Suessigkeit25
New member
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2010
- Messages
- 1
- Reason
- Loved one DX
- Country
- IRE
- State
- Cork,
- City
- Cork
My father has always been a very strong inspiring person to me with the most positive attitude to life you can imagine. He is my personal HERO, who now has been diagnosed with ALS 3 days ago.
My father is 62 years old and I just can't understand why HIM and then also WHY my family. Haven't we gone through enough over the last few years. When my father was 49, he suffered from a severe stroke that nearly killed him. He lost his speech and understanding of spoken language. He was right side paralyzed, lost the entire movements and tactile as well as proprioceptive sense. He spent 4 month is REHAB and slowly learnt to walk again and move his arm and eventually his hand. He learnt to understand us again and gained some of his speech back. His emotions were also affected. Sometimes he cried and sometimes he just laughed. But, he was always looking forward and the most positive person I have ever met and I met. Since I work as an Occupational Therapist I have met a lot of different people over the years and I really have to emphasize that my father fought for anything he has achieved. He was not able to go back to work, but instead of sitting at home and waiting for my mom to come back from work, he decided to change his life. He took walks through our little town and increased his mobility and fitness. He started Aquajogging and swimming. He met new people at the local Sauna. Then he started playing Golf with a newly found group for people who had suffered from a stroke. He motivated my mom to join the group as well as it was a group for relatives as well. My dad lost some friends after the stroke who turned out just not as close as you would like a true friend to be, but he gained many great friends. He motivated other stroke clients and was in my eyes not just making a normal recovery. I must say that my parents grew a lot closer over the past few years.
While my dad was recovering from the stroke, my brother "got into the wrong circle of friends". He started using drugs and was using for at least 10 years. So, my mom had to cope with this as well. Fortunatelly, my brother became clean 3 years ago, but in order to have a higher success chance to stay clean, he moved away to meet other people.
When everything was going just fine, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. My dad cared very lovingly for my mom, who suffered for almost 1 1/2 years. Now, she is well again and for the first time, we just enjoyed being a family. Despite living in Ireland with my family being in Germany, we are very close and see each other as much as we can. This summer, we spent 2 weeks together in the states visiting relatives. When my parents returned to German, my dad did not feel well. He could not walk and had pain in his legs and arms. Nobody knew what was wrong. He was wrongly diagnosed with Polyarthritis at first, but when the muscles started to deteriorate more test were decided upon. And now after spending the last week in Hospital, we got the devastating "news".
I don't know what to say, what to think and what to do. I am going home on Thursday as this was planned a long time ago and there are a million things going through my head. I am thinking about spending some good time with my dad and about really thinking positive and just enabling my dad to enjoy the time he has left. I hope he will stay as positive as he has always been, but I also know that this is very different to what he has gone through in the past.
x Iris
My father is 62 years old and I just can't understand why HIM and then also WHY my family. Haven't we gone through enough over the last few years. When my father was 49, he suffered from a severe stroke that nearly killed him. He lost his speech and understanding of spoken language. He was right side paralyzed, lost the entire movements and tactile as well as proprioceptive sense. He spent 4 month is REHAB and slowly learnt to walk again and move his arm and eventually his hand. He learnt to understand us again and gained some of his speech back. His emotions were also affected. Sometimes he cried and sometimes he just laughed. But, he was always looking forward and the most positive person I have ever met and I met. Since I work as an Occupational Therapist I have met a lot of different people over the years and I really have to emphasize that my father fought for anything he has achieved. He was not able to go back to work, but instead of sitting at home and waiting for my mom to come back from work, he decided to change his life. He took walks through our little town and increased his mobility and fitness. He started Aquajogging and swimming. He met new people at the local Sauna. Then he started playing Golf with a newly found group for people who had suffered from a stroke. He motivated my mom to join the group as well as it was a group for relatives as well. My dad lost some friends after the stroke who turned out just not as close as you would like a true friend to be, but he gained many great friends. He motivated other stroke clients and was in my eyes not just making a normal recovery. I must say that my parents grew a lot closer over the past few years.
While my dad was recovering from the stroke, my brother "got into the wrong circle of friends". He started using drugs and was using for at least 10 years. So, my mom had to cope with this as well. Fortunatelly, my brother became clean 3 years ago, but in order to have a higher success chance to stay clean, he moved away to meet other people.
When everything was going just fine, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. My dad cared very lovingly for my mom, who suffered for almost 1 1/2 years. Now, she is well again and for the first time, we just enjoyed being a family. Despite living in Ireland with my family being in Germany, we are very close and see each other as much as we can. This summer, we spent 2 weeks together in the states visiting relatives. When my parents returned to German, my dad did not feel well. He could not walk and had pain in his legs and arms. Nobody knew what was wrong. He was wrongly diagnosed with Polyarthritis at first, but when the muscles started to deteriorate more test were decided upon. And now after spending the last week in Hospital, we got the devastating "news".
I don't know what to say, what to think and what to do. I am going home on Thursday as this was planned a long time ago and there are a million things going through my head. I am thinking about spending some good time with my dad and about really thinking positive and just enabling my dad to enjoy the time he has left. I hope he will stay as positive as he has always been, but I also know that this is very different to what he has gone through in the past.
x Iris
