Hi Everyone,
I got home from Tennessee late last night. The past week has been so hectic with all the arrangements and everything. I was thinking about everyone on the board and wanted to thank you all. Over the past year and a half or so, I’d shared things Mammaw and I were doing, or struggles I was having, etc. I just wanted to thank you for being there during the good times and the bad. It was fun to share what we were doing, especially during our quilting days.
When I posted last I had no idea about what I was about to face. I knew she was dying and I had this idea in my head that she would sleep, then tell me she needed pain meds then sleep and she then she would pass. I thought she would be able to communicate with me when she was hurting. She couldn't. Things got scary for me when I realized she couldn’t move or speak. I don’t know if she had a stroke or if that was a result of being very very weak. I kept moving her and putting lotion on her so she wouldn’t get bed sores. I would watch her face and if her brow furrowed I would give her morphine. We went from once every three hours to once every 15 minutes. Tuesday she came back to me for about 2 hours. She was trying her best to tell me something, but her voice didn’t work. I was only able to lip read when she said she loved me, and I told her I loved her, and I lip read her saying I know it. But something else was on her mind that day and I couldn’t make out at all the rest of what she was saying. I told her I was sorry but I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me. After that she went back to sleep. She would come around at times but only for a minute. I would say if you are not comfortable blink. Sometimes she would and sometimes she wouldn’t. There was a large lesson in this with boundaries. As the days passed, the urge to call rescue to take her to the hospital was almost overwhelming. I kept thinking maybe they could hydrate her and give her a feeding tube and she would last a while longer. But she didn’t want that, and I knew she didn’t. There were times I would put a sponge to her mouth and she would shut it tight, and our last trip to the hospital a couple of weeks prior she made very clear she wanted no part of it.
Changing - Wayfaring Stranger was very comforting to me. Thank you. I read it many times.
Thank you all for your posts. I came back to the thread several times during those days and would just read. I couldn’t say anything at the time, but it felt like friends were nearby holding my hand. Thank you.
