My father, of course, has the right to his own medical privacy, so I won't go into much detail re him. Rather, maybe, it will be of use to talk about how it's affected us.
My father has had 4 incidents, they may have been microscopic strokes or they may have been seizures. These all happened this year. The first one, my brother and I did not know about and it was only until the second that we were told by my folks. They were not keeping them from us. Rather, they thought it was nothing, just a momentary lapse. These were momentary aphasic episodes.
Over the summer, I was out of work, and it was damned lucky, as there was a third episode and by this time there was contact with Stony Brook Hospital and stent surgery was scheduled. So it was a godsend being out of work briefly, as I could come and help out. I mainly spent the time keeping my mother company and, when my Dad got home, turning the thermostat up and down so that he wouldn't have to.
The fourth episode was after I went home after the surgery and was another minor, little thing. So now, after surgery, it was unknown whether the surgery had really done anything (although it was clear he had needed it) so he ended up in a study of seizure disorders, and went to NYU Hospital for a while so that they could study him and see if they could induce an attack. One of the ways they tried to do this was by keeping him up all night one night, so he and his roommate (a 20-something guy who was also in the study) stayed up, I think they watched all the
Die Hard movies. Still, no seizures, for either of them. Hmm.
So it's a holding pattern, a weird one. You don't know if something is going to happen again, but you can't live your life constantly in fear so you just do your best and see where that leads you. One thing he was told was to no longer sleep in a chair or on a couch (while sitting up with his head back), so if he is tired, he hauls himself upstairs and goes to bed. Hence it's not just a moment or two of napping, but a full-blown sleep. And he needs it. The fatigue is very real, so this kind of comes together for what he needs -- not just a quick catnap, but actual sleep.
As for any differences, there are really none that I can see, my mother sees a few things but it's hard to tell. They were here a few weeks ago and they were the same as ever. Perhaps a few memories are torn or a few fine details are hazy, but he seems the same, and I get the feeling something similar is the case with Bob. A few blurs, a few torn memory fabrics, but it's so small and so hideaway that the rest of us can't tell. Certainly they can, but neither of them should wonder about or be concerned about the rest of us seeing that. At least I know I can't. My father is my father, same as he was in 2005, and I suspect Bob is, to just about everyone, the same as he was in 2003.