And now, the news:
The real underlying news is that Connie’s condition has been really going downhill since Doug and his family left; Tuesday night (actually, about 3 am Wednesday) Connie started having pains, a racing heart rate and other troubles; Susan quickly decided that whatever was going on was way serious, and called up an ambulance - which took her to nearby Edward Hospital (not Loyola Hospital in moderately-far Maywood, which is where all of her cancer treatments and GP were based).
Susan and Mere got in her SUV and took off to Edward Hospital, and were there on and off all Wednesday and today by herself. I went over Wednesday evening with them, but Connie was very under the weather and could barely speak.
They figured out pretty quickly that what was happening was that Connie had built up a large number of blood clots in her lungs and legs, with a particularly big one in her lung that really bothered them. According to the hematologist I spoke with, Connie’s blood was particularly ‘sticky’ due to the cancer, and it would be tricky to put the right amount of thinners or clot-buster stuff in her without risking something going wrong. What they did do late Wednesday, just before we got there in the evening, was to put a clot-filter in her vena cava to prevent a pulmonary embolism.
I don’t have a total understanding of where things are after today; Susan was talking to them, but she hasn’t told me many details; she’s really exhausted and stressed, and I wasn’t pushing. Connie has decided not to do any further chemo, and has been set up for hospice care at home (they sent over a hospital bed, oxygen and a few other things) and has been in serious pain from all of this. She’s coming home sometime tomorrow…
I don’t expect miracles on this at this point. I’ve had a good friend die suddenly from an embolism, and I didn’t hear anything about any major clot successes today. It’s not looking good at all, in a shorter time than I expected.
A lot of today was spent (for me) calling up people and answering the phone, setting this or that up and making some arrangements. I’m very sad to Connie, and most of all for Susan and Doug and the kids, because I’ve always known that the closeness and love they’ve had to one of the most loveable people I’ve ever met (you could NOT ask for a better mother-in-law) would make her passing beyond agony - for them. For her, I think she’s not willing to go through more of this, that she would have far rather lived a good deal longer (she turns 70 in a few days) and seen the grandchildren blossom, but that she’s ready to go.
And me, I will most definitely grieve. She’s been a wonderful, fun person to know and just easy to love. I will miss her enormously. And I will do what I can to comfort Mere and Susan from this end.