One wrong turn and he ends up 900 miles away in Alabama.
It was and elderly man that got disoriented. Thankfully he’s OK. His daughters flew down to get him.
I’m puzzled why a family member didn’t drive the truck back to Pennsylvania. It’s going to cost a small fortune shipping it.
This hits close to home for me. My dad was beginning to get confused. He’d get in the car and have to ask my mom where they were going. I’m pretty sure he got lost (running errands) and never said anything. He died before it progressed to dementia.
Maybe the daughters don’t drive themselves, or didn’t know how to drive the truck (stick shift, that kind of thing)?
Several times a year in my area (and probably in the areas of everyone who’s reading this), an elderly person will get lost while doing some routine thing, and be found dead some time later.
My mother, at nearly 85, still drives, but I’m thinking of broaching the subject of letting us drive her more. Her eyesight and actual driving skills are okay, but she’s starting to get more worried emotionally, as in “sweating the small stuff”. At least she won’t drive at night anymore. But she “doesn’t want to impose” and would really not like feeling “trapped” in her house.
Last summer, a friend’s father-in-law volunteered to pick up his grandchildren after a school event in downtown Denver. Two days later, after an extensive search, he was found in Omaha with no idea how he had gotten there or why he had gone there.
Although he had experienced no previous incidents of this nature, he reluctantly surrendered his car keys. The incident had deeply shaken him. He has asked for his keys back several times since, but his family has held firm. He has had several memory lapses since then but thankfully they have been minor ones. There is every reason to believe they would have been more serious had he still been allowed to drive.
It us a tough decision to take independence away from a loved one, and I am sure when my own time comes to lose my independence, I will resent it greatly, but I strongly believe it should be done for the safety of the individual involved.
This is why I’m grateful my 95-year-old aunt decided that she’d stop driving at 90, just to be safe. She still has all her wits about her, probably because she never had a husband or children…
My grandpa, at 96, is still a better driver than most people (certainly better than me), and praise God still okay in the head and perfectly able to get around town for his standard errands and stuff. But even so, he doesn’t drive himself on long trips anymore, instead my uncle or another family member in his area will pick him up and drive him for those. Knowing your limitations is a good thing.
My other grandpa, though, he kept driving way longer than he should have. A doctor finally had to tell him in no uncertain terms not to drive anymore when he was in for something else and it came out that he couldn’t even feel much if anything in his legs anymore. Fortunately, when he agreed he really agreed and it wasn’t very long after when he had my dad sell his car for him.
I’m enjoying the thought of a Pennsylvania man getting lost all the way to Alabama, just about ready to pull over to ask for directions, then seeing signs for Philadelphia and thinking, “Finally! I’m heading the right direction!”
This article smells like a fake to me. Really, he drove 900 miles without realizing it? Without passing a Walmart, without thinking it’s odd that he had to fill up on gas several times? At the very least, you’d think he’d go to a restaurant once or twice, or use the restroom, or go to sleep.
