The Official No Need To Start a New Thread, Thread

[whitev70r]

At the moment, to my knowledge, other medical professionals can chime in but you cannot write down advanced directives for MAID. The government is working on it and most think it is the next step but as of now, you cannot. Just like the issue of MAID for mental health alone, it is not yet permissible for mental health reason alone. Again, it is on the table for discussion, gov't deferred it for a couple of years. Mental health one is a bit complex.

[Traum]

Sorry to hear about the situation with your old man, Supa.

Disclaimer -- I am layperson with zero formal medical training. Essentially, I am BS-ing when I talk about medical stuff. Feel free to step in and correct me if I am conveying medical mis-information, as conveying mis-information has never been my intent. (But I'm sure at least some of what I'm about to say is baloney.)

In terms of getting your old man to get checked out for dementia, is there any chance you can sell it to him under a different name? Or has he straight up become stubborn and refuses to see the doctor for much of anything at all?

If your dad is showing clear signs of dementia, there is a good chance that a certain amount of vascular degeneration has already occurred. On very crude terms, you can think of vascular degeneration as a pre-cursor stage (or one of the possible pre-cursor stages) to dementia. But to the average and non-medically inclined person, vascular degeneration doesn't sound like dementia at al, and it could share some symptoms with mini strokes as well. So if you old man is very resistant to the word "dementia" for whatever reason, it might be easier for you to sell a diagnosis to him as "a check for mini stroke / vascular degeneration", and he might be more receptive to that. In particular, stroke is a far easier concept for elderly folks to understand, and they are far more willing to get treated (or diagnosed) for that than it is for dementia.

At the end of the day, all of this means you're gonna try to get your old man's family doctor to send him in for CT / MRI / ultrasound to get imaging data on the blood vessels in the head, neck, and the brain. Once your old man has gotten those tests, his family doctor will the one breaking the news to him. IMO when the medical diagnosis is coming straight from the doctor's mouth, patients are far more receptive to accept the reality than if people in your family were to try and convince him of it. If he is receptive to the doctor's diagnosis, then it would be easier for you guys to decide how to move forward.

Good luck with the situation.