Waiting for the Train

December 7, 2010  

Mom is not doing very well.  She is very, very weak.  The nurse believes she's had several TIA's.  She can't stand long enough to brush her teeth anymore.  She can't get out of bed by herself.  She can't sit up from a lying down position without our help.  She can't push her walker anymore; she has to sit in it, and we push it like a wheel chair.

Yesterday morning, Jerry woke up at 5 a.m. to find her in the floor by her potty chair.  She is no longer strong enough to pull herself up at the foot of the bed like she did a couple of weeks ago.  He was worried he'd hurt her, so called the fire department.  Two wonderful fire fighters came, swooshed her right up, and tucked her back in bed.  Next time, we'll know how to do it.

Last night, at the hospice nurse's suggestion, we tried putting the rails up so she couldn't get out of bed.  When Jerry got up this morning, she was sitting on her potty, asleep.  We have no idea how she managed to climb out of that bed and onto that potty.  She is still so dang tough!

She's not interested in eating, eats about half as much as she did two weeks ago.  Her talk is mostly jibberish.  She talks about people who've been dead for decades--Nada, Lily, Mama, Grandma.  For several days after Thanksgiving, she kept looking out the glass front door, waiting for the train.  She wanted to go "to Muskogee, Oklahoma, and the name of the town is Chouteau Mama."  Chouteau is where she lived until she finished with 8th grade.

She kept telling us she wanted to go home.  I asked her if she meant the rock house in Muskogee, and she said yes.  I told her we hadn't lived there in almost 20 years.  Maybe after forty times it finally sank in because the other day we had this conversation:

"I think I'll just stay with you until it's time for me to go.  Is that what you want?  Is that OK with you?"

"Yes, that's what we all want."

 "I've waited a long, long, long, long time."  Laughs.  "Maybe I won't have to wait much longer.  I want to go to the grave by him."

Yesterday Slade came by.  She always recognizes his voice.  She wanted up, so she sat at the table with him and they ate beans for lunch.   Afterwards, when she went back to bed, he sat down beside her and held her hand.  She pulled herself up on her elbows, opened her eyes real wide, looked him in the eyes and said, "Do you have a job?"  He assured her he has a very good job and is working hard, told her she didn't have to worry about him or anybody else.  "You quit worry about all of us and just go ahead and go be with Grandpa."  After they went through the conversation two or three times, she smiled and said OK.  (Here is a photo made a few weeks ago when he took her out to see his wrecker.)

Yesterday the hospice nurse told me Mother could go at any time or it might take weeks.  This morning, Mom woke up hungry and happy.  Every time we think she's a goner, she storms through one more time.  So I've learned better than to do any predicting.

December 14, 2010

Mother continues to grow weaker.  She is pretty much bedfast now.  Mornings are her best time, so I feed her something for breakfast every day, and she might take a little soup in the late afternoon.  She babbles all the time, but it's hard to tell what she's talking about.  She still knows who we are, though, and still knows how to get our attention when she needs us.  

Today our goal is to bribe her into using the bedpan because it is now almost impossible to wrest her out of bed, onto the potty, and back to bed.  She's fighting us so far...  "I don't know why you won't just let me sit down to do this..."  OK OK OK.

She sleeps through the night pretty much with maybe one potty stop and is pretty much awake during the day.  At least that's the way it's been for the last couple of days.  We’re worried she’s really shutting down.