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Fathers | |
October 05th, 2017 | |
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My dad is sick. A few years ago he was nearing retirement and | |
faced and unexpected layoff. He had until the end of the month to | |
take advantage of his health insurance before he lost it (don't | |
get me started on America's crappy health insurance system). So he | |
went in to the doctor and the hospital and got a full physical. | |
It turned out he was lucky to have done so because he had three | |
98% blockages and needed to get a triple bypass immediately. It | |
was terrifying to very suddenly face his mortality. My family | |
generally lives into their upper 90s or 100s, so having a life | |
threatening surgery at 60 was not in my mind. We were lucky and | |
the doctors were good. He made it through, but something had | |
changed. | |
In the following months he made a recovery, but never quite back | |
to what he was like before walking in. He struggled when standing | |
for a long time and his legs would shake. I thought he'd atrophied | |
and needed exercise. The physical therapy helped a bit, but not as | |
much as we'd hoped. Little by little, he was losing mobility. | |
I walked with him at a mall around Christmas that year and he kept | |
getting "stuck". His legs wouldn't start when he told them to go. | |
I knew something was wrong, and I think he did too, but he didn't | |
want to admit it. | |
We finally forced him in to see a doctor and he was diagnosed with | |
Parkinson's disease. That was a relief in many ways. While there's | |
no cure, treatments are good and you can live a long active life. | |
Medicine is actively working toward a cure and who knows what the | |
future holds. My grandfather on my mom's side had parkinsons for | |
as long as I knew him. It was just a little tremor of his hand | |
until he was very old. I could live with that diagnosis and so | |
could he. That, unfortunately, kept him from looking deeper when | |
things didn't add up. | |
As I mentioned, we're a family who has seen Parkinson's up close. | |
What my dad was experiencing wasn't matching that. The medications | |
weren't effective, or at least they weren't for very long. He was | |
degrading much too quickly. His neck muscles were weakening along | |
with his outer extremities in a pattern that I thought | |
I recognized from work. I'm in pharmaceutical marketing and one of | |
the products I've done work on is for ALS. That got me scared | |
again. | |
ALS is deadly and unforgiving. The progression is painful for the | |
individual and for the family. It's fatal and there are not really | |
any good treatments (even that drug I worked on is barely any | |
help). I wasn't eager to tell my dad that it's what I thought he | |
had. He wasn't eager to second-guess his doctor. | |
It took another year or two like that before he was finally bad | |
enough that he agreed to get another opinion. We were right and we | |
were wrong, it seems. He doesn't have Parkinson's, but it's not | |
ALS either. He has Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) [0]. | |
The bad news is it's almost identical to ALS. It is fatal and | |
there are no good treatments. He doesn't have a lot of time left, | |
and the time he has is going to be extremely difficult. My parents | |
live a few states away (10 hour drive or so) where we don't have | |
any other family. I can't offer any support. I'm a little lost on | |
what to do. | |
[0] Progressive Supranuclear Palsy |