Thanks for your comment!

His care team at the hospital said that delirium can very much last months, sometimes up to a year or even more. My father was never diagnosed with dementia, but that's not to say he does not have it because Alzheimer's does run on his side of the family. I will be bringing up this topic during his first post-stroke follow-up in June.

I am his POA. It states that I can make medical decisions on his behalf if he is unable to. Even with delirium/confusion right now, I don't know if he is alert enough to be able to make the decision on his own. In what condition must one be to not be able to make their own decision? I live in Canada, so I don't know if there is a difference between my POA to an American's POA. I would be able to ask the lawyer anyway.

I expressed concerns to the social worker about having my father come home, specifically because he was attempting to leave the hospital to "go for a smoke" outside. He did this often enough that I became terrified that he would wander out of the house in the middle of the night and I wouldn't know. When I expressed these fears to the social worker, she insisted that him coming home would be best because he should be in a familiar and happy environment and also because it wouldn't be reasonable for him to go to a short-term care because of a weird rule that he would need to achieve a specific goal to be accepted. For example, some patients who leave rehab but are not ready to return home would go to a short-term care in order to achieve a goal such as learning to walk without a walker before going home, or being more independent again. We could not use my dad as "waiting for delirium to clear up" to be a reasonable goal. I don't know, it's a bit weird to me.

Anyway, we brought him home and he was improving and now it's gone downhill. If he continues to ignore his medication, I'm sure another health issue will arise, maybe sending him to the hospital. If delirium returns or gets even worse, I would not be able to care for him at home because the way it is right now is already really tough.