Personal post

Well, Dad continues to do really well in his new home. The last time I stopped in he was either shopping, walking, or playing a rousing game of tennis. The man has a better social life than I do! I still think every phone call could be from the owner of the facility, telling me something has gone wrong, Dad's landed a punch on someone... I suspect this low level anxiety will never completely go away until Dad's no longer with us. So far so good, however.

On another note, I interviewed with a Hospice coordinator yesterday. She thought I'd make a good candidate, and my training has begun. As we talked, she detailed the job: the kind of people I'd be likely to meet; the situations I'd be walking into; the likely reactions of patient and family. We talked about dementia and the fact that I already had a background in it; apparently, some of the volunteers refuse certain patients, saying they don't 'do' dementia. But as the coordinator pointed out, sadly almost every house I'll walk in to these days will have someone with some form of dementia; the patient, his or her spouse/caregiver, another family member. This reminded me of the statistics I've quoted in my letters to agents. 1 in 3 people know someone affected by dementia, 1 in 10 Americans have a family member with some form of dementia, and 7 out of 10 sufferers live at home, cared for by, you guessed it, a family member. Its no wonder that this has been called a major epidemic of our time.