Evening of April 30, 2020, I hadn’t received the next dreadful update, informing me mom died--especially since I was given a dreadful estimate of three days.
At 11 p.m. I called the nurses station at Shady Pines to inquire about mom’s status. I said I knew mom was receiving hospice care and was receiving morphine. I knew she had a DNR and a DNH, and no feeding tube, but asked if she was receiving fluids. The nurse told me she gets fluids when she eats. I was surprised, “I thought she was asleep for the past three days—are you telling me she was awake?” The nurse said mom was “alert” and they were trying to get her to eat when she woke up.
Alert? Awake? I avoided calling her thinking she was borked out of her mind on morphine. The person who told me this is an idiot. Just because her eyes opened when they said her name—that doesn’t mean she was awake and engaging in the world around her--and it certainly doesn't mean she's engaged enough with the world to take in sustenance and fluids.
I was told to try to call the nurses station the next day to have an aide go to mom’s room to get mom’s phone handy so I could call. If she was awake and afraid, I didn’t want her feeling alone and abandoned.
I called the next day and did as I was told. I waited a while before calling mom’s cell phone. And unlike all the times before where it would ring and then the voicemail would kick on and I couldn’t leave a voicemail because she refused to empty the voicemail box—this time the phone didn’t ring, and went directly to voicemail—her aides weren’t keeping the phone charged up for her. It makes me wonder what the hell the aides were doing at all for her--given there were only TWO. And when I spoke to mom on the 10th, she said she was eating, and given there were only two aides, she was given the choice of bed time--either 3 p.m. or 11 p.m. If she was lucky, it appears, she'd see an aide ONCE during their 8 hour shift.
Little did I know, several days before, my sister broke her year long silence and called mom. And mom picked back up right where they left off in March 2019 as if there wasn’t a year of silence in the interim. There was no discussion. There was no teary reconciliation. It was back to the routine as it had always been for mom--phone call after phone call. Mom called her every day several times a day, anxious and confused and afraid.
My sister took every call until the day when the calls stopped—and mom stopped answering her phone.
At 11 p.m. I called the nurses station at Shady Pines to inquire about mom’s status. I said I knew mom was receiving hospice care and was receiving morphine. I knew she had a DNR and a DNH, and no feeding tube, but asked if she was receiving fluids. The nurse told me she gets fluids when she eats. I was surprised, “I thought she was asleep for the past three days—are you telling me she was awake?” The nurse said mom was “alert” and they were trying to get her to eat when she woke up.
Alert? Awake? I avoided calling her thinking she was borked out of her mind on morphine. The person who told me this is an idiot. Just because her eyes opened when they said her name—that doesn’t mean she was awake and engaging in the world around her--and it certainly doesn't mean she's engaged enough with the world to take in sustenance and fluids.
I was told to try to call the nurses station the next day to have an aide go to mom’s room to get mom’s phone handy so I could call. If she was awake and afraid, I didn’t want her feeling alone and abandoned.
I called the next day and did as I was told. I waited a while before calling mom’s cell phone. And unlike all the times before where it would ring and then the voicemail would kick on and I couldn’t leave a voicemail because she refused to empty the voicemail box—this time the phone didn’t ring, and went directly to voicemail—her aides weren’t keeping the phone charged up for her. It makes me wonder what the hell the aides were doing at all for her--given there were only TWO. And when I spoke to mom on the 10th, she said she was eating, and given there were only two aides, she was given the choice of bed time--either 3 p.m. or 11 p.m. If she was lucky, it appears, she'd see an aide ONCE during their 8 hour shift.
Little did I know, several days before, my sister broke her year long silence and called mom. And mom picked back up right where they left off in March 2019 as if there wasn’t a year of silence in the interim. There was no discussion. There was no teary reconciliation. It was back to the routine as it had always been for mom--phone call after phone call. Mom called her every day several times a day, anxious and confused and afraid.
My sister took every call until the day when the calls stopped—and mom stopped answering her phone.
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