Big fish

I own only 3 or 4 movie DVDs.

One of them is the movie "Big Fish".

there is so much in that movie that reminds me of our  story.

You, my father, are the storyteller as seen in the movie Big Fish.  Your stories, perhaps, weren't quite as fantastical, nor the characters, quite as colorful, but there was still a similarity. This was present as long as I knew you.

And my reaction was always to partly believe, and to partly not believe it all.
It was never so obviously not true that I knew I couldn't trust you.

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Well, that isn't completely true.  I did figure out, in 1993, that you were not a good source for financial advice.  I stopped asking for your financial advice after I quickly lost $13,000.

Also, today I am reminded of the day you took me and my husband to the safe, and told us the secret combination, and that there was so much money in there I would never have to work.  I believed you.  You were my dad. I still went on to get an education and work.  But what if I had relied on that information?  Was it a delusion or a lie then? Or did you lose it all to scams?

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The poignancy of the Big Fish  movie, for me, was the funeral, when all the fantastical bigger than life characters turned out to be real.
It wasn't all a fantasy, or a lie.

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We have pictures of those colorful characters from my early life.  It was true then, too.

Is this what made it seem feasible to you, that the scam scenarios in 2009 and 2010 were true?

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Was the dementia present already in 1993 when you gave me bad financial advice? or a few years earlier when you took me to the safe?

Were you a normal person who went on to insidiously develop fronto temporal dementia?

Or, did you actually have manic depression, or some other untreated psychiatric condition, earlier in life, which made it all the harder for us to notice or to deal with  the transition?

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The day I lost it

circa late March, 2001
We are bringing mom home from the hospital today.  She has been there for 2+ months, related to the treatments needed for the breast cancer and the stroke.  She has had toilet mastectomy, plastic surgery skin grafts, radiation therapy, physical therapy. She is in a wheelchair, but also has a 4 point cane, and she can walk a bit, but still needs someone to stand by.  She has regained a stuttering speech that we are so thankful for - and we continue to work on.
You have stayed at her side continuously throughout the process as I have flown in and out of another world, to be with you.


During this entire time I had no clue  of how impaired you already were or of what would follow.

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We arrive home and I set about setting up the home.  I ask you to get the medications we had filled at the pharmacy.  You disappear into the back of the house for longer than necessary.

When you return with the medication, it is apparent that something isn't right.

The tablets don't look like normal pills I am accustomed to seeing.  Instead, they look like clear plastic capsules with grassy like powders inside.

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You had decided, on your own, that you weren't going to give her the medication that had been prescribed by the doctors.  Instead, the grassy substances were various supplements that you had extracted from the huge stock of bottles located  around the house.

Did you forget that I have spent my life studying medicine and science?  That I am an actual expert in the room?

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I put my hands on each of your shoulders, standing over you as you sat in the chair, looking at me without concern, and I SHOOK the shoulders with the emphasis of my words:
"You are a F_ _ _ _  UP!!!"  I repeatedly exclaimed, in horror.

I liked to tell people afterwards, it was the day I kicked your ass, that I shouldn't have waited so long to have kicked your ass.  But, I didn't really kick your ass.  It was a tragic realization.

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My vulnerable mother is not safe with my father as caregiver.

No.  2015 Translation: My vulnerable mother is not safe with my vulnerable father as caregiver.

What would it have taken for me to have actually gotten control of that situation in 2001?  I don't think it would have been possible to have done any more than I did, short of moving in with them.

http://seniorfraud.blogspot.com/2014/11/what-you-should-do-if-this-happens-to.html

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You didn't seem very concerned by my reaction, or the tears, making me cry, making mom cry.

You are, however, alarmed that I said the F word.

You also aren't appropriately  alarmed when social services show up over the next months, following my report of Mom as a vulnerable adult.

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Was this already part of the dementia, but I attributed it only to poor choices? ?

Yes, I would say that more than anything, the lack of empathy or the loss of social boundary, permitting you to not be concerned by the need for oversight by a Social Service agency, in order to maintain basic proper medication management of the person YOU are caring for, is a manifestation of the dementia in progress.   A normal person, even if they had made a judgment error, would be called into check, would self correct, and also be embarrassed by this requirement; but you weren't.

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the timeline on the story noted above isn't quite 100% factual. The part about the  meds on day 1 arrival at home is true.  But the part about me losing it actually was a week or 2 later, but related to a similar issue, as I recall.

The very first notice of dementia

I was suddenly remembering what I thought was the very first notice we had of your need for assisted living.  I was looking through my notes trying to find the record with the first recommendation. I think it was 2003, and it followed a hospitalization for encephalopathy related to untreated diabetes.

However, instead, I found other notes that I had written in 2003, which reminded me of other pieces of evidence, long forgotten, but now linking together the trail we have been winding over the years:
failed payments on utilities, resulting in late fees and threats to turn off electricity
lost insurance due to failure to pay ; this followed by decision to cancel insurance (a poor choice)
speeding ticket
running out of gas (frequently)
trading options on the stock market ; trading currency (could there possibly be a more fiscally dangerous hobby for a dementing person?)
suboptimal care of your physically ill and vulnerable wife (for whom you were  primary caregiver at the request of both parties)
http://seniorfraud.blogspot.com/2015/02/its-breast-cancer.html
Medication mismanagement
http://seniorfraud.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-day-i-lost-it.html
excessive purchase/ use of over the counter food supplements
lies about large financial purchase/ losses on the one hand, while nit picking over a penny saved on food, gas, phone service
failure to file income tax

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 At the time of the very first recommendation that you should have assisted living, YOU were functioning as a care -giver for your wife, who was wheelchair bound from a stroke, and suffering from cancer.

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2003.
It was clearly coming in 2003.
Actually, I am sure it was clearly coming in 2001, and I don't know what  I don't know from before 2001, because I lived in another world,  and I didn't take care of you then like I take care of you now.
And you didn't call me and tell me things.

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Back then I called it magical thinking