ANNOUNCER: When it became clear her mom and dad needed help, Linda became proactive, deciding to move her parents to New York City, to live with her and her husband, Frank. It couldn't have gone worse.
LINDA DANO: You know, it was going to be a great life. My mother and dad were going to be with me, and we were going to take care of them, and none of that happened. I mean, it happened, but not like I planned it at all. My father got on that plane, and when he got to my apartment that day with Frank and my mother, he knew me. He called me by name. He hugged and kissed me. And four days later my father never called me by name again.
He just was terrified. He didn't know where he was. His agitation got so much more severe. In four days he destroyed the apartment. He tried to harm my mother. I mean, he did not know what he was doing, and he was so afraid.
ANNOUNCER: Linda's father was in late-stage Alzheimer's, but remarkably, he still had not been diagnosed. He fell, and Linda took him to an emergency room. No bones were broken, but her father was placed in the psych ward.
LINDA DANO: And at one point, after about two and a half weeks, my father chose not to eat. He wasn't eating. I couldn't get him to eat. And he was just comatose the whole time he was there. He wouldn't respond. He didn't talk to me. He didn't talk to my mother. And I was told that I had to give him a feeding tube. And I did.
ANNOUNCER: Linda then asked an expert in geriatrics from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine to see her father.
