MommyNeecey

Hello and thank you so much for thinking of me and my aunt!

Well it has been 5 weeks since the nurse/dr. gave my aunt "6 weeks" after stopping treatment and she still marches on.

However, she's been having hallucinations a bit and doing some "tugging at the bedsheets" that I've often heard described when the body is in it's phase of "dying". My father thinks it's all the "morphine" - but I don't think so. She will often say, "who is that little girl standing there?" Or, "Last night there were two gypsy women in my room cutting up all my clothes!"

Well that only lasted a few days and then literally overnight she seemed to have become literally oblivious to the morphine - doesn't make her sleep, doesn't make her hallucinate - and all she wants to do is argue with my parents over washing her windows or curtains etc., and my parents keep telling her to stop getting so ugly over things that do not matter as her time is short - but she doesn't see things that way.

The hospice nurse (who just started coming last week) - has told her to stop climbing stairs etc., (she was up in the attic when my parents arrived yesterday morning) supposedly going after some garbage bags. She told the nurse - "Well I;ll just wait till you all leave then!" The nurse said, "Oh ya? Well then I'll order you a hospital bed and you won't be able to get up!"

Following that yesterday, the nurse ordered a sleeping medication (can't remember the name - something ending in "epam" ...) and that has to be given to her every 6 hours and it's REALLY made her sleep and barely be able to stand at all! What is the point of that I wonder? Will any of this put her in a coma and bring death any sooner? My m-in-law argues that hospice "cannot legally overdose you with medicine" - but honestly, I thought that was what hospice did was when you are dying - they try to make it easier and as less painfull as they can?

She has some constipation going on, they are still giving her laxatives. She has never returned to "yellow" and her poop was white a few weeks ago - that's back to brown, and her urine is NOT dark or anything so God only knows - couldt his mean she is in remission or something?

Honestly, this has gone on for OVER 3 mos. now and to be perfectly honest, my parents need a break, we are all ready for this to be over. My aunt is 82 and the outcome is NOT going to change, and we'd rather see her gone than completely miserable because she can't "run her own show" like she's always done, and now all she wants to do is argue and fight over a spoon being put in a drawer in the wrong spot!

Any insight might be helpful! I hear that when they "go downhill" that it happens VERY fast - but I'm beginning to wonder ..... actually too we have a disney world trip planned for September - excatly 2 mos. from now - and honestly we'd really thought she'd be at rest by now and are beginning to wonder if we should cancel the trip. Who knows .... the whole thing has been very emotionally, physically and mentally tiring for everyone involved!

Thanks for caring Sam and look forward to hearing back from you!

[This message has been edited by moderator2 (edited 07-19-2002).]