I’m watching my Mother slowly fade away. She weighs less than 30kg now, I can lift her with one arm, to carry her to the toilet, couch, back to bed. I have the task of administering her medication, several syringes pre-filled with anti nausea or morphine, morphine patches, or liquid morphine to spray into her mouth.
She is settled in her mind, constantly complaining about the length of time it takes to die, but refusing to give in at the same time. I think it is going to be very soon, she can barely swallow a teaspoon of liquid now, and the highlight of her day is licking or sucking a lemonade or pineapple iceblock. Which does several return trips to the freezer till she is awake again.
I saw my Father go slowly, I missed being with him by 30 minutes at the end, he was the same, cantankerous to the end as well. The last time I saw him was a fortnight before, 7am one cold morning at Whangarei on the road to the hospital as he was doing a runner from the ward on his mobility scooter when I was delivering from the Nursery to the Garden Centres in Whangarei. I stopped the truck, asked him where the hell he was going at 7am in his ward clothes, no jacket, sweater anything, just hospital clothes, and got a sly grin, a cheeky look, and the words, “Going home” I wrapped him up with my jacket, and sent him on his way, 8 km to Elizabeth Grove. I did get a blast from my Step-mother when I eventually got there several hours later, but Dad was grinning like a Cheshire cat out of Lewis Carrol, all he wanted to do was prove he was still capable of doing what he wanted to do, and to hell with the doctors and ward sisters.
We spend the day talking about our lives, when Mum is awake and able to speak, I’ve had a reasonably varied life, but Mum has always been there for the times when it invariably falls apart. It’s my turn to be there for her now and make the transition from here to there as easy as it can be. We have a morphine patch on her arm at present, 2.5 mg, as she finds the morphine to be too much for her to cope with as a straight dose, it makes her woozy, and unable to comprehend what is going on, and Mum doesn’t like not knowing what is happening. The patch makes her sleep a lot more, but she is better able to understand everything and be lucid whenever people call to see her. Although 15 minutes at a time is about her limit, then she starts to suffer and choke from the saliva buildup from talking.
I have had terrific support from the people that have every reason to be uncaring because of who or what I used to be, my ex Stef has been a God send, still calling in every few days to check on Mum, Damian, Tarsha and Jesse and Kahu, Valerie calling from Melbourne, Peter and Katja, John, Kevin, Libby, Al, people I have not had the chance to meet yet, but have known for a long time on the internet, Murphy, Sally, those who have only known me though this blog. Thank you all.
The Hospice has been terrific, they send a nurse or community care person every few days, or phone regularly every day to check on Mum, and how she is doing. We have a nurse aid comes every day to shower and bathe Mum, I could probably do that for Mum, but I think it would embarrass both of us even at this stage. I have a nurse aid coming in tomorrow for 6 hours from 9am till 3 pm so I can get out to do some shopping, and mainly to have a break from being on call 24 hours. I’ve been told to leave once the Nurse aid is settled, and not to come back till 3pm, which is going to be hard to follow, but I do know it is needed before I get trapped in a black hole of not wanting to be out of the room.
The weather here is bloody atrocious, I’ve been freezing cold all week, rain, wind, although Sunday was so sunny and clear it was almost like spring. Stef and I went around Cornwall Park, after going to the Gluten Free and Organic Food Show at the Showgrounds. Which was good, I tend to get a bit jaundiced about “organic this” organic that” but everything has improved considerably. Despite saying I wasn’t going to be buying anything I managed to get out with only a $80 hole in the wallet, coffee, mussels, yoghurt, Vogels muesli, I did very well.
Pics of Cornwall park.
