Imagine a day where everything changes to something new. The daily routine is unrecognizable and suddenly everything becomes a blur. Remembering last Christmas or even the day before seems impossible and all the information disappears. This represents the daily life of people with Alzheimer's disease. In the book, Last Night in the OR by Bud Shaw, the final chapter of the book is “Good Days and Bad.” The chapter starts with Bud Shaw and his father sitting at a kitchen table in a hospice care facility. Bud inquires his father questions, however with his Alzheimer’s disease, he is addle and can’t answer them. Connie the aide stands there with them, providing care and assisting as needed. She refers to him as Doc, in addition to Bud he use …show more content…
Reconciling his father’s good old days, Bud commemorates the amazing procedures he accomplished in order to save the lives of many people. Now looking at his father, he sadly recognizes the reality. Bud envisages his father as someone unfamiliar to him, and he believes his father is broken and can’t fix himself. Bud recalls last Thanksgiving where his father fixed his hernia pain with his hands. He sadly now compares that to how he falters to answer what he had for breakfast but can still fix him with his hands. Calling him everyday, Bud feels worse after he hangs up every time because he knows his father will forget everything right afterwards. Bud remains at home now and calls the aide Connie daily to ask about his father's medications. Bud, who use to be a transplant surgeon, is very upset when he finds out the aide plans to give him medicine that could possibly kill him. When Bud leaves for the fourth of July celebration, he receives a call from his brother telling him that his father has passed away. At the funeral, he finds out that the medicine he told the aide not to give him is the cause of his father’s death and all he can think is, “a life spent saving hopeless situations with a death that could have been so easily delayed”(Shaw