sunday

My mom is still with us, hanging on with amazing strength.

Most of the time she is asleep. Even when she is awake, it is hard to understand what she says. Every four hours she gets 1cc of morphine (oral solution) and 1mg of Ativan (crushed in water). Once a day she gets a small dose of Haldol, primarily for stress relief (but the Haldol makes her harder to understand - it is a major, and I mean major, tranquilizer). She also wears two Fentanyl patches which are replaced every three days.

Yesterday the nurse inserted a Foley catheter so we don't need to get her out of bed to use the porta-potty anymore. She wasn't happy about getting the Foley but picking her up and putting her back all the time was too much stress on her increasingly fragile body.

There is obviously a lot of pain, as you can imagine (why else would she need both Fentanyl and morphine?). Occasionally it causes her to cry out several times in a row, and when she coughs it is clearly very uncomfortable. The cancer has invaded her lungs.

Every day we get visitors, and a home health aide comes at least once every day. Thursday evening she came by at suppertime so Dad, Karl and I could go out for a good meal.

As for me, I'm having great difficulty sleeping. Naps are all I have been able to manage. My brother takes Ambien, and my father does sometimes as well; this morning I told them that I'd rather not ask for some of it but if this keeps up I may do so anyway. I'll sleep for an hour or two, get up, and within another couple of hours my eyes are crossing from fatigue again. I lie down and the cycle repeats itself.