So, I get a call the other day from my sister...

So, I get a call the other day from my sister. "J, your Dad is losing it!" she says. "Uh-oh", I think.
So I ask her what was going on. Come to find out, my Dad has been losing his short-term memory quite rapidly! But along with this, his temper has gotten really bad. He is threatening my sister over the littlest things. I start to get a sinking feeling. I have seen this before. With my Grandmother. He could be showing signs of dementia or Alzheimer's.

I don't reply yet...I'm pacing in the parking lot of where I was working at that moment. I'm thinking to myself: "What am I going to do? What are we going to do? He doesn't listen to anybody. He sure isn't going to listen to us now! If he is blowing up because of little things, how is he going to respond if he IS diagnosed with either ailment? How would we approach him. How are we going to be able to take care of him? No one in the family can support him. He never set up his VA benefits. How?..." All of this took place in a 30 second time span. Yeah, my head was spinning!

So I take a deep breath. I tell my sister to continue with her side of the conversation. She continues by telling me about Dad's checkup at the doctor's office. Both of his carotid arteries are roughly 50% blocked and he doesn't have an appointment with his vascular specialist until June. He refuses to call and push up his appointment because he doesn't want to be "inconvenienced" for the summer by being laid up with surgery. So, as always, he will wait until things are at the point of extreme.

I told my sister that I would call the doctor's office and the office of the vascular specialist to make sure the report gets into the specialist's hands. I knew that the specialist had not seen this report because my Dad would've received a phone call from the office saying his appointment was bumped up. This specialist is concerned for his patients and is rather pro-active. Back in September, my father had emergency surgery to replace a blocked bypass in his right leg. The day before surgery, when my Dad was admitted I drove 5 hours to see him. I got to the hospital , walked into his room and there before me was this guy towering over my Dad's bed lecturing him on how bad of a patient he has been! He stopped when he saw me in the doorway. He looked at me and asked if I was his son. I said that I was. Then I said "Please, continue." My sister about fell out of her chair with laughter because I was basically rooting on the specialist to jump on my Dad's case for being irresponsible enough to put himself into this position! With a half grin, he turned back to my Dad and commented on how he should listen to his kids and continued with the lecture.

My Dad had no feeling in his foot. It was as white as paper and cold. The vascular specialist first thought that the foot was going to be removed. Fortunately for my Dad, he was willing to try to save it by doing the bypass first and giving 24 hours to allow circulation to resume in the foot and see if it will recover. Dad was lucky. This time.

But, after this last talk with my sister, I guess he did not learn from his last lesson.

I just hope my Dad's "ailment" is related to the blockage in the carotid arteries and that once blood flow is increased, his mind will work better. I have not taken the time to prepare myself for him to age this way. I need to get more involved with my Dad's medical background and prepare for the future. He'll be 80 this year. My Grandmother was around the same age (82, I think) when her memory failed and passed on a couple years after. There is a lot to be done and there is a lot of things I need to say to my father. Things that I always put off because I figure I'll say it next time.

I have a feeling time is short. A year or two. I hate this feeling because I'm usually right. I've experienced 27 funerals in the 34 years I've been alive. Some were accidents, most were old age. I've known too many times when someone wasn't going to be around much longer and I've always hated that because it keeps me from giving hope to them. Instead, I pray for easy passing and comfort for the ones they leave behind. I have seen the death of loved ones since I was a child. I am comforted now by the fact I know who is taking care of them.

HVAC Excellence ( Employment Ready ) Student Outcome Assessment

OK. So I decided to FINALLY check out whether or not I passed those HVAC Excellence Assessments certified by the ESCO Institute.

Test Date	Site	Exam	Result
Apr 22, 2008	View Site	AIR CONDITIONING ER	Pass
Apr 22, 2008	View Site	ELECTRICAL ER	Pass
Apr 22, 2008	View Site	GAS HEAT ER	Pass

HVAC Excellence ( Employment Ready ) Student Outcome Assessment

And there you go. Now, I'm going to look into how to obtain professional level tech certification. There are only about 14 tests to take for that...

Final Grades for Winter 2008 at KVCC

Went online today to check out my final grades at school. I was not disappointed, again. ;)

3 more 4.0 classes!

Now, if I could get up the courage to re-take my Psych 150 from 1995. It is a big 4 credit '0' due to a last minute dropping out of the community college to focus on my classes at WMU. If I retake the class and aced it, I could possibly go from an overall 3.87 to a 4.0. We'll see next year as I will need to get credits from that portion of study to get my degree. May as well boost my GPA in the process.