Many years ago, I received a panic call in the middle of the night that my Dad was very ill. It sounded like he was having a stroke - my mother was in the early stages of Alzheimer's and was frantic. We got him to the hospital only to find out that he was dehydrated..... He was running a fever, slurring his words and unstable on his feet.

He was such a stubborn man that he poo-poohed the doctors -- and getting him to drink water when he was not thirsty was next to impossible. Of course, that was just the beginning of the journey that I would take with them overthe next 10 years.

But - we learned the hard way that dehydration is nothing to fool with....