Berks woman finds joy in caring for father with Alzheimer's disease

ReadingEagle.com

A Stony Creek Mills resident lives with her dad, who has Alzheimer's disease. It hasn't always been easy, but she's glad to care for him the way he always did for her.
By Bruce R. Posten
Reading Eagle


Sometimes Penny Chille's 93-year-old father, Matthew Oleskow, recognizes her and sometimes he doesn't.

"Every once in awhile he will say 'I love you,' and I have a glimpse of my father again," said Chille, 66, Stony Creek Mills, a retired delicatessen clerk. "It's a joy to have him with me. I always call him Daddy. Other people just call him Handsome."

Suffering in the latter stages of Alzheimer's, Oleskow, a widower whose wife died of congestive heart failure in 1988, has lived with his daughter for about 10 years.

But he didn't leave his Philadelphia home easily or willingly.

"My father is a wonderful man, a caring person, and was a great role model," Chille said. "He was a strict dad, but he never was upset or depressed. He'd say being like that is just a waste of time."

Oleskow falls into the extreme end of the category of what national gerontology experts refer to as once strong, independent and self-reliant men who, as they age or become debilitated, don't readily admit that they need medical help or family or social support."

Years ago, during the first signs of dementia, the longtime shipper for a car company still wanted to drive his own vehicle even though he often couldn't remember where he parked it.

"I used to go down to Philadelphia and visit my father regularly," Chille said. "He was just disappearing from his home on occasion. He was not eating right. One time, he had packed up the house, went to the bank and intended to move to North Carolina."

Chille said that when her father was hospitalized and diagnosed with Alzheimer's, he was angry.

After medical treatment and legal proceedings, it was thought best that Oleskow live with Chille, while her sister, who lives in Scranton, handles the finances, Chille said.

His primary caregivers now are Chille and her neighbor Patti Rebeiro, who thinks the world of Oleskow, Chille said.

"When Daddy first came here, it was hard: the strain of it all ended my marriage," Chille said. "I had some help from agencies. But my father could walk then and ultimately I had to secure my home.

"One December, he left the house, fell on the rock and just laid outside until we found him."

In the past five years, Oleskow mainly has been confined to his bed.

At first, Oleskow, out of frustration or anger, would reach out to hit his daughter. In more recent years, he's become calmer.

"Strangely, as the disease progresses, it does get easier in some ways," Chille said. "Early on, when my father would break down and cry, it would devastate me because it meant he was remembering. But there are just things you have to get used to."

While Chille feels caring for her aging father is a duty, she believes it is a loving one. That belief comes with the knowledge that her father always cared for her - he adopted her.

"I didn't know that until........read the whole article

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