Caregiving Story

My father was always very athletic as I was growing up.

After I became an adult he remained quite athletic - once joining my brother and me as the only person over 30 (he was 60+ at the time) in our group to climb Mt. Whitney one weekend. On the climb we younguns all had our freeze dried food and gatorade to try to prevent altitude sickness, while it was my father who cooked a steak and savored his can of Coors at our high altitude camp the night before we reached the summit! Of course he marched up with the rest of us, fit as a fiddle.

At age 59 my father ran the San Francisco Marathon in 3:06. If he could have gotten under 3 hours at age 60 the following year he would have been ranked as "world class" for his age.

My father maintained his fitness until he turned 70 or so. He had a heart attack, while shoveling snow at Tahoe. He survived that and was ok for about a year, but then parkinson's kicked in.

Over the next 5-6 years we watched my father decay in front of us. The physical part was bad enough, but the memory loss was also quite surprising. He was often confused and not sure where he was.

I'll add more to this later as I log back in.