Hi Everyone

We're back and I just wanted to say thanks for all the advice. Things went well - considering.

Thursday was the first day we saw Terry's dad. He was sitting in a "common" room watching TV. He was alert and when he saw Terry you could see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to remember him. It was like he knew he knew him, just didn't know how, why or where he knew him from. We told him a couple times that it was his son, Terry, and he actually caught on and recognized him! He even said Terry's name twice and said "my son, Terry." Terry's stepmom said that was highly unusual, that he never says anybody's name. But he even said her name once, which took her by surprise too. Every once-in-a-while he would sort of drift off and become engrossed in the TV again, but the whole time he was awake and alert and seemed to know what was going on. We brought a picture along that had Terry, his dad and his dad's mom in it. After explaining a few times who was in the picture, his dad actually caught on and knew who it was. Although he had a tough time believing that the one person was him. The pic was taken about 15-20 years ago. It was sort of sad because when he finally realized that it was him in the pic, he said "what happened to me?" As if he knew he wasn't well.

But the good news was that he recognized Terry which made the whole thing a lot easier on Terry.

Friday when we visited, it was a completely different story. His dad slept almost the entire time, didn't recognize anybody and seemed like a completely different person.

After being recognized on Thursday, Terry seemed to handle Friday much better. He understood that it might be the last time he sees his dad alive, but he was ok with that since the alternative is to see him like this - not really living, just existing in a nursing home where he is just another old person that sits in his wheel chair and drools while the staff bustles around.

We left early Saturday morning so we only got to see him those two times. But all in all, I think things went extremely well, and Terry seemed to handle it all much better than I expected.

Of course we got into a big argument on the way home, which could be contributed to the stress of seeing his dad, but it could also have something to do with the 14 hour drive.

So anyway, just wanted to say thank again for all the advice. Things went much better than I expected.