My mother has been in a nursing home since July. When the doctors told us the condition of her heart was so bad she had maybe six months to a year to live, we put her into hospice care. Because of her frailty and dementia, there was no way to keep her at home.
Friday 12/7/07
This past Friday evening the nursing home called. The nurse said Mom had vomited, had diarrhea, and was running a temperature of 101. They had started her on antibiotics.She'd had a flu shot, but there are always strains not included in the shot. They thought she had stomach flu. She didn't vomit again, but her temperature kept rising and falling over the next few days.
Tuesday 12/11/07
Late Tuesday afternoon Marge, the CNA from Hospice, called and said Mom was gravely ill. Her blood pressure was 84/60 and her pulse was 130, meaning her weak and damaged heart was working far too hard to try to keep the blood pressure up. Her lungs were filling with fluid. She wasn't eating anything, and wouldn't take her oral medications. She was sleeping 90% of the time.I asked bluntly if Mom was dying. Marge said yes. She said it could be hours but not more than a few days.
I called my brothers. I called the neighbor dearest to us and asked her to let other neighbors know, and called Mom's best friend. I emailed my closest friends and sent out a mass mailing to Mom's circle of email friends.
The nursing home's doctor called me and said the same things Marge had said. The chaplain called with questions. I came up with the name of the funeral home Mom had used when Daddy died. I told them yes, you can call me in the middle of the night if she dies, and put a phone in my room.
Twice I could feel myself on the verge of tears, but it never let loose. I paced a lot while I was on the phone (using a wireless headset). I took a Klonopin in addition to my regular nighttime meds.
I slept fine that night. No phone calls.
Wednesday and Thursday, 12/12-13/07
Wednesday I was kept fairly busy. Marge told me mom had stopped talking, just slept and slept. Her blood pressure was now 84/42. Every time the phone rang, I waited tensely for caller ID to show me whether it was the nursing home.Another family death at this time of year was going to make my negative feelings about December even worse. My fiance Richard died suddenly on December 17th, 1992. Memories of that time came back. But still, I felt I'd accepted the current situation and could deal with it.
Yesterday, Thursday, was more difficult. I had a hard time concentrating or focusing on anything except endless, mindless games of solitaire. Finally I made myself a schedule -- an hour of computer work, an hour of housework, an hour on Christmas cards -- and got going on that. For the last task, I finalized the card list and printed labels, then started writing a letter to enclose with the cards, writing as if Mom had already died. I wrote two paragraphs and then had to stop.
Shortly after that my brother Bob called and told me about his visit with Mom. She was more alert; she was talking in a labored, raspy voice; she'd eaten a bowl of soup. Marge was there at the time. She told Bob that she was surprised -- she had not thought Mom would make it through Tuesday.
Within half an hour, my stomach started to hurt. I thought I was hungry and ate a big snack, but it didn't help.
I realized that of all the possible outcomes, this is the one thing I'm going to have a horrible time coping with -- if she gets worse, better, worse, better, over and over again. It was bad enough just sitting here waiting for a phone call to tell me she had died. I was as prepared as I could get for that once the initial shock was past. But to go through that again and again ... my stomach is already telling me it's going to be hard to handle. Maybe working on the Christmas letter had something to do with the stomach pain, too.
Friday, 12/14/07
I took a Klonopin again last night and slept through - until the phone rang around 6:25 a.m. It rang once and stopped. Probably a wrong number (which is why I don't usually have a phone in my room). I didn't try to go back to sleep.Almost immediately I found that my stomach still hurts. It's like there's a metal ruler pushing in lengthwise across my innards just below the diaphragm.
I called the nursing home for an update. She's even more alert today, and even took her meds in applesauce. Has she pulled through the crisis? I forgot to ask for her vitals and how her lungs sound.
Is it weird that I could handle the understanding that her death was imminent, and can't handle that she's getting better after all? I don't think so. I've known for five months that her time left was limited. I know her quality of life is awful and that she is prepared to die. It didn't take me more than a couple of hours to come to terms with the idea that she could go at any moment. Now I feel like a marionette with the strings tangled up (and one wrapped around my gut) ... being jerked this way and that.
With tremendous effort I can concentrate, but mostly I'm just aware that my stomach hurts.
