everyone poops

caring for someone who is dying is a gift. and i keep reminding myself of that. it is an incredibly sweet experience...but it's still so hard.

if i wrote my memoirs today, the title would have to be "everyone poops."

between mom and the two dogs i am constantly getting up to let beastley out, or to help mom on and off of the chamber pot, or to let fang out. maura will be adding a newborn baby to the mix in six days and then my life will be complete.

i will say no more about that, in case you have come across this e-mail while you are eating your lunch.

i am tired. exhausted. on top of the physical toll it takes to be hyper-alert to mom's movements at all times, we are all having breakdowns. secretly, silently, in rooms far away from mom's

we decided to stop chemo. i told mom on wednesday that we were going to stop so her mouth can heal. she wants to keep trying. she still does not understand that her cancer is terminal. she has been told about her condition and her prognosis. they even put it in writing for her. but she is in denial. she certainly doesn't understand that it has metastasized all over her body. so i told her that we would "postpone" her next treatment until her mouth healed.

one of the side effects of the chemo is that it has caused the inside of her mouth to blister.

it hurts so much that she can't bear to eat.

she has had fewer than 300 calories in the past week. we've had IV fluids administered, they prescribed "magic" mouthwash and changed her appetite boosters.

she has taken such a turn for the worse in the past week that i called her doctor this morning and got a prescription for home hospice care.

dr. mc dreamy was incredibly kind. i had asked about a feeding tube. he said that the feeding tube would not help her. he says it will just feed the tumor. he explained how the hospice care would work. (he spent a few years doing hospice care and completed special studies in palliative care.) he told me that no one can predict how much time there is left, but that his sense - based on the last time that he saw her - was that he didn't think she would make it for two more weeks.

and that certainly matches what my gut tells me when i look at her. i have reached the point where i am constantly looking to see if she is still breathing.

so now there are different struggles. there is no way we are putting her in a nursing home. but i don't think we are equipped to care for her properly. so I have a hospice nurse coming out tomorrow to assess the situation and help us figure out if we need to hire in home care or if she should be admitted to "casey house" the hospice for our county (which happens to be located a mile or two north of us on the road that runs behind our house).

there are all of these uncharted waters to navigate and i just want to curl up in a little ball and have someone else do it for me. but she is the one who always took on what i couldn't handle...so it is my turn, now.

the malnutrition has taken a toll on her brain and, most of the time, she sleeps or stares or says things that do not make sense. and then, out of the blue, she has moments of lucidity. when you look at her and see that she is really there, and conscious, and looking back at you.

and those moments become even more precious.

we had a little crisis this morning and, after magee and maura and i got mummy all cleaned up and back into bed and tucked in for a nap, i went back in her room and rubbed her shoulder. and she looked up at me and whispered 'thank you, sweetie" and she was back. so i climbed into her bed behind her and rubbed her back and her shoulder and she reached up and took hold of my hand.

and i prepared myself to watch her starve herself to death.

and then she sat up and asked for some raspberry sherbet.