Quick Update

I've been neglecting the blog since Thursday. It's mostly because it's been a few days where there's so much going on I just don't find the time to write it all down, which I know I'm going to regret eventually since I'll have forgotten some of the best parts.

Thursday was a pretty rough day, actually. Mom's decline has been pretty evident since we were able to do the Skype thing on Tuesday and even though we'd planned to let her sleep most of the day so she'd be well rested when Trish and Jim arrived, I was getting pretty concerned about how she was doing. I stepped out at lunch to pay some bills and cut her power, phone, cable and interet service and when I came back she seemed pretty awake and alert, which was really good. But when I got talking to her a bit I realized she was quite confused, she thought she'd slept all night long and it was the next morning and even though I told her a few times that it was Thursday afternoon not Friday morning, she didn't remember it for more than a few minutes.

When Jim and Trish arrived, though, she was asking for slices of apple so I was pretty happy all the same. I don't know what to say about meeting my sister face-to-face for the first time. It should have been an incredible experience, but a lot of the time these days I'm still in that mode that I mentioned earlier, where the volume seems to be turned down on everything. We hugged and talked for a minute and then she went in to see Mom and honestly I've forgotten most of the rest of the first few minutes entirely.

We visited with Mom until about 8:00pm, by then she was really tired and fading in and out, so we went to grab some food and drinks down at the Heritage Pub where we really got to talk for the first time. It was good. Like, very comfortable conversation with someone you've known for a long time. Obviously not all my life, we both are missing lots of details and lots of stories, but that'll come. I didn't think it was at all awkward, though, which is really what I was most afraid of leading up to the meeting.

Anyway, popped back by the hospital after that just to say hi and they went to Janet's and I went back to Dad's place. It was only about 10:30pm but he was already in bed. I don't blame him, this is wiping me out too.

Friday was a bad day. Nothing to say about it except that. All morning Mom wasn't with us at all. When she did wake up she was confused and slurring and at that time I was sure we wouldn't see the end of the weekend. Trish, Monica and I had a long conversation about what was happening and what we were going to do and, against Monica's advice, we had her present all of the options to Mom and let her decide what to be done next. Whether we would stick with the current IV fluids, which the nurses think isn't going to be sustainable for much longer, whether we would remove all IV fluids, or whether we would try to install a pick-line(?) or mid-line(again, ?) IV feeding tube and consider staying on her current IV fluids or IV feeding (TPN). Mom couldn't make a decision then and Monica promised to return around noon or 1:00pm to discuss it again.

The rest of the morning was mostly Trish and I talking about what we should be doing since it seemed like the decision was falling to us.

We'd decided that based on what we were seeing, Monica was probably right and everything we were doing was just dragging out her suffering and we should be removing the IV fluids too. Since we'd turned that decision over to Mom, though, we had to wait to hear what she'd say to Monica when she came back.

I'm lacking the ability right now to put into words how painful this decision was for us and how long Trish and I spent alone in the family lounge circling around what seemed to be the inevitable decision for us. I wish I could explain what it was like but my head isn't in it right now and it may never be, I don't know.

When Monica came back, though, Mom was a little more aware of herself and after a conversation filled with silences that nearly killed me she decided to try to stick with the current peripheral IV fluids and then make another decision when they lost that line. I don't know everything I was feeling then but I know after we left and were driving to get something to eat we were thinking the same thing. That in turning the decision over to Mom we may have made a terrible mistake by just prolonging the bad parts of the time she has left.

I need to be perfectly clear on this, though. Neither one of us thinks that anymore.

We went down to Jimmy's to get burgers and fries and I called Christine. I was sure the time was short enough that she needed to get here sooner rather than later if she wanted to see Mom before the end, so I told her I thought she should start making arrangements for Brazen's care and look into flight options. We didn't talk too long, but I said I'd check in with her later if there was any change.

By the time we got back to the hospital it was almost like we'd gone back in time a week. They brought Mom's dinner, which included a bowl of blueberries and she didn't just take them when offered, but she asked to try them. I think she ate maybe a half-dozen of them, a trivially small amount for most people but huge by our current reckoning, and then she tried a bite of one of those two-bite brownies Trish and Jim had brought with them. Not much, but anyone reading this knows by now that I'm thrilled with anything. Better still, we stayed for another couple of hours and during most of that time Mom seemed to be mostly paying attention to the conversation and even participating. She hasn't seemed that good since Tuesday.

Anyway, we took off for a bit around 6:30pm or so and rather than looking for supper, none of us were even remotely hungry, we took a drive down to Cavendish beach and just walked along the shore for a bit, talking and watching the nut-jobs swimming in the ocean with 16°C air temperature. Christine called me while I was there and told me she'd already deposited Brazen at the cat hotel and was planning to drive to PEI in the morning. I don't really like the idea of her driving all that way on her own but I really want her here and it would help if she could bring stuff back when she goes.

So we left the beach, went to Cows for some ice cream and then drove back to the hospital. That was about quarter to nine when we got there and Janet was still in the room and incredibly Mom was still kind of awake and feeling like talking. We stayed until about quarter after ten when she asked us to leave so she could sleep.

Today's been more of the same, too. We went to Janet's for breakfast and didn't get to the hospital until about quarter to ten but Mom was seeming animated and engaged and generally better than she's been for most of the week. Other than a few drowsy periods today that's been pretty much the pattern. She slept for a bit in the early afternoon but Dan brought Kelly by and she woke up and seemed to brighten when they were here. I'd love to talk to Kelly alone, knowing what Mom's told me about her relationship with her parents, but that'll have to wait for another day. Maybe I'll find her on facebook sometime and see how she's doing, Mom still worries a lot about her and while she does tend to worry about things she doesn't need to, I get the sense that she's justified in her concerns about Kelly.

Anyway, it's now about dinner time so I think we're going to go out and get something to eat then come back and spend the evening here. There's more to tell but I'm going to have to hold off on it, Mom just said about a paragraph ago that she'd like to have a nap so we should get out.