My Dad

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My dad was diagnosed in 1992 with what was then known as Shy-Drager Syndrome, later Multiple System Atrophy. He was fortunate in that his primary care physician was familiar with the condition, so my dad was never misdiagnosed and did not linger without a diagnosis while his physicians "figured it out." He started using a wheelchair in 1996 and died in 2003, having been mostly bedridden for several years near the end. He described the illness as occurring in "plateaus": he would get worse for a while, then hit a plateau for a while, then get worse again, the flatten out again for a while. He had wonderful caretakers, including my mother. He kept his spirits up throughout the illness, insisting on spelling out jokes on an alphabet card long after he lost the ability to speak. I moved far away in 1998, so I wasn't around him much as he got worse. It was strange when, years after his death, he finally began to appear disabled in my dreams, as though my subconscious had finally begun to recognize that he had changed, but was still not ready to admit that he was gone. But, as long as he's appearing in my dreams, he's not really gone, is he?