George Wiggin

Most of you know that dad was diagnosed over a year ago with vascular dementia.  Mom and Dad came to live with Mike and I  a little more than a week ago so that we could help mom take care of dad. Over the last couple of weeks he had become increasingly agitated. 


Tuesday, February 7th, we had dad taken to the hospital so that they could get him medicine to help with the agitation/aggression. The initial thought was that he would be in the hospital for a few days to a week figuring out what medicine, in what dosage worked best for him. 


Wednesday, February 8th on our morning visit, he was doing pretty good, smiling like his old self. But that evening he slept through most our visit. We thought it was just his body getting used to the new meds.


However, Thursday, February 9th he slept through both our morning and afternoon visits and he wasn't eating or drinking anything for us. But he had been awake that morning before we got there and had eaten some of his breakfast. So, again, we thought his body was just adjusting to his new meds. The doctor backed off a little on the already low dosage of the meds he was getting. 

On Friday, we noticed he was feeling warm, but he was not running a temperate.  He continued to sleep through both our visits. 


Saturday morning he had a fever. They began running tests to find out what was going on. They did a chest X-Ray. The doctor said he has mulitlobular pneumonia and atelectasis  (develops when the tiny air sacs (alveoli) within the lung become deflated by fluid in the lungs) . When we brought him to the ER on Tuesday, he had no symptoms of pneumonia, however, when they compared the chest X-ray on Tuesday, with the chest X-ray on Saturday...there was no change. So, in other words, when we brought dad in on Tuesday, there was already something brewing.