This is a little diary for Anna... new Hospice patient... sweet Mom of a friend... kick ass little eighty something year old who told her nurse yesterday, "lose the straw, I can take my pills and drink the water without it". You rock Anna and Stan and I will be there again tomorrow to spend some time with you.
So, she, her daughter and son-in-law met with the docs to make the extremely tough decisions about what happens next. Anna has Congestive Heart Failure, Mitral Valve Prolapse and heart muscle that is like a brick after several years of high blood pressure. She "took sick" Wednesday night, but not really as it seems she was telling her nurses at her skilled nursing facility that she didn't feel well for two days. Unfortunately her daughter was major sick with Bronchitis and not on her game or she would have been right on top of it. At any rate, Anna was "sent out" of her facility, family was notified and now she is dying.
All of this since Wednesday night around eleven.
Stan and I went to the hospital Friday morning to give Larry, the son in law, a break since Kathy, the daughter, was and is so sick with bronchitis that she wasn't allowed to be with her Mom and Larry was making himself dizzy trying to be in two places at once. Great guy he is, by the way.
The "momma duck" as we call her was doing ok with Oxygen at 10L/min but boy howdy, take that mask off for less than a minute and she was laboring to breathe. The Hospitalist came in and made his pronouncements of direness, called Kathy and went about his way. When I talked with her a short time later she knew... she KNEW Anna was not going to pull out of this. Doctor Hospitalist knew it as well but he hedged... didn't want to upset anyone, ya know? That's where I begin to lose it. Step up, be honest, help folks make a plan, ok? So, Kathy and I talked and she knew, and I knew and we went from there. I urged her to put a mask on and get into the hospital "just in case". And she did.
So today the family, Anna included, had a meeting with various docs and the Hospice nurse for the institution and made the plan. Anna was transferred to the Hospice floor of the hospital and had her family write on the grease board in her room, "I'm ready to go home". She is ready.
While I'm a bit emotional about this tonight I want to focus on the wonderful things about Hospice. My Father-in law died in our home a year and a half ago with Hospice care. Without those wonderful folks I really don't know what Stan and I would have done, what with wanting to keep him at home (he lived with us for six years) and comfortable. In Anna's case, she has been living in a wonderful nursing facility for six years but that place cannot have her there in Hospice care with the amount of Oxygen she needs to be comfortable. Her daughter's home is a condo and not set up for a hospital bed and the attendant equipment needed to maintain her comfortably. So, kudos to Hospice and what they provide, and it is a lot.
I was going to block quote "stuff" about Hospice from Wikipedia but instead will link it here. It's a wonderful organization, concept and something so right in the midst of so much that is wrong.
So today, while we are all bemoaning, or not, this and that thing political, there is a sweet little old lady ready to "go home". She is dying with dignity and spunk and her personal stamp on the whole episode. Good on you Anna, you teach the rest of us what it means to have guts and dignity. God bless you "Mom", we love you. Godspeed.