"Well, You'll never pass the mental health test that way.."

That's what my dad told me one day when someone asked me the date and I didn't know it.

I looked at him and told him, "well, daddy, believe it or not there was a time when you couldn't pass that test." He just looked at me in disbelief.

That's how he always looked at me when I would try to tell him some of the things he did when he was out of his head, sick from blood poisoning. By this point in time he had recovered so well they weren't even giving him mental health exams anymore. There had been a time when they said his mind would probably never improve.

When they give you a mental health exam, the first question is always, "what's the date." They also ask your name and where you are and who's the president. My poor daddy thought he was in prison for awhile and he would cry, saying he didn't understand what he had done that was so awful that he would be put in prison. He was so sick (blood poisoning had messed his mind up severely, he was also pretty much blind and he had a MRSA infection) that they had him quaranteened in his hospital room.

There were other days that he thought he was "in the worst hotel I have ever stayed in and these are the worst waitresses I have ever seen. I was grateful that his mind had improved enough that he didn't believe how he had acted during this period.

For awhile he couldn't feed himself but he was too stubborn to let anyone else do it. I would stand by his side and just before the fork would go into his mouth I would drop a bite of food on it because he was unaware that there wasn't any food on the fork. He would chew and swallow even though there was nothing to chew or swallow.