Just do everything with him

We have been scratching our head to figure out how can we get him doing something, anything, as long as we can keep his brain working. We worried that if he is just sitting on the sofa fantasizing, day dreaming and doing nothing, the deterioration speed will be quicken. We just hope that he can maintain the current situation, its fine to us and we can't imagine if he would become a soulless living, forgetting all his friends and families and unable to control his urination.

He doesn't like to be alone, so whatever we ask him to do, he will ask for company and getting upset if we force him. But last night i found that if there is a company, he is willing to do, like asking him to sweep the floor, he refuses every single time to do it on his own ( but his work is totally unreliable, we just want to keep him working and at least use his brain). So I handed him a broom and one for myself and he was just sweeping with me, and we just can't expect him to clean up the floor, just at least he is doing something. 

Another example is washing car, just throw him a cloth and wash together, and the thing he is doing doesn't need a lot of memory like clean the dirt right in front of his eyes, he can focus on it and complete it.

The golden rule is, He must keep using his brain.

The one who cares the most

I used to nag my mum not to be too harsh to Frankie, not to be too forcefully pushing him too much to remember and recall. Because to me, I think that, this is it, we must accept it, and all the emotion that we show to him will definitely be in vein. But when it comes to who cares about him the most, that must be her, Lina, my mum.

Last afternoon, my dad and I were weeding the messy grass that surrounds our house fence. To be honest, I don't quite like weeding, the grasses always make my legs unbearably itchy. So I called a halt immediately right after the we had done enough to have it looked clear and tidy in the side. But Frankie refused to stop, he continued the work to ensure that not a single grass was standing. I had no idea how to persuade him to stop, and I was craving to drink something so much, so I went back in the house first and rested, leaving him alone beside the concrete fence "trimming" weed. I sat and rested in a chair nearby where he was to make sure that I could hear what he said, but he was out of my sight.

My mum was in the kitchen at the moment, doing her cook, warning me that I should not ever leave him alone. I replied impatiently to her that I was close enough to notice if he make any sound. she shook her head and went back to kitchen.

Suddenly, Frankie made a shout, the sound of the shout was diluted by the music that I was listening. It drew my attention. When I was just about to get up to check on him, my mum popped her head out of the ajar kitchen door said worriedly and unsatisfactorily " Go and see what happen? You can't let him stay there alone." I obeyed and went out.

From this incident, it tells me that, she is still the one who is truly and genuinely cares for him, despite all the shouting and yelling and nagging she has done to him and all the temper she is showing him. I respect her so much in this aspect. And for this reason I can understand her attitude towards him. There was once she told me that if she hasn't pushed him this hard and being this harsh on him, coercing him to train his brain and his memorizing ability, he could have been worse, he could have forgotten all his family members, even his children, if my mum never insisted to force him to recall all the names of his family members. I was dumbfounded, and agreed with her. She was not harsh to him all the time, usually she is considerate and tender to him, she just broke out whenever she heard him forget something very simple.  

I am the only one who doesn't show tantrum at him, the most patient to him. I guess he feels most comfortable hanging around with me. And he remember me well and occasionally says I am so good to him. So I guess, my mum should continue to play the role of forcing him to train his brain, and as for me, continue to be the playmate and be the one who cherish his life. You see, even for someone like him, life should have sweetness and bitterness.

Hospital Bahagia

There is a psychiatric hospital located in Tanjung Rambutan of Ipoh, one of the few I guess in Malaysia.
Since I was young I had already heard of it, my impression of it was an asylum with mad men behind bars mumbling creepily to themselves.
If you ask any folks on the streets in Ipoh, they will give you a similar answer, a place where lunatics are sent off to. This common perception is even stronger among elderly citizens.

But in fact it was not merely a place to capture the lunatics, there are in fact also a research center on psychiatric diseases with quite a number of experts in this field working there.
Recently it has opened their service to the citizen, other than doing research on the lunatics in its asylum it is now also treating patients suffering from mental illnesses and even Alzheimer.

Based on our own experience, I can tell that you should turn to this psychiatric hospital if you had a family members having any kind of memory problem and phyco problem because it is way more cheaper than the private hospital where you pay a good 50 bucks for an hour visit and the service is quite also way more better than private.

I can't believe my eyes in the first place. Because is was so stunning for me to learn that they are so professional.
My stereotype about this creepy place diminished immediately right after our first visit.

I still can recalled that there was a unpleasant face on the doctor in one of the private that we used to visit.
The doc never explained anything about my dad in detailed to us.
We knew that it was hard to explain everything explicitly to us
But at least please just shed some light on what step should we seriously take
Stop spitting out your professional terms to us and just show us a way to go
I couldn't see any balance between the money and time we spent and the service that I got
Thanks God, the doc suggested Lina to recourse to Tanjung Rambutan
I was thinking that she is fed up with the our lack of trust on her
The doc even once snapped at my mum impatiently
"Auntie, why do you still come to visit me, has I not told you to give a try in Tanjung Rambutan"

By hearing this conversation, Lina has made up her mind to go there.
In fact, the reason why she was reluctant to Tanjung Rambutan was because she thought it was not appropriate to recourse to governmental hospital, because she believed that governmental aid was meant for helping those who have financial problem.
With a very strong believe in her religion, she didn't think we were fit to this aid and she was determined not to go for governmental, but then she had choice and she had to take this as a last resort because we had actually visited almost all the experts in our town.

I was the company to Lina and Frankie in our first visit there.
It was located in a rural area
Lina and Frankie were both going there with a mixed emotions
Lina might be thinking that she needed to do more charity work for taking this advantage which is supposed to the poor
And Frankie himself was actually coming with a reluctant heart, it was more like being forced to be here by Lina.
But I had not the dilemma Lina faced and I had opened up my mind to accept what would amaze me soon.

Poor Frankie, my Dad was still thinking that we were bringing him to an asylum
"I knew this is a place for mad men, I sure remembered that"
he mumbled this after he asked us where were we heading for
Lina and I had to tell him that we were going for a new doctor and tried to avoid his questioning bout we were we going.

I felt guilty of it when I noticed that he was looking around with a blank face and mumbling soundlessly to himself and when I sensed that he was aware that we were going to Hospital Bahagia, a place he hated and thought that only madmen will go there in a sunny day.

The atmosphere was quite like those typical governmental clinic. We had to hang out in a near by hypermarket and get back again because we reached at a wrong time, lunch and praying hour on Friday. So we got back by 2 30 pm and be the first in the queue. A patient nurse had helped us with the registration and my daddy was called to do some check on blood pressure, height and weight and we were asked to sit on a sofa and wait for our turn in front of a consultation room. It took us some time in the wait that we expected in a government unit.
Then we saw a very tall guard in brown uniform brought along a lunatic who dressed like a patient in a faint blue cloth knocking on the door of the consultation room next the one that we were waiting for. His face is like spiritless, with his eyes like staring at point in full concentration and his jaw moving restlessly as if he was mumbling something soundlessly. The guard ordered him to sit down and pass a file to the Chinese doc who came out of that room and the patient went in while the tall guard waited on the sofa opposite to us.

This is in fact a scene I want to avoid Frankie to witness, I was so worried that he would think that we were bringing him to a asylum and treated him like a madman. I noticed that Frankie had been avoiding the view since the Chinese lunatic appeared.

Lina seemed unaware of it and urged Frankie to go into the consultation room when he was called by the doctor in the room. He didn't seem so friendly and strict, but I could tell that he was so serious in understanding Frankie like his recent memory condition, behavior, medical history and lifestyle. We were so fond with it despite the time that we had waited because never had a doctor that we had visited shown such a keen and serious attitude to the matter, most of them would just tell us to take the prescription.

Then a test was conducted to test Frankie's memory, it ranged from easy question like, where is here, time and, and date, some simple math problem and some drawing. And I found that they were quite useful and I had sometimes asked this same question to him after that.