This could be a mistake...

 Dad's surgery went well. We were sent home the same day. He has his follow-up scheduled for May 2nd. Knowing that he will most likely be having six weeks of treatment after the follow-up, he decided to ask his friend C if he could stay a week with her in Florida. C is a very kind and caring person, but has a hard time saying no. Dad is supposed to fly out next Tuesday and return the following Tuesday. I'm not going with him on this trip.

His trip falls during my middle child's thirteenth birthday, and I'm not going to miss it. That said, I'm not excited about the prospect of my father traveling alone, as his memory is only getting worse. For example, I went to the emergency room on Tuesday night. I told him in the afternoon when we woke up because we didn't get home until 3:30 a.m. After I told him this and he asked me a bunch of questions about my symptoms, he asked me to take him to the liquor store. I said, "Sure, just let me finish what I'm doing." We get in the car, not 5 minutes later, and he asks me why I'm so tired. I respond that I was in the ER last night and didn't get home until 3:30 a.m. He begins asking the same questions again. He asked again on the way back to the house because I had told him I was going to take it easy. But if he wanted to go walking after we got home, he was welcome to, but I wasn't going to join him.

Another reason why the trip might be a mistake is that he can't sit still. I mean, he will do anything and everything other than what you ask him. Currently, he is wiping down the counters in the kitchen, despite my telling him not to. If he really wanted to help out, he could go through the boxes we gave him from the storage unit. What do you think he is doing right now? More cleaning, even though I said the kids were supposed to do it. With his inability to relax, he will probably go to the Credit Union and put money in a CD, despite my telling him not to. We need what he thinks is extra to pay off his credit card again. That means another call to customer service asking them to put it back in his account. Then he's going to ask all the same financial questions again that I have answered a hundred million times. I know it sounds like I'm whining about being inconvenienced, but his inconveniences take a lot of time to correct, and that's time I could be spending with my family or doing something constructive with him. 

Oh, also, he refuses to go through his boxes without my help. I don't understand why. When we packed them, I told him to make sure he definitely needed them in MD. Now, he says he is not sure why he brought them. I get that, but I'm not unloading the storage unit into my house so he can save a hundred bucks a month. There is no room in my home for them, and the last time we put them all in the house, he didn't go through them. He basically had a fortress of full cardboard boxes, and we lost our gym and ability to walk freely to the washer and dryer. I will go through them with him, but he asks me to at the most inconvenient times. Currently, I have an online appointment in 45 minutes, and he wants me to go down there and help him with the boxes first. Dude. One, it's not my decision to make on what stays and what goes; two, your problem is not my emergency, and I'm not missing my appointment because you can't follow directions. 

My husband also thinks this trip is a mistake. I'm probably going to have to walk him to the airport to get his printed boarding pass and show him his gate. Pray he gets through security by himself and on the plane. Or I might ask if I can accompany him to his gate until he gets on the plane because he has Alzheimer's. When he arrives in Florida, I'm not sure he will know where to go to get picked up. Then, while he is down there, C will have to be on top of his medication and probably take it from him so he doesn't start moving pills around. I don't know why he does that but he does and it is frustrating because usually he moves the sleeping pill to the morning and then it's an all day cluster fuck. 

What we are dreading most is his returning to our house. Not because we don't want him here, but because he's such a mess when he comes back from Florida. He starts talking about living in his house down there again, which he can't because it's rented, and how he has no friends here (he doesn't try to make any when I take him to events or places), etc. Then he has to relearn how to use the TV and remote on both TVs: his downstairs TV and the one in the living room. When he is here with us, we follow a pseudo routine, and he is happy and calm for most of the day. This is harder to reinforce when he comes back because he all of a sudden thinks he doesn't have Alzheimer's anymore - because see, I can travel by myself - No, you can't. 

So why am I allowing this? I don't know. He has already purchased the tickets, but I'm having second thoughts and am thinking about telling C, ' No, I'm sorry, he can't visit. ' I know, though because of how he is she will tell him I said he couldn't and then it will be a tantrum about how I don't control his life, etc, and the nasty Alzheimer guy, who is not my father, will come out and make shit difficult for hours. Ugh. What do you think? Cancel the trip or let him go? I know if he goes and it's terrible, he won't remember, so I wouldn't be able to use that as a reason for him not to go by himself again. I also know he desperately misses his friends, but he won't see them, as where he will be staying is two hours north of where his friends are. Got any advice? I'm willing to hear it.