In the early 2000s, Dad was a very high-functioning septuagenarian who took care of Mom and rode his bike around the lake at least twice a week.

Then, it started. A corrupt system, bad doctors, and, of course, Neila came for him.

Round One
A routine checkup showed his cholesterol was slightly elevated. Immediately, drug therapy - statins - was pushed at him. Within a year, his hands and feet largely died out from under him, apparently due to statin neuropathy.

Bye-bye, biking.

The solution for the neuropathy? More drugs atop the statins, of course. 

Round Two
He was put on the controversial, heavily-fined anticonvulsant gabapentin and stayed on it for years despite him being unable to tell if it actually helped. His uncertainty was met with increased dosages.

By 2012, the neuropathy had worsened and Mom, in the last few years of a 30 year slog to the crematorium, was often restless and hacking her lungs out all night due to her Kool-induced severe COPD. Throw in crushing stress from their lives being heaved into the crapper by Neila's war with John over Aydin, and Dad was sometimes having trouble sleeping.

Round Three
So, more drugs atop the others. He would be drugged daily with tranquilizers for the next 5 years, keeping him docile as The Flozberks dragged Dad's household into lawsuit hell, a process he later cited as something he wanted nothing to do with and his biggest-ever regret. Neila repeatedly described the doctor responsible for that as a dear friend of the family. More on that piece of shit later.

Twice during that, Mom had to go to the bathroom at night but was unable to awaken her drugged mate, so she tried to make it herself with no starch in her knees. Both times failed, landing her on the floor amid dreadfully embarrassing accidents requiring paramedics and bringing what she grimly described as the loss of her dignity.

One of those incidents was fueled by stress from a process server sent by her former golden boy, the once-overvalued-then-pariah John, terrorizing them by banging on their door for hours.

Those poor old people.

Fast Forward
Summer 2017. Mom was two years gone. Dad was sleeping much better but was still regularly awakened by a lady - his dog, Tasha. Sometimes she needed to go out; sometimes she just wanted to hang with her master.

Dad complained to me that he felt tired in the morning, his brain seemed smothered, and he was incresingly unsteady on his feet. I studied his drug regimen and was stunned. What I thought was a light dose in his "sleeping pill" was actually quite robust. I took one as a learning experience and got unpleasantly fucked up off my ass.

Violated Clinical Standards
The lorazepam Neila's buddy had Dad benzo'd-out on should NEVER be given for more than two weeks except for in cases of extreme anxiety or insommnia, neither of which remotely affected Dad. The elderly should not take it longer than one week

Dad was on it for FIVE YEARS, ages 81-86, and kept on it long after the ostensible original reasons were no longer a factor.

Combining it with gabapentin made Dad's brain like mashed potatoes.

Malpractice, period, end of story. Neila's doctor violated clinical standards in several ways, creating a serious hazard and robbing a damn good man of precious years of fully-lucid existence.

Mindful Detox
The Flozberk Way would have been to keep him on the dope, or, at best, to shove him off with crudely kind-of-halved pills over a week or two. But, withdrawal from benzos demands care for patient comfort and safety, so I got a milligram scale, pill chopper, and paper pill cups to do it right, reducing his dosage 10% every 5 days.

It went smoothly and his energy, balance, and mental acuity much improved.

Next in the crosshairs: gabapentin, one of the most fined and overprescribed drugs in history. Dad was an exceptionally poor candidate for it, given his respiratory ailments requiring daily treatment, badly decayed vision, age and unsteadiness on his feet, a couple of drinks each evening, and use of tranquilizers until autumn, 2017.

Most important, he could't tell if it was helping, and if one can't tell if a drug aimed to stem discomfort is helping, it likely isn't. A huge portion of those given gabapentin report no significant relief and troubling side effects.

So, they again increased the dosage and he immediately suffered unprecedented multiple falls in quick succession, saying his feet just suddenly went dead and down he went. Gabapentin is a listed fall risk drug that works by suppressing neural function.

At the same time, his vision also got even worse, a listed side effect requiring a prominent warning sticker on every bottle.

Exceptionally Poor Candidate
I presented to Dad what I'd learned, emphasizing that the drug was likely endangering him and Tasha (him falling on his gimpy old dog was a true nightmare scenario), worsening his primary health and safety concerns, and did not seem to be significantly helping him. Plus, it was costly, which mattered to him.

Hey, I'm thrilled half-shitless that some see great relief from gabapentin, but with Dad, the math just wasn't adding up well. He was simply a poor candidate, and Neila's doctor failed to exercise due diligence while likely under deftly-devised pressure from Pfizer reps - generally hot chicks with zero medical background - to prescribe the drug with abandon.

Dad agreed to taper and cease, then see what happened. Based on accounts from others, I warned him that he might experience some visual changes for a while, but he was already legally blind to start with.

The attempt failed. He indeed did have some visual disturbance - not necessarly worse, but for sure different and strange. However, his steadiness on his feet began to clearly improve. My primary goal of reducing his fall risk was being realized and we sought to ease in alpha lipoic acid to see if it helped his relatively mild neuropathic discomfort.

Neila
When Neila learned of the visual disturbances, though, she and her strip mall sports medicine sawbones creep got Dad back on the prior dosage and his tightrope-teetering returned.

That was very upsetting to me, but there was nothing more I could do. The cornerstone of my platform is FREEDOM, and I had done my job and fought hard. I had to let Dad do as he pleased and shifted my focus to reducing his fall risk in other ways.

A Broad Mitigation Effort
The worst hazard seemed to be Tasha rousting him in the middle of the night, so I worked to reduce incidence of that. She was disturbing him about 1.7x each night - usually twice per, sometimes once.

1. Increase her comfort and make her less inclined to rise before morning. I replaced the old comforter on the hard floor with a plush dog bed, which worked very well, reducing rousting to 0.9x - once per, sometimes none.

2. After talking to the vet, we started drugging Tasha with 25mg of diphenhydramine, aka Benadryl, nightly. That further reduced incidence to 0.5x - a split between once per and none. That greatly reduced Dad's odds of suffering a drowsy nighttime fall.

3. Adding HEPA filters to the living areas both helped with Dad's respiratory woes and eased Tasha's allergies and was associated with another drop in rousting incidence to just under 0.4x, with most nights finally free of Tasha roust.

4. Pull Tasha's water in the evening and return it in the morning.

Little Pink Spots
Strangely, we noticed that the incidence went up when we were out of town and the Flozzies took over. Turned out that Reagan was ignoring my procedure for getting the pills into flavor-sensitive Tasha. She loved peanuts, so I'd give her a few and get her into peanut mode, then slip her a pill with peanut butter on it, then chase it with more peanuts until I was sure it went down. Success rate was at or near 100%.

Reagan favored a less-mindful approach, his resulting failures were marked by increased incidence of rousting, little pink spots from the dye on the generic Kroger Benadryl on the carpet, and mysterious pills mashed in the soles of my boots. Tasha was a master pill spitter, Reagan's success rate was needlessly low, and Dad's attempts to improve his effort were brushed off, much to his puzzlement and frustration.

The Fall of the Year
It appears in the last weeks of his life, his gabapentin dose was again increased and, like before, he quickly started falling much more. Then, according to Neila, he suffered one last fall in his bathroom, killing him.

If he did fall due to instability in his legs, gabapentin likely played a role. The phenomenon is documented across a huge number of patients. Neila's drive to instead pin his fall on me for, earlier that day, sending the unannounced caretaker home when we had an appointment to attend, is tragically malicious and withers under scrutiny.

That pales, though, next to Princess Corn Log's outrageous, tragic attempt to bring suspicion unto me for murdering Dad. It's one of the worst things I've ever seen someone do.

Neila's identity rested heavily on two things:

1) Being our tireless defender from John in the lawsuit over The Sultan she helped bring into being, and
2) Being a caretaker for FOUR camps of old people that they sequentially milked a literal fortune out of. The more dependent they were, the better. The more pills they took, the better. The less we knew or participated, the better.

All 4 camps ended, one way or another, in disaster.

REPEAT:  ALL FOUR

A Son Fails His Dear Father
I failed Dad horribly here and will carry the disgrace to my last breath.

Despite us pulling a bit closer together during the war with John, I was well aware of The Flozberks' affinity for the subpar, to put it nicely. Trusting them as the point men in Dad's health care was supremely neglectful, no matter what else Lisa and I had on our plate.

On Neila's referral, I actually saw the doctor who had dad so drugged, but it was only to get my disability documented for a homestead property tax exemption. It was successful, but his exam was bizarre, half-assed, and absurdly expensive. Then, I was overbilled and no effort could fix it, so I just paid it before it went to collections.

The guy was a joke, a strip mall sports medicine specialist caring for an old man with unique needs long, long removed from any sporting life. Not surprisingly, he was the nearest doctor to Camp Flozberk of the thousands in our vast metroplex, about 3500' away from them. This strongly suggests a devotion to lazy convenience over caring excellence.

It's worth noting that "Doc Flozberk" damn near killed both Neila and Ryan with prescriptions, too.

I absoutely should have known better and years sooner should have scrutinized Dad's meds and guided him toward better health care and a shot at better living. It's easy to blame The Flozzies, but if I put a toddler at the controls of a helicopter and wished him bon voyage, the resulting mess would be my fault.

I knew they were fucking half-assed idjits AND that the doctor absolutely sucked, but still handed the shotgun to the monkey. That is a spectacular failure.

The next round of blame goes to the scumbag doctor. Were it possible for me to render him physically unable to practice medicine without suffering great consequences, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Those who invalidly drug our elders and children are among our very worst fellows.

People, scrutinize all prescriptions. We are the first line of defense. It's amazing that people will spend an hour watching Dr. fucking Phil on a 62" screen, day after day, yet will devote just two minutes on a 4" phone screen researching drugs their loved ones are given.

No Response
Here is the info I relayed to The Flozberks on July 27, 2017. Like with almost all communication I sent them, I received no response.

Dad has recently complained of bad morning fatigue along with, as we already know, mental fogginess and instability on his feet. The damn sleeping pill – Lorazepam – is a factor in this.

I thought the 1mg dose of Lorazepam was a tiny dose, almost a placebo. WRONG like a MOFO! 1 Mg Lorazepam = 10 mg of Valium, which is a heavy dose. L also has a much longer half-life than V, so that explains why he's fatigued in the morning. L is hot stuff. I was badly remiss in failing to learn this sooner.

L should not be taken for more than a couple weeks by anyone except for those with a severe anxiety disorder. He's been taking it for FIVE FUCKING YEARS! It surely was helpful when Mom was next to him hacking her guts out all night, but that's obviously no longer a factor.

Prescribing this on a constant therapeutic basis is borderline malpractice, but stuff like this happens all the time. Doctors often just give old people whatever they want to shut 'em up. We can do better.

L presents a serious falling risk, especially in the 6 hours after the drug is ingested. The dog waking him up during the hot period after dosing is problematic. I believe Dad fell and hurt his ribs a couple hours after going to bed and strongly suspect L was a factor in that incident.

To aid with sleep, the benign and effective supplement MELATONIN is much better. And, it's not like he has to go to work or anything – any sleep he is missing can be regained during the day.

Let's get him off that shit. Cold turkey and such is not a good idea with Benzodiazepine drugs. I just bought a very sensitive scale, a pill splitter, and paper pill cups for dirt cheap on Amazon. Starting this weekend, I'm going to very precisely drop his dosage 10% per week (or perhaps 4-5 days if he tolerates that OK) until it's eliminated.

I'm certain he'll feel better and be safer and more mentally clear once we accomplish this.

Again, no response after this very important notificaiton. Nothing. Silence. Like, as in nothing. Crickets chirping. Nothing. The only input from the Floztwats was from Neila to Dad, imploring him to keep taking that hard dope.

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