Now that I figured out what to do about my Mom . . . help her adjust to her new life

just drifted off at 11:55pm

Mary Elizabeth Borchers Clark
February 19,1933 – May 1, 2012

February 10, 1933 on a Sunday morning the bells at St. Mary’s Catholic Church on West High Street in Springfield Ohio were late being rung. My Grandfather was the bell ringer and he had to run across the street to ring the bells for each mass. On this day he was late and got chewed out by the priest. My Grandfather’s reason for being late was that his 6th child had just been born. Mary Elizabeth . . . my Mom!!! Happy 79th birthday Mom!!!

She was having a great deal of difficulty breathing and she was crying because she didn’t feel good.

I went over to the home she is living at and we talked and decided to call the hospice nurse on duty. She came over within 30 minutes and assessed by Mom and confered with the doctor.

They transerred her to their facility and kept her for a few days. Today she got moved back to her room. She is much better. I was freaking out because I am supposed to leave for New Orleans tomorrow morning with Mr. HC. I wasn’t sure I should go.

Everything is good now. I will be back in time for her 79th Birthday . . . big celebration!!!

I was always under the impression that when Hospice came in, you were at death’s door. Evidently I was not quite correct in this assumption. Hospice Care is however utilized for the “terminally ill” patient which I have come to grips with. My Mother is terminally ill. She is not going to get better, but she can be comfortable and she can stay out of the hospital which she really wants. It’s funny, she used to like going to the hospital. She thought the food was so excellent (she has an odd palate in my opinion) and she liked the attention she got. She has changed her mind about the hospital now. She no longer wants to be there. She still doesn’t call where she is living “home”, but she says she wants to stay in her room with her things.

I have taken the necessary steps to get her signed up with Hospice. It will actually be easier on both of us. Hospice has nurses and doctors on call 24/7. I met the nurse on Thursday that comes to the house where she is living now. She comes on a regular basis (like three times a week) for three other people in the house. Mom would be #4. She will make sure Mom is getting weighed regularly (imporant to monitor her weight due to the CHF) Their doctors will take over her regular doctor appointments and they will arrange for necessary blood draws. This means I don’t have to take off work every week to get her to doctor appointments and blood draws and whatever else the doctors keep ordering. At the end of these appointments she is exhausted and frankly I am exhausted, mostly from the stress. Everytime I take her out I am stressed because I am afraid she will fall or get sick. I am very tense and as a result, we are both wasted at the end of the day. We haven’t done anything fun together in ages, because we are just so fucused on getting through these appointments.

If she has hospice care, I know she is being monitored way more closely than before and I know that if she gets into trouble, hospice is called right away and they will assess the situation and either treat her there at the house or take her to their facility, unless of course it is a situation where she needs to go to emergency, they will make that call. After I talked with them, I talked with my Mom and she was surprisingly agreeable with the while thing. I thought she would balk because she would not be seing her regular doctors anymore. She didn’t seem to care, she said she just wanted to feel better.

I don’t know that she is going to feel better, but she can feel more comfortable. I told the intake worker that maybe a good goal, to work towards was for us to be able to go out and have high tea rather than for us to go out and have doctor appointments all day. Having High Tea at the Biltmore would be way more pleasant than anything we’ve been doing. She felt this was a good goal to work towards.

There is lots more as I work my way through all of this, but for right now, I think I am headed in the right direction. She is not going to get better, but she can be comfortable hopefully have some good outings in the near future.

Mom is being released from the hospital today. Hopefully they will have changed her meds up a little to try and keep this from happening again anytime too soon.

Not really encouraged though. I know that her kidneys are functioning at 28-30% max. She was told yesterday (or she told me, I will have to verify) that her heart is functioning at about 45%. She had a quadruple by-pass in April 1999. This is a concern. I need to find out more.

Just as I was leaving the house for work today, I got a call that my Mom was on the way to the hospital via ambulance. She woke up not being able to breathe. She is in the hospital again, oxygen, IV lasix and catheter.

Shit . . .

There is this cake that my has been in my Mother’s family for as long as I can remember. It is a Chocolate Cake with a really yummy caramel icing and rich as all get out!!! My Grandmother made it and taught her daughters to make it.

I was trying to spend some time with my Mom today, just one on one time before Christmas so I asked her to teach me how to make the cake. I actually sort of already knew how, but she was excited “To teach me” so today I went and got her and brought her home wih me and we made the cake. She taught me how, passed on the knowledge from her Mother to Me. It was nice.

What was not nice was she kept trying to get me and then Luna Girl to go and buy her some potato chips. It was very irritating and I reminded her that she was on an extremely low sodium diet. She said the made salt free potato chips. She wanted us to get her the Salt and Pepper Flavor potato chips. So then, they made salt free salt and pepper flavor do they?

I refused to get them and so did Luna Girl, but she laid the “I’m dying anyway what does it matter anyway” dialogue on me.

sigh . . .

I was pretty surprised as she is still not really great (although she says she is) They added 5 more daily medications to her already pretty extensive list of daily meds. She is now taking 27 different meds each day. I just know she is happy to be back in her own room with her own things and looking forward to Christmas Brunch at my house. Not sure how long she will stay out of the hospital . . .
It’s true what they say, getting old is not for wimps or something like that.

I took her a Poinsettia and a pair of Christmas Socks and sat with her for maybe 4+/- hours today. She is still having a good deal of fluid around her heart and lungs. Her kidneys are just not functioning properly. She is still getting IV Lasix
and is pretty weak.

She told me today that she thought this was “the beginning of the end”. I asked her what she meant exctly and she said she had been thinking a lot about how it was when my Dad got sick and how after a while he was in the hospital every month. She said “I am there”. I reminded her that she had not been in the hospital every month, that she was not is the hospital last month. She thought about it and said she guessed I was right, but still . . . “she feels she is there”. I reminded her that she said she was going to live to be 84 and she told me that she doesn’t think that she will now.

I don’t think that she believes she is going to die extremely soon (as in this week) as she was giving me very precise instructons as to what I was going to serve for Christmas Brunch.

It seems that her heart and kidneys are not “working well together” I am not sure what this means. Everyone is so vague about it when i try to ask. Maybe they don’t know either.

I am especially bothered about this as my Father’s death weighs heavy on my mind this time of year. He passed away on December 25, 1984. He had pneumonia and was admitted to the hospital a couple weeks before Christmas. The doctor said he would be home for Christmas. He was not.

My Mom has over the past 27 years always said to us “You never know, this may be my last Christmas.” She usually said it when she was trying to get us to do something that we didn’t want to do. This year it may well be true. I am worried.