Anger

Dad isn't doing well this week. He is saying things that he hasn't said in months like, "I'm locked up. I can't go nowhere. I just want to get out and see my family." But, something was different this time. This time he is a lot more angry. I had to go over to Whittier yesterday to make him feel better, but today Megan got the brunt of it.

We had his check up with the Dermatologist and the rash is getting better... slowly. The minute Megan brought Dad back to Whittier Place he was adamant about not going back. Somehow she got him back in and had him take an anti-anxiety pill. While waiting for it to kick in, Dad was ranting and raving about being locked up and how he can't take another day of this. He was angrily pacing up and down the hallways and everyone was staring at him.

Megan called me to have me talk to him but he basically yelled at me on the phone about how we locked him up and then wouldn't talk to me. I could hear him in the background complaining non-stop. A couple minutes after hanging up with them I got a text from Megan, "Dad is crying."

Then he got angry again and Megan told him that he seemed very angry and he should try to calm down. "Of course I'm angry. This place is shit! S.H.I.T. That's how you spell it." I laughed out loud when she told me this and she said there were moments when she wanted to laugh too but didn't want to upset him more. Apparently he kept saying, "I haven't killed anybody. I didn't kill anyone. Why am I in here?"

After trying to talk to him for half and hour, she finally gave up because he was so mad. Dad wouldn't say goodbye to her and he said meanly, "Just forget about you. I'll be fine." She asked him to say by to her and like a little kid yelled, "No."

Megan left crying.

I know Dad's Mom had a lot of angry episodes in her Alzheimer's days and so far Dad has mostly sweet, confused, or sad episodes. I hope this isn't a sign of what's to come in the future. But it probably is. The worst part is that we can handle most of the other mood swings, but I think when Dad gets angry it upsets us and brings us back to our childhood memories of 'mean' Dad. We don't think of him as that person anymore but it doesn't mean that we don't remember how scared we used to be when he yelled. It almost always made us cry.

He's absolutely harmless now and we know that. We'll just have to toughen up as things get worse. Just another awful part of this disease.