I see I haven't posted in a while. Life has been conspiring against me. My mother, who is suffering from advanced Parkinson Disease and dementia, has taken a significant turn for the worse. A little over a week ago, the hospice nurse told us that she thought Mom had maybe a month before the end. I think she overestimated. Mom has been pretty unresponsive for the better part of a week. She woke up this morning and asked for something to eat. She hasn't had any actual food since May 9. Her fluid intake has been declining quickly. Lately she has been drinking only just enough to swallow her medications (thankfully, she is still able to do that). Today she had a large glass of chocolate milk, but that was this morning, and she's been "asleep" (unresponsive) in her chair since she finished it.
When she was at the local hospice facility in March, they tried to weigh her. It's not easy to weigh someone who can't stand on her own, but they came up with a guesstimated weight of 72 pounds (less than 33 kg). I'm pretty sure she's below 70 lbs. now, probably closer to 60 lbs. She's very frail, which is not at all like her. It's probably a good thing she's so small to begin with (4'10"); otherwise, it would be much more difficult for my brother and me to take care of her without help. Hospice has been a wonderful resource, but they can't be here all the time. It would be easier to put her in a nursing home and forget about her, but we made a promise to our dad and to Mom that we would do everything we could to keep her out of those places.
She's always been a little powerhouse, but not now. I think she's given up. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. She's had no quality of life for some months now. Her decline has been what is frequently described as "downhill on roller skates". I hate watching what this disease has done to her, but as much as I want my mother back like she was, I know this isn't possible, and I just wish it was over for her. She's not in any pain; the medication takes care of that. She doesn't seem to be having any scary hallucinations; different medication takes care of that. And she knows my brother and me, which is comforting.
She had a bad Parkinson lockup the other night, in which she folded up (chest to knees in her chair, like she was trying to pick up something from the floor), and she couldn't sit up again. I tried for about an hour and a half to help her by giving her the Parkinson medication, her pain medication, a heating pad to her back, massage, anything I could do to try to help, and it was all useless. My brother and I finally put her to bed, figuring that if she could lay on her side, she could at least breathe a little easier, and maybe the Parkinson med would kick in sometime during the night. She was less stiff in the morning, but unresponsive, and she cried out like an injured animal when the hospice aide tried to get her washed up. She came to a little that evening, and spent about 45 minutes in the living room with my brother and me, but that was it.
It's weird, but the hospice nurse tells me it's not unexpected, to see her go from being unresponsive one day, to being up and alert the next. It almost gives me a little hope that maybe this isn't "it", but I know better. I see her slipping away a little more all the time. It tears me up, so much that I can't keep the tears away, and I know it distresses her when she sees me crying. I make an excuse, but I think she knows. One one of the nurse's most recent visits, she claimed she wasn't in any pain... yet. I don't want her to have pain. She cried a lot that day. I think it was the day she realized what was happening.
OK, enough of this. I need to try to think about something else. I will do my best to try to post more often, and hopefully about happier things, like what the bunnies have done lately. But now I have to go. My mother just woke up, and she wants more chocolate milk.
