"To live a life that seems to be a lost reality" (from FF)
Been avoiding writing...not been at home. My mother died at roughly 7:20 PM Friday night. She was 47.
She got home on Tuesday and broke done the minute they got the strecher in the house. She was just in so much pain and panicing... At one point we thought it was okay but then she decided to try to go to the bathroom. She's been unable to walk unassisted since March. The Hospice nurse was talking about knocking her out with Thorazine but a few more shorts of Morphine did the trick for all of 5 minutes. We just kept feeding her the lquid shit. We'd call Hospice, they'd say give her more. A nurse ended coming over at 4:30AM, 8 hours later, to knock her out with a couple Morphine/Valium combos. The next morning she was still hurting... unable to breath but seemed to be in good spirits...she'd only be up for a few minutes at a time. She woke up in the late evening and spent an hour with a friend from work. The next day shit got real rough again.. that would've been Thursday. She was in pain...you could tell but she couldn't talk anymore. We couldn't get her to swallow whatsoever... they had put in a port so we could just screw the syringes into that intead of poking her every two hours, not that she felt any of them after the first. She'd look up at us.. and try to speak but just couldn't... the look in her eyes...oh...my...god. You could tell she was in agony just by seeing that look. She went comatose later that day...early afternoon. Her temp shot up. Her kidneys had been failing for 2 days at this point... she didn't move after that. Sometimes we thought she was moving but it was just twitching from her struggling to breathe. We'd glance in there and just hold our breaths waiting to see if she'd breath. We packed ice around her to try to bring down the fever. Her blood pressure was nonexistant as of Thursday. We kept her meds up on Friday hoping to keep her comfortable, well the Morphine and Ativan...the rest had been suspended Weds morning. We ceased taking her temp because the ice made it impossible. We'd both jump a mile everytime we heard something we thought was her...and we'd check on her every 10 minutes like clockwork. Both of us were scared to leave the house or sleep...he woke me up at 7:30 AM on friday telling me she was going... because she was panting real hard. She calmed out of it though.
Later that night I went to check on her...and waited for her to take a breath like always. It never came. I yelled to him (er her fiance) to check her...she was gone. We called Hospice so they could come and "confirm" that she was dead. Confirm...right because the lack of heart beat and breathing didn't tell us that. But to their credit they "her" out of there within an hour. I dunno I'll write more on it later....just thinkng about it is making me all shakey again...I need nicotine..and my kiddo.
So yeah... I spent last week watching my mother "slowly" die. Wonderful.
From: NiteMyste
10/26/2008 23:09:40
my condolences hon.... I truly do know the feelings and wish you well.. *hugs*...