Growing up we had a lot of strange animals (no snakes actually, though we found quite a few)…. My dad would hear about something and run and get some animals. During grade school dad heard about a person with a collection of animals and decided he wanted one. We all loaded up and ran in to get what we could AND came home with a deer…. Pictured to the left is Bambi. He was friendly and as long as he didn’t have antlers on, we could interact inside the fence.
My dad would try all sorts of things though. At one point we had a crow that my dad found that would ride around on Bambi’s antler’s. It had an injured wing, so the crow was perfectly content to ride around. After a while my dad got more deer and we had a whole menagerie.
These were Fallow Deer, indigenous to Germany, and I’d swear my dad’s goal was to use them as lures to get deer to come closer while deer hunting. We would have the local game warden visit each year to make sure ours in captivity were legal and not white tail (local deer). Deer can jump amazingly high, so my father had high fences for them made out of old grain bins. The only escape I remember took 6 men to get the deer back in the pen, and I remember the deer standing with all 6 on it’s back.
While picking up Bambi we also got to see an old monkey named SOB (mean! and abused) and some honey bears. I wanted them SO bad at the time. My father tried later to trade for the honey bears but couldn’t make a deal. I remember the visit by the guy with the bears (they are little bears), and the bears got loose in his truck and locked him out while he was dropping off deer at the time.
SOB ended up taken from his owner and became a test subject for the University of Illinois. Even with all the odd animals we had and the quirky behavior my dad would never have abused an animal. Even a dog we had (Peanut, and yes the matching dog was Butter) that bit my dad while he was trying to help with an infected ear, ended up going to a family with no kids. The dog really had been ‘provoked’, so it wasn’t the dogs fault – and my dad knew it!
Later my dad and a friend tried Beefalo and decided it was GOOD! So they ran out and got two buffalo. We got the girl who my brother and I named Buffy. She was added to the herd at our house. Pictured below is my mother with the buffalo feeding chickens from the look of it.
It’s funny, at the time, although we all had a healthy respect for the animals and knew what each could do and when… we were in and out of the cages to feed them all the time. I’m sure I didn’t think twice about standing there to take this picture and I’m sure my mother fed the chickens, gathered eggs, and fed buffy and the deer like this a million times.
Buffy escaped once in my memory. An owl got into the chicken coop and couldn’t get out. As it flapped trying to get out through the top whole (an old grain bin top that had been cut off) – Buffy got scared and exited through the fence. I’m sure that was a site for all the cars coming up the road. Note: My parents do live on a dead end road and knew everyone around, but still a buffalo in the road on your way home ha
s to be a surprise.
Now as my dad’s memory goes, talking about animals is a way to connect. Seeing deer, a snake, or the fact that my son decided to make a pet out of a frog he found at their house is a great talking point with my dad. These deer were in my parents field! I do wish I had a way to show my dad pictures, I’m thinking I should move them onto my iPad to show him an image that he can see better – maybe put together a slide show of the things that he would find interested. Konnor’s new frog, Konnor’s toad, the deer by the house, even his dogs (did I mention we had 32 dogs at one time growing up!)
We did have a few other unusual animals for short stints, but they always moved on quickly. Everything from a ferret that tried to use a litter box in the kitchen to a a swimming pool filled with fish. My father ended up with a pond filled with catfish that were trained to come to the sound of his footsteps so that he could feed them dog food!
It doesn’t really matter what causes dementia, the problem is that it isn’t covered by health insurance! Most people don’t realize how expensive it is either. A nursing home can cost between $5000 and $7000 or more per month for dementia care. All out of pocket unless you qualify for Medicaid (have less than $1500 to your name). For a farm family this literally means losing the family farm to pay for care.
Farmers that do plan ahead get Long Term Care insurance ahead of time. (We are dealing with filing for benefits now.) It’s paperwork, run around, and lots of work to get the benefits when they are finally needed – and that’s after they push the ‘grace period’ as long as they can.
Long Term Care insurance policies are also only good for a set amount of time – so the issue also becomes at what time do you enter the nursing home to use all the benefits without going over. Basically what is the family members life expectancy, if you miscalculate you can still ‘lose the farm’.
We have in our own situation looked at other things, but the biggest issue is that we are stumbling around blind. Whether you get an advocate, get a lawyer, or just get friends that have been through it, every situation is different.
For example, my father was in the reserves, but was told that he was serving active duty for 6 months near the end of his enlistment during the Vietnam war. We are filing for benefits, but now we are being told it may not count because it was classified as ‘training’! Assets become an issue also and income definitely does. From the sound of it my mother would need to be destitute and live on nothing for my dad to get benefits? If he had qualified…
Anyone with suggestions on ways to pay for dementia care when a family members becomes unmanageable at home?
My father is growing old. We’ve said he has dementia, but the true story is a little tougher to deal with…
At 16 my dad wrecked a motorcycle. I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a helmet on, not even sure helmets existed yet – and I’m sure they weren’t common. The story I’ve heard is that my Uncle Tom saw him wreck and ran to get the car. He then drove him to the hospital, where it was expected my dad would not survive. Dad had brain swelling (this was the 50s!) and I’m sure the drs said there wasn’t anything they could do for him. Amazingly my father survived though. He was in such bad shape that my grandfather, being a widower farmer couldn’t take care of him, so my dad was sent to live with my Aunt Dorothy. (She’s fairly colorful, so there are lots of stories there too) I should mention the year I was born my father wrecked a convertible Corvette – TOTALED. He was with my cousins Joellyn and Judy and they only survived by being thrown from the car. It rolled over…. Luckily no head trauma then though.
My dad went on with headaches and more, growing up to be a farmer himself (and having me and my brother). Not fond of medical care, my dad didn’t see a doctor for years. I do remember a kidney stone when I was in grade school where my mother had to take him to the ER, but other than that, NADA. Then finally a few years back my father has a seizure and they find his blood pressure is sky high. Not only that, but his blood pressure has been sky high for quite a while. (High blood pressure can cause capillaries in the brain to burst) My father’s blood pressure had went on so long it had caused damage!
My dad is convinced that people die in hospitals, which leads him to try to escape every time he’s in one…. This has led to him removing his own IV and being found in other people’s rooms a few times and the inevitable calls asking everyone to come and take him home…. BUT at that time the drs thought they had gotten it under control.
Skip forward a few years and my dad has a stroke (they run in our family). The doctors had a really hard time with the stroke due to the mass of brain damage (see the motorcycle wreck mentioned above), but finally they decided it was a stroke. Since then he has had a couple as well as his heart valve replaced (because it was leaky?).
So when we look at my dad and know he can’t remember, or is having a bad day – how do you decide.. Does he have dementia or brain damage? My thought is that dementia steadily gets worse where as brain damage (if the underlying conditions are treated) will not get worse unless there is more damage to the tissue.
Even knowing all this, really knowing the cause in this case is just knowledge. Does it help with his treatment? Would it change anything?
I think my answer is yes it does change a little, I have his genes. I need to decide whether I check off Alzheimer and dementia in my close family history. No one else in my direct line had dementia, so does my dad or is it brain damage? Is it my future?
I thin on my family tree medical conditions is something I need to start adding. I think I should add not just COD (Cause of Death) but also major chronic illnesses. My father also has Padget’s disease. I know that is hereditary! It’s something I need to watch out for just in case I received those genes.
Do you track medical conditions in your family tree?
about a person with a collection of animals and decided he wanted one. We all loaded up and ran in to get what we could AND came home with a deer…. Pictured to the left is Bambi. He was friendly and as long as he didn’t have antlers on, we could interact inside the fence.
It’s funny, at the time, although we all had a healthy respect for the animals and knew what each could do and when… we were in and out of the cages to feed them all the time. I’m sure I didn’t think twice about standing there to take this picture and I’m sure my mother fed the chickens, gathered eggs, and fed buffy and the deer like this a million times.
Now as my dad’s memory goes, talking about animals is a way to connect. Seeing deer, a snake, or the fact that my son decided to make a pet out of a frog he found at their house is a great talking point with my dad. These deer were in my parents field! I do wish I had a way to show my dad pictures, I’m thinking I should move them onto my iPad to show him an image that he can see better – maybe put together a slide show of the things that he would find interested. Konnor’s new frog, Konnor’s toad, the deer by the house, even his dogs (did I mention we had 32 dogs at one time growing up!)