If I Told You , You Wouldn’t Believe Me

Is my picture showing yet? I hope so. I followed Christina’s instructions.

Mom had a couple of rough days but she’s better today although she is still weak and asked to go lay down just now.

She got her voice back a little so we called Judy early this morning. Jack made bisquits and gravy for his crew at work so that’s what we had for breakfast…sat on the porch while she tried to smoke a cigarette…she gave up finally after I got on her for burning her lap blanket (Not the one Nana made, not the snowman blanky, another one).Came back in, watched TV, finally had a good pee (her not me, I pee just fine ty very much) She asked to go back outside but didn’t try smoking this time. I finished the doofy hat for Malinda, modeled it, then she asked to come in an lay down. I’m taking advantage of the quiet to write a little.

The social worker from hospice came by yesterday with a booklet about death. It’s sad but quite informative. I wanted to share a little from it with you so maybe you’ll understand what’s going on here.

From….Gone From My Sight, the Dying Experience  by Barbara Karnes

Each person approches death in their own way, bringing to this last experiance their own uniqueness. What is listed here is simply a guideline, a road map. Like any map, there are many roads arriving at the same destination, many ways to enter the city.

Use this guideline while remembering there is nothing concrete here: all is very, very flexible. Any one of these signs in this booklet may be present: all may be present: none may be present.

Death comes in its own time, in its own way.

Death is unique as the individual who is experiancing it.

If the following signs were to be put on a timetable, a very flexible timetable, we could say these changes begin one to three months before death occurs. The actual dying process often begins within the two weeks prior to death. There is a shift that occurs within a person that takes them from a mental proccessing of death to a true comprehension and belief of their own mortality. Unforetunately this understanding is not always shared with others.

One to Three Months Prior to Death

1. Withdrawl from the world and people (if you call and she doesn’t want to talk don’t take it personally)
2. Decreased food intake
3. Increase in sleep
4. Going inside self
5. Less communication

One to Two Weeks

1. Disorientation (agitation, talking to the unseen, confusion,picking at clothes)
2. Physical signs (decreased blood pressure, pulse increase or decrease,skin color changes,increased persperation,respiration irregularities, congestion,sleeping but responding, complaints of body tired and heavy, not eating, taking little fluids, body temp hot or cold)

Days or Hours

1. Intensification of one to two weeks’ signs
2. Surge of energy
3. Decrease in blood pressure
4. Eyes glassy, tearing, half open
5. Irregular breathing: stop, start
6. Restlessness or no activity
7. Purplish, blotchy knees,feet hands
8. Pulse weak and hard to find
9. Decreased urine output
10. May wet or stool the bed

Minutes

1. “Fish out of water” breathing
2. Cannot be awakened

(end of quote)

I can’t honestly say I’ve ever been around someone who was dying. It’s hard. I’m much more emotional about it than I thought I would be.  I try not to cry in front of her but I’m sitting here bawling my eyes out right now.

Did I get your attention? Good, now listen up. There’s been a misunderstanding here at Mommycity.com.

My name is Becky and my mother is Mary Jane. She has lung cancer and I am keeping a journal of her time here in Colorado with me.

Christina owns this site. Her mom’s name is Becky but she’s not ill or anything unless you count being afraid of green vegetables an illness:P Christina is pregnant not me…

To try and keep things from being any more confusing Christina is hard at work coming up with a way to put our pictures on our blog posts…I’ll be the one with red hair…wait…she has red hair too…hmmmmmm OK I’ll be the one by the mountain and she’ll be the one in the beanfield…

I’ll prolly just use this picture…it’s memorable don’t you think?

I guess by now you know I live in Colorado…but did you know I play guitar? I do…this is me singing and playing with a montage of Colorado Pics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by_uVMhQgEM

(I tried the embed thing Christina..no go)

Sorry for the lack of updates over the weekend. Not only were we super busy but for a while my internet was down (ugh…it was my fault, I feel so stupid. I should have checked the phone line plug in thingy straight away…note to self…do that next time)

Saturday we went out to eat at our FAVORITE place…Gunther Toodys, a 50′s diner. Then we went over to Walmart for grocries and whatnot then up to Hobby Lobby for more canvases to do our button art projects on (More on that later)

Mom is getting weaker. I think it has a little to do with the pain medication, in this case Vicodin. It makes her loopy and uncoordinated. She’s really not in a lot of pain like you think she’d be. Mainly she complains about her butt…the top of the crack. The nurses have looked at it and can see no outward reason for it to hurt so I am not sure what the deal is. I keep putting the pink salve on it and once in a while give her a pill.

I’m trying to get her to drink a lot more water coz she’s had a touch of the dreaded diarrhea again (oh no!). I told her she  needed to drink quite a bit so she didn’t have to get an IV and I think she understood.

We had company yesterday. Cheryl and her mother, Violet Borror came over. Vi had never been here before so it was fun showing her the view and my rocks lol!

Later I took mom on a walk. I pushed her UP my alley (man you have NO IDEA what that involves!) I took my coat off after about 20 steps. We had to find the best way home because of sidewalk considerations, massive vegitaion blockage, etc. We had fun though.

I have some bad news. My new camera took a dump on me already. Do you detect a theme here? I buy something and straight away it breaks…I am thinking of adopting an Amish lifestyle…no consumerism at all…grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! (I have a DRs apt Friday to get my blood pressure meds refilled….if this keeps up he’s gonna have to up my dose)

Have you ever seen a catalog from Wayside Gardens? They look like a million bucks, all glossy and pretty and full of hope of what your garden could like like. Too bad their service doesn’t match the image they try so hard to project.

During my May trip to Illinois I found out that my mother-in-law, Pat, wanted a yellow climbing rose. I looked around online when I got home to Colorado and found that Wayside had a sale on them…buy one get 2 free. Hey! That sounds pretty good…get out the credit card, type in my info….sit back and wait.

She got the first one straight away and they followed the instructions and got it planted. I was unaware that they only got one and she was unaware that there should have been 3.

Fast forward to July….I get an email AND a letter by post that the two remaining roses had been shipped…eeeeek! Pat and Johnny were on their way here to bring Dakota home. A few quick phone calls had their youngest son, Justin, on the lookout at the PO for the roses.

End of July…no roses. I called Wayside and they told me to call the PO where the plants were to be shipped…ok..did that and the Postmaster assured me no packages had come in. We waited another week and I called Wayside again. “Oh, so sorry it was a MIS-SHIP” Huh? They shipped it wrong? How? Why? When? the gal on the phone didn’t know but offered my money back minus shipping since they weren’t shipping anything at the time due to summer heat…ok whatever! I now have a whopping $14.95 in credit with them.

Fast forward again to three days ago…the rose bloomed and guess what?!?  It’s PINK!!! I called again and was told I was out of luck since they already gave me my money back….ok lady…what about the fact that I ordered a YELLOW rose and this is a PINK  rose despite the fact that it had a tag stating it was YELLOW!?!

“We already gave you your money back”

“I want to speak to a supervisor”

“We already gave you your money back”

“I heard you…don’t you care that this rose is PINK not YELLOW? ”

CLICK….she hung up on me:|

OK …now I’m mad…I sent an email to customer service…they sent an automated reply stating I’d get an answer in 48 hours which was 72 hours ago with no word from them.

Yep…keep sending those fancy  catalogs out but don’t train your phone, computer or warehouse people to keep customer satisfaction high. I’m off to find some garden forums to cross post this on.

Mom got a present in the mail yesterday…Thanks Nana, a commenter here on this blog who went to school with her…it’s real purdy!!!

It’s cold here today. That plus no sun plus the fact that mom is having a bad day makes for not much fun

What is she gonna do when it really gets cold?

The wind was blowing and the temp was about 60 or so …Jack says he’ll find a way to cut the wind this winter. No smoking lease…she’ll have to brave to cold or do without.

The nurse finally showed up. She was basically useless. Gonna have a different one next week and then again in October. The CNA comes today to give her a bath.

My mother was quite the handful yesterday. She’s bound and determined to become more mobile . I guess I can’t blame her but I feel the need to be on RED ALERT status.

Twice she tried to wheel herself in after smoking on the porch…ok no worries on that. She made it to the door at least. It’s the getting out of bed that continues to be the problem.

She had layed down for a couple of hours watching TV yesterday afternoon when I heard the dreaded THUMP. I went in her room and sure enough there she was on the floor by her chair. I asked her if she was hurt and she said no. After making sure she wasn’t bleeding I grabbed the camera…I know..I’m evil…. but she was laughing about it so I snapped away.

Notice that she managed to put her gloves on first.

When I asked her why she did it she replied…”The chair was so close it seemed like a shame not to try”

She’s going through another NO SLEEP phase. I hope it catches up with her soon.

I could use a break.

PS Judy…this site is a SECRET remember? No references to any pictures I post please!

Some people don’t like squirrels. I happen to think they are cute. And as one of God’s creatures I feel they deserve a little TLC so I feed them.

Since we have a no pet lease I suggested mom use the squirrels as her pets…just don’t try to touch them Mary coz if they chew your face off I’ll whip your butt!

Mom wanted a picture of her with the flowers Rod sent:

It’s cold here today. I don’t want to turn the heat on but it’s looking like I might have to. I put gloves on mom when she went out just now lol!

The nurse should be calling any time now….more tomorrow.

No I am not talking about the deserted streets of New Orleans…I am talking about the relatively calm past few days we had with Mary.

Yesterday we watched the balloons launch again and then Jack misunderstood mom when she wanted to “walk”.  She meant she wanted to get up out of her chair and walk a bit and he thought she meant she wanted to go for a walk somewhere in her chair…I realized the misunderstanding right away but I told mom if Jack was willing to push her somewhere we might as well take advantage of it. We ended up going down to Union then on to the trail across the street, all the way down to the school, up to Van Buren, back down Valley Forge then up Costitution home. All in all about a mile and a 1/4…took us a good hour or so. The only bad part was the rise in the sidewalk here and there but Jack has spent time in a wheelchair and he knew a few tricks for navigating them.

Mexican food for supper then we sat outside some more then I wrestled mom into the bathtub for a hot bath. She didn’t go to bed until almost 9PM.

The last thing I said to her was “Please don’t try to get out of bed to use the bathroom…please please please… just wet your pants and I’ll clean you up, it’s not a big deal.”  She had not been able to pee since about 3PM so I knew she’d have to by the time she got up. Well, I reckon you know where I am going with  this….

About 6 AM I heard a big THUMP…yep sure enough she was flat on her face trying to get to the pot. I got Jack to help me pick her up and when I got her on the potty she had already pooped her pants. It’s back to a bowel movement every couple of hours.I am guessing that the instinct to get to the toilet is stronger than the realization that I told her to go ahead and mess her pants.  She peed a bit but not as much as you’d think after 16 hours. I’m a little worried but the nurse comes tomorrow and I’ll talk to her about it.

The thing to remember with Hospice is that they don’t try to CURE things…this is probably a result of the cancer spreading and our main goal is to keep her comfortable not to run her to the ER again and subject her to all the poking and prodding. She’s NOT in any pain so I’ll keep her warm, fed and clean and see what they say tomorrow. If it’s serious enough she will be admitted to the Hospice building on Pikes Peak for IVs to keep her hydrated and what not.

She’s resting now with the TV tuned to The Closer.