Hi
My Mum was relatively happy and alert when she came out of a 2week coma after her very major stroke. This lasted for a couple of months along with mood swings and agitation etc, but then she became very sad and depressed She was unable to speak - so it was hard for us to find out and assess how she was. In hindsight (it is now over 10 years since her stroke) I think she was on a bit of a high initially just because she was alive, but though she was having rehab and doing okay, the next several months I think she maybe started to understand the extent of her disabilities (including right side paralysed and hardly any speech), and was quite understandably depressed mourning her old life. It probably took her 2-3 years to come to some sort of acceptance of what had happened to her.
As others have said, being sad and depressed is I think part of the process - and understandable given the enormity of the change in her life. We maybe didn't fully understand this at the time, and saw it as a setback. We were so desperately happy that she had survived, and were so desperately hoping that she would make a substantial recovery, that I think we tried to jolly her along when maybe we should have just let her be sad. But - you can only do what you can at the time, and take each day as it comes.
Unfortunately the anti-depressants she tried for a while had bad side effects for Mum- lethargic, hallucinations and extreme agitation - so we weaned her off them and she was more herself and more stable. Time was the real healer for Mum in terms of her depression.
All the best to you and your Dad - My Dad passed away last year and I am now Mum's fulltime carer. She hasn't made major improvements with her physical disabilities, but emotionally is far more stable, and relatively content I think. We still have our ups and downs, and the lack of verbal communication is a challenge, but when Mum smiles, or when I manage to exactly understand what she's trying to tell me, or when she laughs at one of my attempts at a joke - these are just moments of pure joy for both of us.
One other thing - Mum still has trouble focusing on conversation when there are more than one or two people talking. When there are three or four people chatting around her she withdraws - I think she has to work very hard to follow the thread of a conversation.So we now try to make sure we keep her included and involved by not having lots of people talking around her, and not interrupting each other and jumping topics too quickly. This may be helpful also with your Dad - just a thought.
Love to you and your family
Helen
