finality, and what that means all the sudden...

[sonjajade]

You guys know my mother-in-law is really sick.  Me and my husband take care of her with help from Hospice and a lady who bathes her twice a week and spends time with her.  The past few days, Ma just hasn't been right.  She's been constipated really bad, sleeping like a narcoleptic (literally, she will fall asleep while driving her motorized wheelchair and bang into walls and stuff...) and generally being confused and extremely forgetful.  She fell today while transferring from her chair to the toilet, because she fell asleep midway.  We called Hospice because if she has to go to the hospital, they can arrange for an ambulance to come for free, as well as specialty care through their wing at the hospital.  Ma was ok, she didn't break or scrape anything on her body, of course she forgot that she had fallen last summer and hit her head, and had fallen the winter before that trying to put her house shoes on standing up.  She kept saying she'd never fallen before.  Anyway, when the hospice nurse comes, she ups some of her medications, advices me and my husband to let her sleep if she is already asleep and only wake her for meals and medicine.  Otherwise, it's comfortable for her, and easier on us as caretakers, to just let her sleep.

What got me today was this: today was the first time the nurse began to ask questions about her final arrangements, as in, is her funeral preplanned? what kind of services, etc.

Ma's got like 6 months left, and that's if everything remains as it has been and her decline doesn't accelerate.  She will more than likely not know the baby I carry.  GEEZE. Lets hope we can do it.