MONDAY, OCTOBER 14th, 2013
I did not sleep well. In fact, for once, perhaps the "long, dark night" was mine and not my mother's, but only briefly, because my night's "sleep" was lousy. I woke up utterly shattered but unable to get back to sleep in the "wee small hours" fretting about various things after having decided that I would be better to return to working from home for at least today, given that I had already been summoned to a discussion with a doctor during afternoon visiting today to discuss the best approach to making mum "comfortable" in the face of several aspects of her body breaking down in conflicting ways.
Meanwhile, I think that the exhaustion and the anxiety are starting to catch up with me... I don't feel capable of thinking any longer and I appear to be coming out with sympathetic breathing difficulties and a lack of appetite which can only be down to how things currently are...
Sometimes, perhaps when I'm working or watching a bit of telly, just for a moment, I actually manage to forget, but then I remember again and that somehow seems far worse. The thing is that I don't know how to do this any more, it seems to have been going on forever, but somehow you don't want it to stop because of what stopping will actually mean. I find that, for once, I want to have a conversation about it all with my mother but, well, that seems impossible now...
The call came around noon. It was the perhaps scarily ebullient Ward Sister from Sunday evening asking when I would be available to talk to a doctor. I said "When do you want me there?" and she replied "Now, preferably" pointing out that mum had "got worse" during the morning. With a few abstract mutterings about whether or not it's easy to find a parking space at the hospital at "this time of day" I pretty much dropped everything - not even waiting for the file that I was sending to finish uploading - and drove over there, not really knowing whether mum had already gone and wondering whether, if that was the case, they were not able to say so over the phone.
Sitting in the car park half an hour or so later, I found myself taking deep breaths and trying to find the courage to go in, whilst procrastinating furiously by sending a couple of Text Messages to let certain people know what was happening, and fumbling for change for the parking meters. Then, there was nothing else to do but to head inside and see what awaited me.
I managed to stand in the doorway of mum's room - bed number 23 - and she seemed to be still breathing with an oxygen mask on and the loud, endless hiss of the gases which would provide the soundtrack to the entire afternoon. Before I could ask whether it was okay to go in, though, the doctor whisked me away to the "Relatives Room" for a talk about mum and how she'd "bounced back" from the internal bleeding she'd had a couple of weeks ago, but how she now had two conflicting conditions as she had suffered heart failure "a some point" over the weekend and that fluid would build up in her lungs if they thinned her blood enough to treat that, which were conditions that they probably couldn't cure, and that it might be best to stop doing the invasive blood and other tests and essentially "withdraw treatment" and make mum as "comfortable" as they could and use "pathways" drugs to manage her pain and distress levels over the "next few days..." although, perhaps thankfully, it never actually came to that.
He probably said a lot else, too, but I didn't take a lot of it in, as I was starting to get pretty upset, so he left me alone to gather my thoughts and I made one of those telephone calls that nobody ever wants to have to make. Mine was to my sister, although I struggled to get the words out and we ended up communicating by Mutually Supportive Text Messages for much of the rest of the exchange.
As I was sitting there, another doctor popped her head around the door, seeking out a different set of relatives, which only goes to show that, even in the middle of your own personal crises, life goes on, and other people can find themselves in much the same boat.
Happily, my Beloved joined me shortly after I went to mum's bedside, and we were able to support each other through that long, final afternoon. The staff were lovely and very supportive - offering cups of tea and saying it was okay for us to go and have a sandwich in the cafe - as we mostly just sat there watching mum sleeping very deeply whilst wearing that oxygen mask, and noticing that her breathing got increasingly a little more shallow as time passed by. Mostly, of course, we were there in case she suddenly woke up and needed someone to be there, but otherwise it was just the faintly surreal experience of watching someone sleep for several hours.
At about 4.40pm, she seemed to be fighting for breath and the doctor returned for another chat, suggesting that he might want to switch mum onto just a nasal tube for her oxygen, but, as the Ward Sister went off shift about an hour after that, she explained how the pathway drug system would work if required and explained that she disagreed about the oxygen situation and they had discussed it and decided to leave things be.
Mum's Church Minister arrived at about 5.30pm and we gave him a few minutes to talk to mum privately before having a little chat with him ourselves about my sister's situation and whether mum might hang on another day to give her the time to get here, but that wasn't to be.
Instead, after the beloved had returned from a hunt for the sandwiches which she thought we might need over the course of the potentially long night ahead, I returned to the bedside where, since the nurses had turned mum over at about 6.00pm, her breathing had become much worse and, despite her eyes being open, she didn't seem to see me.
But I talked to her, and told her that everything was alright, and a hundred and one other things that I'm struggling to remember now and, at about 6.20pm on the 14th of October, 2013, she appeared, peacefully and without ever waking up, to just stop breathing, and I stroked her hair for a couple of minutes before trying to find a nurse who did, indeed, confirm what I already knew.
I got the Beloved to make the call to my sister because I was struggling to get any words out again, and didn't want to leave mum "alone" if that's not too weird an idea, but the staff told us to take as long as we liked to talk and be there, which I did, until, emerging from the room and making a significant nod towards one of the members of staff that we'd mostly been dealing with, they finally felt that they could intrude upon our privacy and began the process of whatever it is that they do, and I failed to successfully answer many of their important, sensitive questions.
In the end, because there was little else to do, we left with what I'm still hoping didn't seem like indecent haste, and I went home to make just one phone call - again to my sister - before deciding that I was really so very tired that I needed to at least try to sleep.
Meanwhile, I think that the exhaustion and the anxiety are starting to catch up with me... I don't feel capable of thinking any longer and I appear to be coming out with sympathetic breathing difficulties and a lack of appetite which can only be down to how things currently are...
Sometimes, perhaps when I'm working or watching a bit of telly, just for a moment, I actually manage to forget, but then I remember again and that somehow seems far worse. The thing is that I don't know how to do this any more, it seems to have been going on forever, but somehow you don't want it to stop because of what stopping will actually mean. I find that, for once, I want to have a conversation about it all with my mother but, well, that seems impossible now...
The call came around noon. It was the perhaps scarily ebullient Ward Sister from Sunday evening asking when I would be available to talk to a doctor. I said "When do you want me there?" and she replied "Now, preferably" pointing out that mum had "got worse" during the morning. With a few abstract mutterings about whether or not it's easy to find a parking space at the hospital at "this time of day" I pretty much dropped everything - not even waiting for the file that I was sending to finish uploading - and drove over there, not really knowing whether mum had already gone and wondering whether, if that was the case, they were not able to say so over the phone.
Sitting in the car park half an hour or so later, I found myself taking deep breaths and trying to find the courage to go in, whilst procrastinating furiously by sending a couple of Text Messages to let certain people know what was happening, and fumbling for change for the parking meters. Then, there was nothing else to do but to head inside and see what awaited me.
I managed to stand in the doorway of mum's room - bed number 23 - and she seemed to be still breathing with an oxygen mask on and the loud, endless hiss of the gases which would provide the soundtrack to the entire afternoon. Before I could ask whether it was okay to go in, though, the doctor whisked me away to the "Relatives Room" for a talk about mum and how she'd "bounced back" from the internal bleeding she'd had a couple of weeks ago, but how she now had two conflicting conditions as she had suffered heart failure "a some point" over the weekend and that fluid would build up in her lungs if they thinned her blood enough to treat that, which were conditions that they probably couldn't cure, and that it might be best to stop doing the invasive blood and other tests and essentially "withdraw treatment" and make mum as "comfortable" as they could and use "pathways" drugs to manage her pain and distress levels over the "next few days..." although, perhaps thankfully, it never actually came to that.
He probably said a lot else, too, but I didn't take a lot of it in, as I was starting to get pretty upset, so he left me alone to gather my thoughts and I made one of those telephone calls that nobody ever wants to have to make. Mine was to my sister, although I struggled to get the words out and we ended up communicating by Mutually Supportive Text Messages for much of the rest of the exchange.
As I was sitting there, another doctor popped her head around the door, seeking out a different set of relatives, which only goes to show that, even in the middle of your own personal crises, life goes on, and other people can find themselves in much the same boat.
Happily, my Beloved joined me shortly after I went to mum's bedside, and we were able to support each other through that long, final afternoon. The staff were lovely and very supportive - offering cups of tea and saying it was okay for us to go and have a sandwich in the cafe - as we mostly just sat there watching mum sleeping very deeply whilst wearing that oxygen mask, and noticing that her breathing got increasingly a little more shallow as time passed by. Mostly, of course, we were there in case she suddenly woke up and needed someone to be there, but otherwise it was just the faintly surreal experience of watching someone sleep for several hours.
At about 4.40pm, she seemed to be fighting for breath and the doctor returned for another chat, suggesting that he might want to switch mum onto just a nasal tube for her oxygen, but, as the Ward Sister went off shift about an hour after that, she explained how the pathway drug system would work if required and explained that she disagreed about the oxygen situation and they had discussed it and decided to leave things be.
Mum's Church Minister arrived at about 5.30pm and we gave him a few minutes to talk to mum privately before having a little chat with him ourselves about my sister's situation and whether mum might hang on another day to give her the time to get here, but that wasn't to be.
Instead, after the beloved had returned from a hunt for the sandwiches which she thought we might need over the course of the potentially long night ahead, I returned to the bedside where, since the nurses had turned mum over at about 6.00pm, her breathing had become much worse and, despite her eyes being open, she didn't seem to see me.
But I talked to her, and told her that everything was alright, and a hundred and one other things that I'm struggling to remember now and, at about 6.20pm on the 14th of October, 2013, she appeared, peacefully and without ever waking up, to just stop breathing, and I stroked her hair for a couple of minutes before trying to find a nurse who did, indeed, confirm what I already knew.
I got the Beloved to make the call to my sister because I was struggling to get any words out again, and didn't want to leave mum "alone" if that's not too weird an idea, but the staff told us to take as long as we liked to talk and be there, which I did, until, emerging from the room and making a significant nod towards one of the members of staff that we'd mostly been dealing with, they finally felt that they could intrude upon our privacy and began the process of whatever it is that they do, and I failed to successfully answer many of their important, sensitive questions.
In the end, because there was little else to do, we left with what I'm still hoping didn't seem like indecent haste, and I went home to make just one phone call - again to my sister - before deciding that I was really so very tired that I needed to at least try to sleep.
Thanks for sharing this Martin.
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