|
Post by tisbearself on Jan 12, 2024 17:54:50 GMT
Praying for your mum HSD
|
|
|
Post by tisbearself on Jan 12, 2024 17:55:46 GMT
The piece that always reminds me of my mom is "Debris" by Ronnie Lane
|
|
|
Post by theguvnor on Jan 12, 2024 18:16:04 GMT
This is another favourite poem of mine. But this was famously written by a son to his mother the night before his execution:
I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge My two strong sons that I have seen go out To break their strength and die, they and a few, In bloody protest for a glorious thing, They shall be spoken of among their people, The generations shall remember them, And call them blessed; But I will speak their names to my own heart In the long nights; The little names that were familiar once Round my dead hearth. Lord, thou art hard on mothers: We suffer in their coming and their going; And tho' I grudge them not, I weary, weary Of the long sorrow-And yet I have my joy: My sons were faithful, and they fought.
|
|
|
Post by homeschooldad on Jan 12, 2024 21:15:20 GMT
Yes, I know I said no more updates, but this is significant enough that it needs sharing.
We went to my mother's doctor's appointment today, and the doctor recommended placing her under hospice or palliative care (they haven't figured out which one yet), in the home. There will be no more doctor's visits outside the home, and no more hospitals. It was an ordeal to get her there, and she really did not comprehend what was going on, she stayed slumped forward in her wheelchair all the time and cannot speak coherently. When medical transport brought her home, her caregiver stayed until 2 pm, and we changed my mother's bed, gave her a sponge bath, administered her morning medicines, and she is sleeping soundly, and probably will do so all day, she and I stayed up almost all night. The nurse is supposed to arrive later this afternoon.
This is about the outcome I expected. She will be with us as long as she is with us. We are both at peace.
Continued prayers appreciated.
|
|
|
Post by tth1 on Jan 14, 2024 14:53:04 GMT
A sad and difficult time. I remember my father's death which took weeks. It puts life on a pause. It also feels strange sitting there waiting for a loved one to die whilst hoping their death will bring them peace and release from any suffering they may have. Even that is difficult because one doesn't know what, if anything, they can feel. Be assured of our continued prayers. May you be surrounded and comforted by the Holy Angels.
|
|
|
Post by homeschooldad on Jan 14, 2024 21:15:30 GMT
A sad and difficult time. I remember my father's death which took weeks. It puts life on a pause. It also feels strange sitting there waiting for a loved one to die whilst hoping their death will bring them peace and release from any suffering they may have. Even that is difficult because one doesn't know what, if anything, they can feel. Be assured of our continued prayers. May you be surrounded and comforted by the Holy Angels. My mother has been placed with in-home hospice care, and they prescribed an opioid pain killer, among other things. She is still very much with us, slept soundly for the better part of two days, then awoke this morning, had a somewhat substantial breakfast, her morning coffee, and then began reclaiming some of her mental faculties and speech. She got a whole lot of things on her mind and was becoming upset, but I talked her down from this, and she finally wore herself out. She is now sleeping again. Yes, as you put it, life is on a kind of pause, I've been doing some home reorganization while my mother slept, cleared out the drawers in our china cabinet, they were still as they were before my father passed in 2021, I found all kinds of detritus from his life, bank stubs, business cards (he loved his business cards, kept them in a fat stack with a rubber band around them), odd change, and what had to be at least a dozen pairs of those cheap dollar-store reading glasses that he used, kind of like Fred's drawer on Sanford and Son (the one where he would rap on the side of the table and the drawer would slide out). Don't know why he had so many. I just put all of them in a large zip-lock bag and restored them to the drawer they came out of.
|
|
|
Post by homeschooldad on Jan 16, 2024 1:17:36 GMT
Again, filed under “dramatic”:
My mother has had a fairly good day, and about a half-hour ago, asked for beer and pizza. She has been on bland, mushy food (at one point could not chew) since mid-week last week, and out of the clear blue sky, she asked for a beer. With the pain medicine she is on, of course, alcohol would be out of the question, but as Providence would have it, I had some O’Doul’s non-alcoholic beer in the refrigerator, and she had almost 1 1/2 cans of it. The pizza was one of those cheap 99-cent highly processed ones that you can either put in the oven or microwave, I chose the oven, and she ate half of it. So here we’ve all been, more or less coming to terms with her final days, and she wanted to party. Laus Deo!
But it gets better. Hospice has various people who come in for different reasons, and today, after the aide came to give her a bath and change her clothes and bed linens, the social worker (MSW) came. We got to talking, and he occasionally goes to the TLM here in town, the same one I go to (diocesan), and knows the priest who offers it, even asked the priest if he’d like to go shooting one of these days. (This is the South, that is just what we do.) Big scary bald dude, reminded me of either John Fetterman or Shel Silverstein, I warned my mother before he came to her bedside.
My mother is even asking if she could go back to her house, the one across the street that she hasn’t been to since my father died, and not for some time before that. She had said she could never go in that house again, and now this. Go figure. So if she could handle the wheelchair, getting down the driveway and across the street, and onto the patio, we may just do that.
I am seriously having to wonder if hospice is the best place for her. I didn’t think she’d be living by today (my father’s 89th birthday, I haven’t mentioned that to her, don’t know what her reaction would be). But she is.
|
|
|
Post by homeschooldad on Jan 16, 2024 6:28:45 GMT
Sadly, after our evening pizza and beer blast, my mother lapsed back into dementia, as bad as it has ever been. She is sleeping now.
I don't understand nearly enough about dementia to know how that kind of thing works, back to her old self one hour, back into the shadowlands the next. Guess I'll learn as this thing unfolds. I'll pretty much have to.
|
|
|
Post by tth1 on Jan 17, 2024 12:59:29 GMT
Dementia has to be, I believe, one of the cruellest diseases. It takes away the person. Sitting there is someone you recognise but it isn't the person you know. It's also so confusing. My mother is the same. Sometimes she is incredibly lucid and can hold her own against anybody. That's the incredibly strong woman I remember. Other times it's almost like role reversal and I'm the parent and my mother the child. I don't want my mum to die. I know when she goes I'll be devastated. However, I think going to her eternal rest would be the kindest thing for her.
|
|
|
Post by homeschooldad on Jan 17, 2024 15:01:14 GMT
Dementia has to be, I believe, one of the cruellest diseases. It takes away the person. Sitting there is someone you recognise but it isn't the person you know. It's also so confusing. My mother is the same. Sometimes she is incredibly lucid and can hold her own against anybody. That's the incredibly strong woman I remember. Other times it's almost like role reversal and I'm the parent and my mother the child. I don't want my mum to die. I know when she goes I'll be devastated. However, I think going to her eternal rest would be the kindest thing for her. You describe our situation entirely. My mother asks why she can't just go ahead and die, and I have explained to her that we do not get to pick that time. Again, last night, she was reciting a long laundry list of how she wants me to treat my son when she is gone (he is having issues and I discussed this with the social worker, counseling is a possibility, as he won't listen to me), the next hour she is seeing large squares before her eyes (I thought of Ronald Reagan thinking the bookshelves in his room were trees), and the next hour she is offering extended histories of the various brothers, sisters-in-law, their children, their families, and so on. So it comes and goes. She has also got this idea that I should marry her caregiver, and I explained to her, first, that I can't marry anyone without the annulment (which may not be granted), and secondly, I don't think her caregiver and I would gee-haw --- she's kind of stubborn and hard-headed, came in here telling me that we should rearrange the furniture, a suggestion I politely deflected. Thirdly, while I admire a dignified, intelligent, classy West Indian lady as much as the next guy, Cupid just hasn't shot that particular arrow. (It would be kind of like How Stella Got Her Groove Back in reverse. That was a cute little movie.) The hospice people are wanting to increase her pain medicine, but I'm a bit skittish about that, as she is in some discomfort but not in excruciating, howling pain. I certainly hope they're not trying to shorten her life, though they do tell me that she is never going to get better (the whole point of hospice in the first place).
|
|
|
Post by tth1 on Jan 19, 2024 13:26:46 GMT
That is the great dilemma with pain relief. It may indeed hasten death. However, it does ease the person's suffering. I believe it is neither morally nor legally wrong to give pain relief to ease the person's suffering. If as a side-effect is hastens death that is not wrong. Of course, if it is given for the purpose of hastening death and for no other reason that would be morally wrong and also lead to potential criminal charges.
I think most people who work in hospice care do genuinely care about the people they look after. Considering the potential for being struck off any professional register, being charged with criminal offences and, I'm afraid I have to say, the high chance, in the USA, of being sued I don't think the hospice people would want to just speed her your mother's end.
Given her age, the state of her health and the fact she's been put in hospice care I do think her life is drawing to its earthly end.
You seem to have a lot on your plate at the moment. My family are keeping yours in our prayers.
|
|
|
Post by homeschooldad on Jan 19, 2024 16:53:21 GMT
That is the great dilemma with pain relief. It may indeed hasten death. However, it does ease the person's suffering. I believe it is neither morally nor legally wrong to give pain relief to ease the person's suffering. If as a side-effect is hastens death that is not wrong. Of course, if it is given for the purpose of hastening death and for no other reason that would be morally wrong and also lead to potential criminal charges. I think most people who work in hospice care do genuinely care about the people they look after. Considering the potential for being struck off any professional register, being charged with criminal offences and, I'm afraid I have to say, the high chance, in the USA, of being sued I don't think the hospice people would want to just speed her your mother's end. Given her age, the state of her health and the fact she's been put in hospice care I do think her life is drawing to its earthly end. You seem to have a lot on your plate at the moment. My family are keeping yours in our prayers. Thanks so much. The hospice doctor has put my mother on a much stronger painkiller (Oxycontin) and she is feeling little if any pain. She basically just sleeps all the time. The hospice caregiver came today and gave her a bath, changed her linens, and brushed her teeth. My mother is utterly helpless and cannot do anything on her own. She was only able to take a few spoonsful of pudding yesterday, and is taking very little fluid. Oddly enough, her respiration actually seems to be a bit improved with the Oxycontin. It is horribly addictive, but at this point, that's really not a consideration. Before my mother received the Oxycontin, she would wake at random hours and call my name incessantly. I tried to grab a nap yesterday afternoon, in the bedroom adjacent to her sick room (the living room has been repurposed into basically a nursing home room with a hospital bed), but she wouldn't let me sleep, kept calling my name, so I finally made a makeshift bed on the couch and was able to get a few minutes of relative rest. She's not calling out for me anymore. This will last as long as it lasts. My son and I had a very mature conversation yesterday, at his urging, and he understands everything, and is accepting of it. I am going to try and get our TLM priest out here to the house in the next few days, to administer Viaticum if that's possible, if not, well, that's fine too, we can only do what we can do. There is no way she could swallow an entire host, he'd just have to chip off a crumb (which, as we all know, is entirely His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity) and I would be happy to kneel and receive the rest of It. I have already taught my mother about the Apostolic Pardon (in non-theological terms she can understand) and she has been given to praying often lately. The hospice chaplain came the other day, and I discovered that she was utterly clueless about Catholicism, so I gave her a copy of Life In Christ (the 1950s edition, it’s excellent and was actually quite forward-looking for its time, it anticipated a vernacular liturgy, for instance) and bookmarked the section about Extreme Unction. I told her it was hers to keep, I have several.
|
|
|
Post by theguvnor on Jan 20, 2024 14:04:28 GMT
This issue with hospital chaplains is one that's becoming a problem here in parts of the UK. As the older wave of Irish and Italian migrants die of and the number of priests shrink the chaplains often tend to be from evangelical groups and they are often less than knowledgeable about other faiths. They tend to not recognize that Anglican and Catholic and Eastern Orthodox are not just variations of each other.
|
|
|
Post by homeschooldad on Jan 20, 2024 15:12:25 GMT
This issue with hospital chaplains is one that's becoming a problem here in parts of the UK. As the older wave of Irish and Italian migrants die of and the number of priests shrink the chaplains often tend to be from evangelical groups and they are often less than knowledgeable about other faiths. They tend to not recognize that Anglican and Catholic and Eastern Orthodox are not just variations of each other. The hospice chaplain is a dear lady, and I felt bad about having to give her the bum's rush, as my mother's hospice nurse was here at the same time. She had a short devotional with my mother and me. To tell the truth, I just saw the opportunity to try and get some Catholic literature into the hands of a non-Catholic, so I used the excuse of the book having a chapter on Extreme Unction. The devotional was very anodyne and not specific to any one denomination. I'm finding that my mother's illness is allowing me to have "teachable moments" with her various caregivers. Never pass up an opportunity!
|
|
|
Post by blackforest on Jan 21, 2024 1:24:32 GMT
Praying, HSD!
|
|