Currently the United States medical community is in the process of completely fucking up the treatment of my father. How's that for an opening sentence?
Backstory: He is 73 years old. In 1999 he lost a lung to cancer, having kicked the smoking habit back in the late 70's. Since that time, he has had myriad health problems: He has mild emphysema in his remaining lung, COPD, prostate cancer, a melanoma on his forehead, high blood pressure, and just to make things that much more enjoyable, he's had a bad back his entire life. Fair enough, it paints a bleak picture.
In July he and my mother went to England to visit my sister. To be fair, this was against the personal advice of his own wife, and me. Every time he tries to travel, it beats his system up, and tends to knock him backwards. But he is a stubborn guy, and so off they went. From what I gather there were a few of his "normal" travel incidents, trips to the emergency room etc, but nothing astonishing or grossly upsetting.
The first warning shot that something was amiss came upon their arrival. Dad had a panic attack in Chicago, and was having trouble breathing. They took him to the local hospital, and the arrival to St.Louis was delayed a day. That wasn't too shocking in and of itself, because, as previously noted, travel always presents problems for him. No, the big problem was their arrival in St.Louis itself. First off, his physical appearance was shocking. He looked like he had escaped the set of "Night Of The Living Dead". His explanation was he hadn't slept for the better part of three days, and was shattered. This lack of sleep (I believe) would manifest itself again very shortly. On the way home, I stopped so he and mom could get something to eat. At this point, dad decided to take a left turn from reality, and it was a bit of a shock. At the restaurant, he became convinced that my nephew was at the restaurant, hiding behind the counter, waiting to surprise him. A relatively harmless delusion, but one he was absolutely convinced of. Once it was explained (repeatedly) that his nephew was in fact out of town, he finally decided that maybe he would benefit from a good night's sleep.
And that was it. He got a good night's sleep in, and over the next couple of days, as his strength returned, he was back to normal. Church on Sunday, meeting me for lunch of or dinner a couple of times a week...the usual.
And then sometime in mid September, everything started to go wrong. He began having a lot of trouble with his breathing, and sought treatment for his COPD. And boy did he get it. Drugs, drugs, and more drugs. And the more medications they put him on, the more medications he needed, and the more meds he needed, the more side effects seemed to manifest. Most disturbingly, he started to develop an inability to get any continual sleep. As that problem increased, unsurprisingly, so did his anxiety levels. Which led to panic attacks, and insistence that mom take him to the emergency room. Which to my astonishment, led to larger doses of "anti-anxiety" medications. (Brief interlude...something wrong with you? Throw some drugs at it. Still got a problem? Throw more drugs at it!! It's logical!!)
So we have the start of a spiral. By the time he was finally admitted to the hospital, the doctors had him on EIGHTEEN different medications, being taken multiple times, each day. I took the liberty of googling each and everyone of these meds, and found that listed side effects of a dozen of them were "interferes with sleep". Now, gentle lay-reader. Go out and google "sleep deprivation psychosis", and guess what? You're going to get a lot of hits, alot of articles, all sort so scientific psychobabble, that in a nutshell says..." Deprive someone of quality sleep, and they will go goo-goo, ba-ba, batshit, hallucination lsd crazy."
He finally got to the point that he thought he had been kidnapped by old people, and that they were throwing firecrackers at him overnight in the hospital.
The hospital doctors, in their wisdom, decided that maybe the medications he was on were contributing to the problem. So they just replaced them with a bunch of others. Got him down to 16, taken multpile times a day. Am I the only one that finds that hysterically funny? One of the doctors wanted to increase his anti-anxiety medications, to help him deal with his hallucinations. I told him, "you do realize he didn;t have the hallucinations until AFTER he was put on the anti-anxiety meds, don't you?" Like a taped recording, he then informed me, no, these are to help him. I figured punching him was probably inappropriate, so I asked him if he had done an overarching pharmaceutical review, to make sure that no negative interactions were taking place. He assured me that they were professionals and knew what they were doing. I felt assured that he was an arrogant ass, that didn't like some commoner asking him to justify his joy in pumping my dad full of chemical experiments.
So, at this point, my dad is in a nursing facility, as the system pumps him full of psychotrpoic drugs, looking for that perfect balance that will turn him into a compliant zombie. It should be noted, that while the geniuses are searching for an Alzheimer's unit to send him to, so he can be forgotten about, he in actual fact doesn't forget ANYTHING, short term or long term. No memory issues, sports fans. Nothing that screams Alzheimers.
Hallucinations. No sleep. Piles of drugs. I'm not a doctor. I know that his breathing issues and blood pressure problems require medication. I also know that pulling him off all the crap they have him on "cold turkey" would be horrifyingly dangerous. But I sure would like to find a doctor that would have a serious conversation about this before he becomes a Stepford Dad. And so far, I am having no luck. The only one who is even willing to listen is the administrator of the home in Chester (That's an HOUR away from Saint Louis) that they are presently trying to ship him off to. And he doesn't have any control over medical care.
Phhhttt.
