Camping on Death's Doorstep

My mother is finally comfortable - I think - but she's getting closer and closer to the end. A few weeks ago, she started forgetting she needed help anytime she wanted to get out of bed, climbed out over the rail and fell. When I came to see her, she was sitting in the hall by the nurse's station waiting for the x-ray technician, babbling something about a pink monkey. Previously, she had decided she would call people blue monkeys instead of dirty dogs, and the good guys became white monkeys, but I hadn't heard about any pink monkeys before. I still have no idea what the pink monkey represented, but when Adrian, one of our favorite aides, walked by, she told him that Bob (my dad) was now here and could pay him for the pink monkey. Adrian and I Exchanged Looks, and Adrian said he'd take care of it.

A couple of x-rays showed she hadn't broken her hip or her ankle, but she still kept trying to escape on her own. The Hospice service made sure she had a new bed that could be lowered to about 10 inches above the floor along with a padded mat for her to land on. After a couple of days and many, many bruises (her legs looked like she'd been playing field hockey without shin guards), hospice put her on continuous care and started readjusting her medication. With the exception of a few four-hour blocks here and there when no one was available, someone has sat with Mother all day and night for about the last three weeks.

Last Friday, I covered the four-to-eight watch. I hadn't had a lot of warning, so I arrived a few minutes late. Mother had her covers off and was slowwwwly moving her outside leg toward the edge of the bed. That's one advantage of a Bradykinetic Movement Disorder: she moves at slothlike speeds. So I helped her to the commode. She insisted on taking her gown off, so finally I let her, then put it back on her before getting her back to bed. She napped briefly and then wanted to sit up. I finally figured out she wanted to sit in her wheelchair, but when I was helping her with the transfer, her knees suddenly buckled. She was an absolute dead weight. I gently lowered her to the floor, put pillows under her head and pushed the nurse's call button. When a nurse and an aide came to put her back in bed, the nurse told me I should call for help in the future. I think I had already figured that out. My mother made several requests while I sat with her, most having to do with "getting out of here" or completely incomprehensible, but then she started insisting I take the splint off her liver. Um. So I gently massaged her abdomen and asked where it hurt. She apparently had uterine cramps, so I heated a rice pillow and lay it on the affected area. This has helped in the past, but now the weight of the pillow bothered her. I took it off. At least I appeared to be doing something to help, even if my actual treatments didn't work. The Roxanol every two hours did, though, more or less. She had scratched off her Duragesic fentanyl patch (I keep suggesting they put in on her back or some other place she can't easily reach, but they keep putting it on her chest) and wasn't due for another until the following day. I used the lotion Elizabeth gave Mother for Mothers Day and massaged Mother's arms, hands, feet and legs, which seemed to calm her down. Others have apparently discovered this trick, since the lotion was almost gone. Of her supper, she was willing to eat only the Jello. Everything else, even the mashed potatoes, tasted bad to her. When the night nurse came a little before eight, I practically bolted home.

On Saturday and Sunday, I got the sleep-all-day, ache-all-over bug that lay Daddy low on Friday, so I didn't see mother again until Monday. The change was drastic. She has hardly been drinking anything, and now her skin is stretched over her face. The swags of wrinkles she had after losing so much weight so quickly have largely shrunk away, and she looks as if she's modeled of wax. She didn't eat at all for me, but she did take a few sips of the special thickened, flavored water I make for her. Mostly she slept, looking for all the world like a cadaver except for the slow rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. Even when she was awake, she didn't seem to be all present. I'm not sure she knew who I was, or that Daddy was there. Her speech was sparse, labored and completely unintelligible. At one point, she perseverated on the letters "L Y, L Y," repeating it perhaps a dozen times. I had brought some face cream and applied it once when she became a little agitated, along with lotion on her arms. Mostly, she did not seem to be in pain, nor did she try to get out of bed.

Yesterday, she was much the same. She did at one point answer a question "Yehh," but she still didn't eat or drink much. On Friday, she had called me by name and even asked for Charlotte, but now she doesn't seem to know who I am. When Daddy talked to her and kissed her cheek, she didn't respond at all.

It could be a matter of only days. I called Charlotte and suggested she come this weekend, not for Mother, but for Daddy. And me.