyed them. We went a few days early to celebrate with him since we would be out of town on his actual birthday. Timothy and the boys and I brought him a chocolate cake which he really enjoyed. He ate 3 pieces!

He was happy to see us and had a good time.

I finally was able to talk to his Nurse Practitioner about his CT Scan results. They determined that he did have a stroke. Although the test isn't able to give an exact time, I believe this happened in May and that was the cause of his decline. While it's possible that the stroke could have been brought on because of all the changes to his meds at that time, we don't know if that is the case and I don't see any point in trying to blame anyone. I'm just happy for whatever I can get with him now.

We also learned that Dad does not actually have Alzheimer's as we thought previously, but instead he has Vascular Dementia. The effect is still the same - memory loss and so forth, but the cause is different. In Dad's case the blood vessels in the brain are slowly shrinking providing less blood and oxygen. While there still isn't anything to be done it's nice to have a little more of an understanding of what is happening. Also, I'm grateful for the staff at this facility because they cared enough to run the test and find out what is going on with him.