Daycare For Dad

With help from out County we found a facility that would offer not only care for my dad for the day so that I could go to work, but also so my mother would have time to relax and heal, and so my father would get the stimulation that his mind needs as a stoke victim to continue to grow new pathways in his brain so that his brain damage does not continue to grow causing the loss of even more functions. Use it or lose it is what the doctors are telling him.
We enrolled him in a fairly active program that is full of people with all different problems, men and women of all ages including some men around his age that have also had strokes. They take them fishing, out on pontoon boat rides, to play pool, teach them to play guitar, play bocce ball, and he is given his therapy there in the afternoons...however my father is uncomfortable there as he does not feel it is necessary for him to be there yet. He thinks the program is good for people who need it, but he doesn't see that he does. He doesn't like to be around people who are mentally worse off then he is. I really can't blame him. It is a visual reminder of where, and how he might be one day. I have trouble looking at these people myself, knowing that my once extremely vital, active father might end up stationary in a wheelchair unable to communicate his simplest thought or needs. It leaves me feeling sick to my stomach. I cant imagine what it does to him.
So, he has done everything in his power consciously and unconsciously to get out of going to this day program. He is depressed about it to the point where he was sleeping about 20 hours per day. We finally brought him into the hospital and the doctors agreed that he is depressed and expressing the same anxiety that children often do when faced with fitting into kindergarten for the first time. The doctors told us that he would only deteriorate if we allowed him to stay at home, and he would never be happy in any program we put him in. It would just be a period of adjustment for him.
So now without fail we have to force him to go no matter how sleepy he says he is, and everyday he comes home telling us he was too busy to take time out to have a nap, and shares all the fun things that happened during the day. Then without fail the next day he tells us he is too tired to go again.