How everything still turns to gold (our home hospice experience #5)

It’s getting harder. Much harder.

D. is in a new phase. Her ability to draw breath is deteriorating by the day, leaving her more uncomfortable. With this discomfort comes all sorts of emotions for all involved. For us, it’s sadness, dismay and even incredulousness when she’d choose to go have a smoke even when it took her the better part of an hour to cross the room to the door outside. For her it’s mostly anger and resignation; anger when she can’t do something she wants to or feels trapped by her own body – trapped in a room, trapped by the unrelenting parade of treatments and scheduled medications, trapped by the condition she’s forced upon herself. It’s easier sometimes to be angry at us for pushing yet another breathing treatment or dose of nasty-tasting morphine than to face her anger at herself for getting her here. Or so I presume.

But even this phase has largely passed. D’s breathing discomfort has reached a point where she requires ever-increasing doses of the morphine to make breathing possible. And yeah-it seems counter-intuitive to give morphine to someone who can’t breathe but it does actually work. It relaxes her from trying so hard to inhale that she’s tense and laboring and just lets her breathe as best she can. The downside of this is her morphine intake is at a level that she’s largely lost sight of reality. She mostly knows who we are but isn’t entirely sure where she is or why we’re keeping her here. After each dose – every 90 minutes now – she has an hour or so of relative comfort and ease. Then she becomes either paranoid or angry, sure we’re up to no good. She’ll ask questions: “when do I go home?” or “who lives in this place?” Or even “who are you?”. We’ve learned to roll with these questions and answer best we can without trying to inject logic that she can’t process.

And we have our moments of fun, too. Last night, when she was having difficulty orienting herself in her current location, Mike had her at the window and was pointing out the neighborhood homes and who lived where – many of whom she’s met. At that very moment, a couple walked by, (presumably) dressed for some sort of party with shiny silver Mylar wigs on their heads. WE freaked a bit, assuming this was a very bad thing for a morphine-addled person to see. D took it in stride – it was the blinds at the house across the way that had her more concerned. (They were opened just enough for someone to watch her, she felt).

And the guy who treated our asphalt driveway (and has for years) noticed D in her room and all her medical accoutrement and brought a large bag of leaves and dried greens that he called “the herbs from Africa” and a tea made with these “herbs” would fix her up good. Seems it “cures the cancer, fixes the ‘rheumatiz’ and everything else that ails you. Mike asked what kind of plants were in there and was assured it was simply “the herbs – granny sent from Africa”. We have yet to try “the herbs” tea but maybe Mike and I will at some point. If it cures all, why the hell not? 😉

All that aside, it’s safe to say we’re on the downslope of our journey. There will be ever more morphine at ever shorter intervals. At some point, we’ll stop being able to get her to take her other pills and the breathing treatments that give her some increase in O2 intake efficiency. At some point it will be all morphine.

How soon this happens, I have no clue. It does feel like its moving faster – that the snowball is speeding up down the hill. We’ll deal a day at a time.

Thanks to all who continue to read these rambles – means the world to me. Please let me know if you want to hear more or have questions. Or if you’ve been through this, I’d love to hear about your experiences. But most of all, thanks.

And Happy Mother’s Day to D – and all of you moms out there.