Bumpa

My Dad, "Bumpa" age 80, has quite suddenly (over the past couple of months) assumed most of the calling cards of Alzheimer's. He has been diagnosed and placed on Aricept, but his behavior has really snowballed lately. It began with pneumonia. He was in the hospital for a few days and then home recovering. He was ill and weak from pneumonia, but didn't get completely better, ever. My Mom would wake up in the middle of the night to find him out of bed. Once she found him outside in the alley in back of their house. He does a thing called "sundowning" which I am learning means his symptoms get worse in the evening. He quite often gets his days and nights mixed up, like babies sometimes do. Mom and Dad like to grocery shop almost every day. It's an outing for them and they go to pick up fresh fruit or milk or whatever. Mom tells me they can't get out of the store for under $100 because Dad fills the cart with anything that catches his eye. If Mom objects, he gets really angry at her at the store. Last week he bought $70 of tulip bulbs, which is a lovely thought, but they'll never get into the ground. Normally when any of the "kids" calls Mom and Dad, we talk primarily to Mom. Dad has always been a man of very few words and not outwardly demonstrative emotionally. Now he asks for the phone and tells us each of his love for us, which is nice, but if you're accustomed to a certain behavior from your Dad and he suddenly turns into someone else, it's very unnerving. Today my brother relayed that Dad told him "a guy drove his car down the alley and threw a rock through the kitchen window so I put up a big, tall fence in back". This is true, only it happened 30 years ago.