Family hopeful but 83-y-o with Alzheimer’s still missing

For the past two months, every time the phone rings, a Manchester family answers with both anxiety and hope that the call will bring news of their missing 83-year-old patriarch, Ferdie Green. 
Green’s stepdaughter, Nicola Montaque, told THE STAR that the family is still searching.
“Sometimes I am driving to work and I am just looking, and that’s how we the family operate, but we are still searching and I know he is out there somewhere, we just can’t find him,” she said.
On May 23, Green, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, accompanied Montaque as she took her mother, Green’s wife, to The Villa Medical Complex to undergo minor surgery. 
“No one was available on the day to stay with him, so we had to carry Dada. I was checking on him every now and then but with Alzheimer’s, you know everything is unpredictable. I came out about after 7 and I gave him breakfast and went back in the theatre, so when I came back out I asked my 13-year-old where he was, and she said he went back in the waiting area, and I looked and he was sitting in there,” she said. 
“Being busy back and forth, the last time now when mommy was in recovery I went to check and he wasn’t in the waiting area. I went outside and he wasn’t there and that’s where I started to panic and I just started walking in the parking lot everywhere and that’s where I confirmed he was missing.”
Montaque, who works at the complex, reviewed the facility’s CCTV footage.
“It did show when Dada made several trips outside and back inside, but the last time he went through the door he didn’t come back. The other footage would have shown him walking towards the gate of the complex and he was just there wondering which direction to turn. That’s how he looked and we have been searching from then,” she explained.
On the day of the disappearance, Green was clean-shaven and wearing a navy blue T-shirt with white writing on the front, a pair of jeans and blue shoes. 
“By this, he should be ‘bush up’, a lot of hair on the head and so forth. If persons are looking, he had a fracture that affects his leg, so just the right is like a bow leg and he walks with a limp,” she said.
As the family continues to search and hold on to hope, Montaque said that his wife,  though physically recovered from the procedure, her mental health has steadily declined. 
“She has just been going through it. They have been married for 30-odd years and Dada, to her, is like a baby. He can’t do anything for himself, she has to bathe him. They have five [children] together and he has more. But for Mama, all she can do is cry, and when she’s eating, sometimes you hear her saying ‘A wonder weh Ferdie deh?’”
For Montaque, the situation has been heartbreaking, especially as Green’s own medical needs have gone unmet.
“He was diagnosed with prostate cancer recently and he was to get an injection to slow the growth. So when it comes around to his appointments, his wife is just really, really depressed because we don’t know where he is at,” she said.
She described Green as a man who enjoys being around people and believes that may be why he has managed to remain unnoticed.
“I know he is not dead, I know that for a fact because if he was we would have heard something by now. Someone would have found a body or something. Listen, he does not like the dark, so he will find himself around crowded spaces. We are looking and we see persons looking like him, but it’s not him. Sometimes I think someone found him and just have him. I don’t know what to think; we are between a rock and a hard place,” she said.
Still, despite the uncertainty, the family refuses to give up hope. 
“I am staying positive, because when I check JCF page, I see elderly going missing for months and are returned home safely, so I pray that’s our case. One of these days the right person will find him and one of the calls we get is the right call to say they have found him,” said Montaque.

Anyone knowing the whereabouts of Ferdie Green, may contact 876-548-7008, 876-776-0888 or the nearest police station.