Ah, what a week we’ve had on the Snowy front.
I’m writing from the chair next to Snowy’s bed in a nursing facility, grateful that Chick (unhappily) left her laptop here for me to use a tiny bit tonight as I keep watch overnight. Chick took the first shift this afternoon after we got Snowy checked in/ settled in and I raced to put a face to show at work.
Have been hearing too many opinions on the news about how “NOW is NOT the time to be invisible at the office!!! Try NOT to telecommute but to be where you are seen, and seen as necessary!” Taking that to heart especially amid whispers that the axing isn’t necessarily over yet. Sigh.
Back to How We Got Here from when I last waved…
I’m so tired I don’t even know if I can think to remember. Snowy kept HURTING and the pain meds would help the hurt but then they turned her into an absolute zombie. She was either asleep for hours on end or virtually non-responsive in the moments when she was ‘awake’. The pain meds take her to almost non-existence. Pretty shitty quality of life.
Nurse Ellen was out to check her on Tuesday, and she zeroed in immediately on the need to get to the bottom of the problem. She said we need to find the source of the pain so that we could get it taken care of, and also modify the meds to deal with it without wiping her out. She arranged for Snowy to get an appointment with one of the Hospice doctors that she finds very tuned in. He wanted Snowy to get additional x-rays first.
So, Wednesday morning we went out to the Beaches area to pick up the order from Dr. C’s office and took that over to the nearby hospital to have the x-rays done. This all took a fair amount of time, and Snowy was so unhappy and uncomfortable with the rolling around and odd positions that she had to be in, but eventually we were through and took her home and got her to bed. I flew in to work around 11:30. We thought today would go much more quickly.
HA.
With the pouring down rain (after the discovery as we were getting Snowy prepped to go out again that overnight she had developed a horrible bedsore on one of her heels — I didn’t see it at 3:30 AM when I got up with her to go to the bathroom), we didn’t quite make 8:45 appointment time, but I don’t know if that would have mattered. We waited in an odd room for over an hour and a half to see the doc, getting crankier by the minute as Snowy was SO uncomfortable sitting up in the little wheelchair we use for her — it is NOT meant for long sits. Chick and I had gotten fairly wet during the time it took us to get her loaded in the car and then unloaded at the doctor’s office. Her inability to really stand or to ’scoot over’ really were more obvious in this weather.
However, once the doctor got to us, to HER, it became clear why Nurse Ellen thinks the world of Dr. C. He was immediately focused in on Snowy, had a real eye for her as a hurting elderly lady, pondered the situation and what to do, and got into action. He got the x-ray report which confirmed that no breaks were seen, but that she had arthritis and osteoperosis in a major way (lucky she DIDN’T break anything!). He found she was suddenly running a fever, and, listening to her coughing especially after drinking some water, felt that she very likely had some aspirational pneumonia. He was concerned about her heel, and had the nurse come in an dress and bandage it while he got some other troops working on what he felt Snowy needed NOW — which was to spend several days at this care facility so that they could work on some pain management and get that under control and deal with her heels and see what else was happening.
Unusually (we thought), Nurse Ellen called from her travels (which included expediting Snowy’s getting in at this facility, at which Hospice ‘keeps’ a few beds for such cases), and she told Chick that one of us needed to stay with Snowy and one of us needed to spend the night with her to make sure that she didn’t try to get out of bed. Thus, once here and settled, Chick took shift 1 and I signed on for the overnight. Chick has gone home — tending the various herds, getting a little bite to eat, and heading to bed. She is worn out and has swollen ankles. The 3rd trimester is working her, and all of this extra, and extremely emotional, adventure has us all tied up in knots.
The main hospice doctor came by this afternoon to check Snowy out. He spoke seriously to Chick about our need to think about Snowy’s end-of-life plan. He wasn’t ‘telling us what to do’, but he said that dying from Alzheimer’s is not a very good or happy or peaceful death. He told Chick that there was a reason why pneumonia is called the “Old Man’s Friend” as it was a swifter and far more peaceful death. He wanted us to be thinking about, if Snowy does have pneumonia, whether we should attempt to treat it or embrace it. Oy.Oy.
Snowy long ago told me she didn’t want ‘heroic measures’. She has also so many times over the past 6 years cried to be with Pop, to GO. She has many times asked us to ’shoot’ her, or give her a gun so she could shoot herself (she wouldn’t, and we certainly didn’t and wouldn’t!). I can’t imagine what death by Alzheimer’s will be like for her. This past year, and especially this time since the hospital stay after the melanoma surgery, have been ever more rapid downhill slides. And more recently, with her wanting to do nothing but stay in bed and sleep, with an occasional joint struggle to get to the bathroom, the loss of appetite and desire to eat much of anything (applesauce is her new “solid food”)… it has felt like she is moving further and further away from us. I want to do the right thing for her.
But, can I say it? I’m not ready. Selfish me. I am having trouble imagining my life without my little Momma as a big part of it. I wouldn’t let ANYone go if it was up to me. But I’ve been watching programs and reading, readinbg, reading about the ethics of dealing with Alzheimer’s, and those who work with it say it is a cruelty to the patient to do things to prolong life for those who are suffering from it. They, too, say — think about doing the patient the favor of not giving antibiotics (or other things for other situations), because it is condemning the patient to longer period of going down by a horrible disease.
Oy.
Oy.
