The idea of anybody writing my father off was more than I could stand. From Italy I sent the psychiatrist a threepage appeal for reconsideration, but even as I was writing it the roof was caving in at home. "Much as I dislike telling you," my mother wrote in a letter faxed to Italy, "Dad has regressed terribly. Medicine for the urinary problem a urologist is treating in combination with medication fordepression and nervousness blew his mind again and the hallucinating, etc. was terrible.