She's Sliding Down



Tonight mom is becoming almost incoherent.  She heard me make a comment about an uncle who hasn’t been following his doctor’s instructions.  She’s spent the last 15 minutes saying over and over, “When he first gets to the doctor…”  She finally added, “Make sure he…”  But we have yet to find out what she thinks he should do. She’s trembling uncontrollably now.  Her head hangs most of the time.  If the meds do not put her quickly to sleep she is agitated and frustrated with so many things.  She wants the bed up…she wants the bed down.  She wants us to put the sides of the bed up and down.  She feels bumps in her back (I suspect these are tumors and not lumps in the bed like she thinks).  David only has to pound on the bed and she believes the lumps go away.  She asked to sit up today and feel her doggy…a faithful companion who lies just a few feet from her bed at most times.  She just asked again, “Where am I?” 

I thought it was interesting earlier today when she heard that a pastor friend was going to be coming to visit and she said, “Uh-oh.  I better put on my face.”  She washed her own face with a washcloth and then let me give her a sponge bath and change her into a fresh nightgown.  When her friend showed up, though, she could barely enjoy the visit.  These are the moments that make me saddest.  The blessing is that she doesn’t appear to be aware of the condition she’s in.  I only wish we didn’t have to watch this.

There is nothing more frustrating than wanting to help her and finding there’s nothing we can do to help.  She “fiddles” with things…the bed sheets…her nightgown…the hospital table that we use for her meds and glasses of water.  I don’t believe she’s taken one swallow of Boost in two days…which means she is now receiving no nourishment.  Her slurred speech is becoming almost unrecognizable.  When she sits on the side of the bed one of us needs to sit next to her because she sways so much we’re afraid she could fall over.

She looks like she’s sleeping as she sits.  The amazing thing is that she’s still able to step to her potty…if you can call it stepping.  It’s more like a slow slide to the potty.

Dan, Andy and Steve will be heading down from New York this week.  I’m a little frightened for my boys to see their grandmother like this. 

Mom is now asking David to help her “stand up”…this while she’s barely sitting up without leaning back against his arm.  She doesn’t want to lie down…okay…it’s five minutes later and we have her in bed.  David is so tender and patient with her.  But we’re both so uncomfortable when she gets like this. 

While a lot of what is happening to her is due to the morphine, dilauted and zanax in her system, I suspect there may be a tumor affecting her brain now.  We do know that they found a tumor in her skull in June…and if it’s growing and pressing against her brain it would interfere with the signals going to her body. 

As I watch mom suffer, I think of Job and how he suffered.  He suffered economic loss…when that didn’t get him to denounce God satan took away his family.  Job still didn’t budge.  So satan got personal and attacked him where it really hurt…taking away his health…covering his body with boils.  At this point all his friends told him that he must have really messed up to have lost so much.  They encouraged him to fall on his face before God because surely God must be punishing him.  But Job knew the truth…he knew that His God was faithful…although he was getting pretty disgusted as his body failed him.  I watch mom and hear her pleas to let her go so she can be in heaven with Jesus dad.  With all that’s happening happening to her…with the mind slipping…she still knows where she’s going and Who she will see.

What she doesn’t know or understand is what’s happening to her.  She’s asked us, “Why are you trying to kill me?” when we’ve told her she has to take her medicines.  “Where am I?” she asked for the umpteenth time tonight.  Maybe the one that bothers me most is, “Am I dying?”  It hurts to have to explain over and over to her that she IS dying.  David tells her that it’s taking a while because Dad’s up in heaven trying to get things ready for her.

So tonight we both sit in the living room…neither one of us really willing to go to the back of the house and try to sleep.  Her breathing has slowed… almost alarmingly at times. 

I feel a little numb tonight…emotionally numb I think.  Physically I’m hurting.  My back is telling me it’s not happy with me…I twisted it lifting mom into bed earlier today.  Spiritually, though, I’m pressing on.  I was able to visit with a pastor friend today who gave me some excellent advice about unloading “baggage”.  Events like this bring out the best in some people and the worst in others.  And I’m one of those ridiculous people who internalizes information and take it all personally.  I toss and turn in the night thinking there must be a solution that I’m not seeing.  And the truth is…there IS a solution and I’m not seeing it because I’m not the person in charge of fixing everything.  So I was told, along with the information that this was going to sound like a really spiritual answer, that I needed to take those things that were troubling me and just put them in the hands of the Lord.  So basic…so simple…and so true!

So tonight I place my troubles in His hands.  I place mom’s pain and suffering in His hands.  I place the loneliness I feel being separated from my family in His hands.  And I ask Him to let me wake in the morning refreshed and ready to handle whatever challenges come my way.  I can still say, “It is well!”

P.S.  It’s now 12:15 a.m. and I’ve just called hospice to have someone come and put in a catheter.  Mom cannot walk from her bed to the potty that sits at the foot of her bed.  My heart is breaking for her.