(no subject)
It's been a little while since I have posted, and the main reason for this is that I haven't had the heart to write about the main thing that is happening in my family now. To put it bluntly, Mom's condition has been declining and she probably has only a short time left to live. We suspected this after both rounds of chemotherapy failed, but there was still the hope that she would get better. For the first two weeks after she came home, she held her own. Over the past couple of weeks, though, her condition has deteriorated. She is almost entirely combined to bed now, and she has almost no appetite and has not eaten much of any solid food in days. She is under hospice care now, and the main priority is to keep her as comfortable as possible. Yesterday, she started getting oxygen to help compensate for her being anemic.
A visiting nurse has been coming in 3 times a week for the past 2 weeks, but my father is the one who is giving most of the care, with some assistance from me and my brother Ryan. He has accumulated an enormous amount of leave from working in the government for the last 25 years, and now he is using it to help my mom around the clock. My brother Ryan, who is working on his doctoral thesis, has gotten leave from school as well and is with us. My other brother Justin is just starting a master's program and needs to be at school, but he was home over the Columbus Day weekend. I'm still going to school and working part time, and helping at home and running errands when I can.
Mom's sister, her husband, several of my cousins, and a couple of Mom's cousins have visited. Another aunt came in from California over the weekend and just left this morning.
Mom spends all of her time lying on a hospital-type bed in the family room downstairs. She seems to be reasonably comfortable most of the time. She has an air mattress that periodically adjusts pressure in different areas so that the same spots on her body won't always be pressing down and she won't develop bed sores. She drinks fairly frequently, including nutrient drinks like Ensure, but she has almost given up eating solid food in the past few days. This really upset me for a while, and I kept asking Dad if there was any kind of food that she might want to eat that we hadn't tried. The problem is that she really has almost no appetite. The visiting nurse has explained that this is a common thing to happen when someone is very sick and declining further - parts of the body start shutting down, and the appetite for solid food goes pretty early in the process.
Her voice is weak, and she is often sleepy, sometimes confused. At times, though, she focuses in and talks clearly and with a stronger voice. The oxygen also seems to be keeping her more alert more often.
We've all broken down and cried at least a few times, including Mom. Sometimes I've cried from seeing her condition, sometimes I've cried thinking about her not being here for very much longer. She cries when she thinks about not being able to see the people in her family for much longer. It is still almost impossible for me to think about what it will be like when she is gone. I try to think about other things, work, school, random books that I read, anything else. My father and brother are, I think, doing the same thing.
Mom actually seems more comfortable now than she was a few weeks ago. We suspect that the disease has actually passed beyond the point where it causes the maximum pain, and she might be feeling much less pain because she has less feeling in her body overall. This is a blessing for her. In many ways, the hardest burden now is on my Dad, who essentially lives in the family room with her 24/7 except for brief trips to the kitchen down the hall or to the dining room to get medicines, make calls, and work on paperwork. Ryan says that he came home more to help Dad than to help Mom. Mom is an intensely private person, and she really wants Dad to be the one to help her with most things, especially now that she is bedridden.
Her bed is right in front of a large sliding door with plate glass in the back of the family room. The family room is part of an extension to the house that was built 15 years ago. Mom pretty much designed it, and now she can look out the doors during the day and have blinds pulled down across them at night. On Monday, I was sitting on the couch, and looked over to see her resting fairly peacefully, while through the window behind her I saw the red maple trees in our backyard starting to change color, and the sun lit field beyond.
At some point I should describe how incredibly fortunate I have been to have a mother like her. For now, I will only say that she grew up in an environment that was often unhappy, and sometimes miserably dysfuntional. She was determined that when she had children of her own, they would grow up in a different environment, and that they would see their family as their greatest support, not something to be afraid of or embarrassed about. She achieved all that and more, and did as good a job as any parent possibly could.
A visiting nurse has been coming in 3 times a week for the past 2 weeks, but my father is the one who is giving most of the care, with some assistance from me and my brother Ryan. He has accumulated an enormous amount of leave from working in the government for the last 25 years, and now he is using it to help my mom around the clock. My brother Ryan, who is working on his doctoral thesis, has gotten leave from school as well and is with us. My other brother Justin is just starting a master's program and needs to be at school, but he was home over the Columbus Day weekend. I'm still going to school and working part time, and helping at home and running errands when I can.
Mom's sister, her husband, several of my cousins, and a couple of Mom's cousins have visited. Another aunt came in from California over the weekend and just left this morning.
Mom spends all of her time lying on a hospital-type bed in the family room downstairs. She seems to be reasonably comfortable most of the time. She has an air mattress that periodically adjusts pressure in different areas so that the same spots on her body won't always be pressing down and she won't develop bed sores. She drinks fairly frequently, including nutrient drinks like Ensure, but she has almost given up eating solid food in the past few days. This really upset me for a while, and I kept asking Dad if there was any kind of food that she might want to eat that we hadn't tried. The problem is that she really has almost no appetite. The visiting nurse has explained that this is a common thing to happen when someone is very sick and declining further - parts of the body start shutting down, and the appetite for solid food goes pretty early in the process.
Her voice is weak, and she is often sleepy, sometimes confused. At times, though, she focuses in and talks clearly and with a stronger voice. The oxygen also seems to be keeping her more alert more often.
We've all broken down and cried at least a few times, including Mom. Sometimes I've cried from seeing her condition, sometimes I've cried thinking about her not being here for very much longer. She cries when she thinks about not being able to see the people in her family for much longer. It is still almost impossible for me to think about what it will be like when she is gone. I try to think about other things, work, school, random books that I read, anything else. My father and brother are, I think, doing the same thing.
Mom actually seems more comfortable now than she was a few weeks ago. We suspect that the disease has actually passed beyond the point where it causes the maximum pain, and she might be feeling much less pain because she has less feeling in her body overall. This is a blessing for her. In many ways, the hardest burden now is on my Dad, who essentially lives in the family room with her 24/7 except for brief trips to the kitchen down the hall or to the dining room to get medicines, make calls, and work on paperwork. Ryan says that he came home more to help Dad than to help Mom. Mom is an intensely private person, and she really wants Dad to be the one to help her with most things, especially now that she is bedridden.
Her bed is right in front of a large sliding door with plate glass in the back of the family room. The family room is part of an extension to the house that was built 15 years ago. Mom pretty much designed it, and now she can look out the doors during the day and have blinds pulled down across them at night. On Monday, I was sitting on the couch, and looked over to see her resting fairly peacefully, while through the window behind her I saw the red maple trees in our backyard starting to change color, and the sun lit field beyond.
At some point I should describe how incredibly fortunate I have been to have a mother like her. For now, I will only say that she grew up in an environment that was often unhappy, and sometimes miserably dysfuntional. She was determined that when she had children of her own, they would grow up in a different environment, and that they would see their family as their greatest support, not something to be afraid of or embarrassed about. She achieved all that and more, and did as good a job as any parent possibly could.