I played a small concert with my duet partner on guitar on Wednesday night at my watercolor class. I decided that, since she and I practice on Saturday afternoons anyway, why not go to Dad's house and put on the same little concert for him. We got there at 2:00 and he and one of his housemates were put in the backyard to listen. The housemate is a sweetie pie with, I think Parkinson's, but all of his marbles and flawless manners. He shared the pie with us last week.
As soon as we started Dad undid his brake and started rolling around the backyard pavement. I told the caregivers it was OK for him to wander off in the fenced backyard (I've got no problem with him working out his arms. This is the most alive I've seen him in weeks, thanks to the anti-anxiety meds being reduced.) The housemate was all ears. Eventually, after a few songs, the caregiver did come out and put him back in front of my buddy and me. He cried, "What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong?" I told him he didn't do anything wrong.
He went back to rolling off once she went in the house and decided it was a good time to start getting undressed. When he took the shirt off, it somehow set off the alarms. I redressed him but didn't know how to turn off the alarms. I couldn't play through that, and had to get the caregiver to turn off the alarm. She came out and let him chat with her while we played. I told my gal pal, "If you can play in front of this audience, you can play anywhere." She also took lots of videos of our playing.
He tried to get out of the wheelchair for the last half of the concert, as well as undressing. He was also bored to death.
While I'm very happy to have him regaining his wits, I am also hoping that he doesn't go back to sneaking out of bed and falling. I watched him on the daddycam this week trying to figure out how to open the windows in the hall. He's back to asking for a knife to cut off his restraining belt that keeps him from standing up from his wheelchair. I hated to see him shit faced over the three weeks, but the alternative is an extremely willful child who likes to play with matches and gasoline. Dad doesn't look strong, but his upper body is still strong enough to do some real damage if he gets mad. We'll just have to wait and see. If the falls are going to start up again, I think it will be sooner rather than later. If it happens it happens, and we'll just start over.
I gave his sweet little housemate a hug for being such an appreciative audience and for putting up with Dad all day every day. It can't be easy being Parkinsonian and half deaf in the world of the memory impaired. Believe me, there's memory impaired as in, "now why did I go into this bedroom?" and then there's MEMORY IMPAIRED. Dad called him Earle all afternoon.
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