My Dad (65y) has had PD for the past 15 years. He takes C/L every 2.5 hours because he is so fixated on making sure he can walk and function at a “normal” capacity throughout the day. However, his behaviour is all over the map. One minute he is manic and the next he is crying, having a depressive episode. An hour will pass and he is manic again. This is happening on a daily basis.
His behaviour is causing stress to the whole family, especially to my mother which is his primary caregiver. It’s impossible to reason with him during the manic episodes. He morphs into this cocky know it all and his thoughts, decision making and actions are unreasonable.
For example, he will do something he isn’t supposed to be doing (use power tools or agree previously that he will wait for another person to help him) and go behind my mom’s back and just do it because he’s afraid she’s going to say no and he doesn’t want to hear that. He thinks all of his ideas are good yet they are often times dangerous. We are afraid he’s going to have a life altering injury one day. When he gets into the depressive episode he is more remorseful, yet an hour will go by and he becomes manic again and it’s as if the previous discussion/conversation/agreement not to do it again never even happened!
I want to know, is it common to experience this? How do you get your point across and get the person with PD to understand? And what do we do to change this?