Love Makes Families

Love Makes Families
A family of 8 due to the blessing of adoption!

Thursday, April 28, 2011

A very hard day.... to suffer or to die?





Today started much like any other day. I woke up at 7:50 a.m. about 50 minutes later than I should have been awake, and I beg Kevin to wake up and get Kaitlyn off to school (one of the benefits of him being out of work.) He agreed, and I decided to try to get some more sleep..... ya good luck. I finally fell back to sleep around 9:30 a.m. then my dad text me.... need you. That's it nothing else just "need you." I thought for sure something had happened to grandma and my mom was hysterical, so I jump out of bed and literally run down the stairs. My dad says when I enter the room and find everyone sitting there calmly.... "look at my foot, does it look red?" I'm not sure if it was the lighting or just bad timing, but it looked fine at that moment. Well they get up and going and decided we should take dad to the doctor. It turns out that he broke his big toe and his foot, so he got a boot put on.


This was just the start of what turned out to be a difficult day. We get to the hospital to see my grandma, and we find my mom, my aunt, and my cousin there. They had been talking and made some decisions about grandma's care. A doctor had told them that his suggestion would be to take her home and make her comfortable. He told us we had 2 options.... option 1 is home health care and option number 2 is hospice. Since nobody could bring themselves to do hospice yet they all decided to do home health care. Basically the doctor has told us that she has little to no chance of fighting off the infection that has taken over her body, so if after a week has gone by and she still isn't better, they will reevaluate the idea of hospice.

I had to sit though several meetings where her care was discussed, and where the ultimate outcome was all taken in consideration. It is even hard for me to type the word.... death..... it is so hard to know someone is going to be gone soon. At this time I am so thankful for the knowledge that this is not the end..... It is only a new beginning.

Just would I thought I couldn't get any more emotional..... I was proven wrong again.

My aunt Barbara (my mom's oldest sister who is in a care center because she has alzheimers) gets wheeled into the room. As soon as they wheel her up next to my grandma she looks up and says "She wants to go." Even my aunt who is not "lucid" knew what her mom wanted. My aunts illness is so bad that she rarely communicates what she wants, and she is rarely consistent when she does say she wants something. My uncle Roy (her husband) says that she was literally dancing in the halls this morning saying I'm going to see my mommy over and over. He asked her several hours later what she wanted and she said I want to see my mom. He asked her a series of questions.... do you want to go fishing... no.... do you want to go dancing.... no.... do you want to see your mom... yes

The whole experience was truly amazing. I couldn't contain the tears.

1 comment:

  1. Oh I forgot to mention just how my dad broke his foot. He was playing a baseball game, and was trying to get a ground ball.Did I mention this game was being played while he was sleeping... he was acting out a dream, and he kicked the wall. Good news is... he got the ball!

    ReplyDelete