What a difference a day makes.
Yesterday after I posted, I went to the hospital to see my mom, who was much clearer-headed than I'd seen her in a while. She greeted me by saying "Goodbye, Karen." It sounded very purposeful, and for the rest of our visit, she responded to me clearly and appropriately - following the conversation and making perfect sense. I was left thinking that she knew exactly what she was saying, and was letting me know what she wanted.
I told this to my brothers and updated the out of town loved ones. We agreed to meet this morning with my mom and the docs at a time when she was feeling awake to see what she wanted to do.
This morning, Mom was almost completely back. She was no groggier than she is any morning when she just gets up. The docs updated her on what's been going on with her medically, and then we asked her what she wanted to do about it. We had all been readying ourselves for her to say "palliative care and that's it." She didn't.
YEEEEEEE-HAAAAW!
I've been walking around with a shit-eating grin on my face since. She said, "I've put too much into this already to be ready to give up yet." She also said she wants to treat things "aggressively." Go, Mom.
I'm under no illusions. Her cancer's still growing damn fast, and the chemo agent that she's been taking hasn't been effective enough. But she's not checking out this week, and she's not so tired that she wants to give up.
My anticipated battle with the hospital won't materialize. The docs were on our side (as expected), and all we need to do to make the administration/pharmacy happy is bring them the bottle of a commercial preparation so they can check out the label.
Should anyone who's reading this have the misfortune to need hospital care, I can recommend Newton-Wellesley without a single reservation. I don't know who's in charge of their HR policies, but I suspect they're brilliant. Without exception, every employee of the hospital I've encountered has been kind, caring, warm, responsive, and as far as I can tell, highly competent. Two examples: while my mom was being transported from the ER to the CT scanning facility, the gentleman wheeling her gurney slowed down as the wheels approached a doorsill, so he wouldn't bump her unnecessarily. The guy who was mopping the floors in the ER gave me sympathetic smiles.
Anyway, time to go have dinner. With a smile.