Update on Mom - 4/1/14: I SO badly wish this were a bad April Fools joke, but its all too real! The hospice nurse told me today that she thinks Mom has days, maybe even hours, left. When I walked into her room today, I could tell right away that Mom was awfully congested. She has that sinus drainage and post-nasal drip literally ALL THE TIME, and has for as long as I can remember! The pine pollen is out in full force here in Summerville, and knowing all of us have it on our clothes when we walk in, Im sure a lot of the patients are breathing it in, even though they dont go outside. I raised the head of Moms bed first, knowing she always breathes better with her head up, and then I pushed the beeper to call a nurse. One came pretty much right away, and I showed her how congested Moms breathing sounded. Another nurse came in and said shed been like that earlier this morning, so shed had Moms lungs checked, and thankfully they were clear. Two nurses came in with some equipment and did some suctioning, which got a good bit of the congestion out, but not all of it. While they were still in there, somebody else came in pushing an x-ray machine to do a chest x-ray. After all that, Suzanne, the hospice nurse I met with a couple of weeks ago, came in. She said, in her educated opinion, that congestion is not sinus/allergies/post-nasal drip, but is fluid accumulating in Moms chest cavity, around the heart. Since hospice is all about comfort care, she said she believes the way Mom is breathing indicates that shes uncomfortable, so she recommends scaling back the tube feeding to cut back on fluid retention, and also administering morphine. She put in a call to Dr. Castellones office and was able to talk with Amy, the nurse-practitioner. I made sure they were NOT going to totally stop the tube feeding and let Mom starve to death (one of the most cruel things they could do, in my opinion!), and that the morphine wasnt going to make her so drugged that shed be even less responsive. Suzanne assured me that the morphine should make Moms breathing easier. With the days, maybe hours prognosis, I fell apart. Thats the last thing a patients only child is ready to hear. Before leaving, Suzanne tried to see how I was doing, and I told her I felt like I was falling apart. For more than six months now, its been little else but gloom-and-doom, hopeless predictions, when I have so desperately needed hope! Weve been in Summerville four weeks as of tonight, and I had so hoped that we would at least have as long here as we had in Nashville. Thankfully, though, Mom still gets LOTS of visitors, and she obviously has quite a strong will to live! We still DESPERATELY need a miracle!!!! Thanks so much to all of you for your prayers and please keep them up!!!!
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 21:31:55 +0000
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