My mother didn't die tonight. I really thought she would.
We were both there, and she was using phrases like 'Good bye' and 'I think I'm dying' and 'I'm ready'. As we left the floor to let them change dressings and the like, her day nurse told us that her blood pressure was down about 30 points (systolic), her heart rate had dropped a bit, and the color of her skin around her feet was changing, getting paler. She looked as if she were going to die, sometime soon. Cadaverous.
When we came back, half-sure we'd be intercepted on the way to her room, she was awake (kind of), looking around at us. She wasn't ever alert, and some of what she said didn't make much sense, but she was clearly still alive.
After a bit, the nurse gave her some Ativan, and she dropped off to sleep within thirty seconds. Like a rock. I watched her heart rate and O2 saturation for a while, and they were fine, so we left.
We think it's going to happen this week, but we'll take what we can get.
2 comments:
We went through this same thing with my MIL and because we could not always be there, she died without us. But we had spent many hours at her side, she knew.
We were very glad to have gone in yesterday afternoon, and when they called last night and told us that they thought it was imminent, we went; though she was still zonked, we liked being there, and we talked with her. So, it was about as good as it can get. And yeah, we want to believe she heard us, too.
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