{"id":8778,"date":"2024-06-30T09:00:52","date_gmt":"2024-06-30T09:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=8778"},"modified":"2024-06-30T09:23:45","modified_gmt":"2024-06-30T09:23:45","slug":"racing-to-retake-a-beloved-trip-before-dementia-takes-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=8778","title":{"rendered":"Racing to Retake a Beloved Trip, Before Dementia Takes Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Before we begin, would you repeat these three words? Apple, penny, table<\/em>. I had my dad do something like this, too.<\/p>\n

The evening before he was supposed to catch a cross-country flight to me, in Providence, R.I., my 72-year-old father said he didn\u2019t need to set an alarm because he always wakes up at 6 or 7, a statement I knew to be untrue \u2014 or, at the very least, unreliable. He lives near Half Moon Bay, Calif., and now that he is retired, he usually rests in bed until 10:30 or 11. I suspected he no longer remembered how to set an alarm, and I couldn\u2019t stop myself from asking him.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t need an alarm!\u201d he bellowed. And so I set mine for 10:30 a.m. my time, 7:30 a.m. his, to allow him a fat hour and a half to get ready. When the bells startled the silence of my office the next day, I called him, and he sent me to voice mail. I dialed again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m up!\u201d he snapped, panicked. Then he hung up. Ten minutes later, he phoned: \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you give me any information? I don\u2019t know the flight number or anything. I\u2019m flying blind here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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I had texted and emailed him his itinerary several times and discovered, with surprise, that he had lost the ability to open emails and text messages on the phone he\u2019d had for years. He lives alone. His wife, my mom, was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 7 and died when I was 10, and he never remarried. I have no siblings. He has no nearby friends on whom I felt comfortable imposing to help him. I decided that I should just instruct him to check in at the ticket counter. The only thing he really needed was his passport and a credit card.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a problem,\u201d he said, calling me again. \u201cMy passport is expired.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe only applied for your passport in 2018,\u201d I said. It would be good until 2028, I told him.<\/p>\n

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Before we begin, would you repeat these three words? Apple, penny, table. I had my dad do something like this, too.The evening before he was supposed to catch a cross-country flight to me, in Providence, R.I., my 72-year-old father said he didn\u2019t need to set an alarm because he always wakes up at 6 or 7, a statement I knew to be untrue \u2014 or, at the very least, unreliable. He lives near Half Moon Bay, Calif., and now that he is retired, he usually rests in bed until 10:30 or 11. I suspected he no longer remembered how to set an alarm, and I couldn\u2019t stop myself from asking him.\u201cI don\u2019t need an alarm!\u201d he bellowed. And so I set mine for 10:30 a.m. my time, 7:30 a.m. his, to allow him a fat hour and a half to get ready. When the bells startled the silence of my office the next day, I called him, and he sent me to voice mail. I dialed again.\u201cI\u2019m up!\u201d he snapped, panicked. Then he hung up. Ten minutes later, he phoned: \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you give me any information? I don\u2019t know the flight number or anything. I\u2019m flying blind here.\u201dI had texted and emailed him his itinerary several times and discovered, with surprise, that he had lost the ability to open emails and text messages on the phone he\u2019d had for years. He lives alone. His wife, my mom, was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 7 and died when I was 10, and he never remarried. I have no siblings. He has no nearby friends on whom I felt comfortable imposing to help him. I decided that I should just instruct him to check in at the ticket counter. The only thing he really needed was his passport and a credit card.\u201cWe have a problem,\u201d he said, calling me again. \u201cMy passport is expired.\u201d\u201cWe only applied for your passport in 2018,\u201d I said. It would be good until 2028, I told him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8780,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8778"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8781,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8778\/revisions\/8781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}