One option would be to call the county's Adult Protective Services (or
the equivalent). He sounds gravely disabled, unable to manage his own
financial affairs, and at risk of burning down the house (and himself)
due to forgetting that he's cooking food.

Another option would be to seek conservatorship over his person and
his financial matters, but you might need to have medical
documentation of his inability to take care of himself, and that's not
good that doctors are refusing to talk to you. That's why it may be
necessary for Adult Protective Services to get involved because they
should be able to get the doctors to talk to them.

There's a chance that if he realizes he could lose the ability to make
decisions about his own life, he will stop drinking and seek help. My
father did that for a while after Adult Protective Services got
involved and after he realized they could start controlling his life.
However, after he succeeded in changing the doctor's mind about his
mental fitness, which caused the court to drop the matter, he started
drinking again and eventually needed to be hospitalized again.
Despite living 3000 miles away, I attempted to get conservatorship
over him at this point (Adult Protective Services refused to deal with
him again), and arranged for professionals to visit him at home to
assist him, but in this case, he ended up dying alone at home of an
unexpected and massive heart attack (which is probably how he would
have wanted to pass).

Your father is killing himself with the alcohol. Some would say he
has the right to do that. Some feel others should try to intervene to
try to stop him from doing that---but doing so may allow him to blame
other people for the anger and frustration he feels instead of
realizing what he's doing to himself.

I'm not current on the research about what to do in a situation like
this, and perhaps there's some useful research findings available out
there. In the absence of such knowledge, if I had to do things all
over again, I would focus on bringing out the small part of my father
that did realize he had a problem. I would ask him what he remembered
about what was going on in his life, whether he remembered certain
problems he had had, and what he thought should be done to help him
function better and maximize the quality of his life. It can be very
helpful to keep someone on track with respect to focusing on their own
problems and what needs to be done about them; otherwise, many people
perpetually go off-track, thereby never getting around to addressing
their own problems.

Good luck.


Dana
















On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 6:10 PM, sunniibunnii71
<sunniibunnii71@...> wrote:
> Hello..its been a long time since I have posted or read orbeen in touch. My
dad is Bill the fireman, who has been on and off..his WKS has reached a point
where he thinks he is a millionaire, and he wants to go buy us cars. He forgets
he has the bath tub running and over flows the house, cooks and forgets..my
family is done helping him. I am a single parentto a 7yearold. and we do what we
can when we can. My question is this. what is best for him? He lives in a hme he
owes monthly thathis father co signed the loan for so he has to continue to pay
for this, a nursing home will cost a fortune. He might do ok as long as he is
allowed to smoke that is what he does..he also likes beerI know no facility will
allow that. I am prepared to do what needs to be done..I jus dont know what to
do or who to talk to..his neurolgist and doctors no longer return calls..so I
was hoping for some advice from other who went through this who might know what
to do?? Thank you so much Sunni in Texas
> email sunniibunnii71@...
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------