So yesterday the nurses stopped the majority of my Grandma’s medication and reduced her tube feed a little bit. She’s in what you would call palliative care, so now it’s all up to her when she wants to go. For those of you who don’t know what palliative care is the World Health Organization defines Palliative Care as:
Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.
I thought hearing the update from my mom today would make things easier on us, but the anticipation is still there, and it’s getting worse now. None of you have ever met my Grandma, but she is such a strong, independent and stubborn woman, so the fact that now her days are up to her scares me because I know she’s stubborn enough to keep going like this for months or even another year.
They took her off the thyroid medication, blood thinner, antibiotics for her pneumonia and as I said before they reduced her tube feed because they can’t legally remove it from her. The scariest thing is that she’s no longer on the blood thinner that has been keeping her blood clots in the brain and heart from getting bigger and causing another stroke or heart attack.
With all of this happening my mom and I have been talking and we all agree that we think Grandma needs to hear that it’s alright if she wants to let go. Truth be told I avoided going to visit her today because I know what I eventually have to say, and I don’t want to have an end of life talk with my Grandma. Even up until now I’ve been her Grand-baby, and I don’t want to say goodbye to her and give her that permission to go. I know I have to tell her that I’ll be alright, that I’ll get through it but I don’t know how much I believe it. I’m already fighting like hell to keep it together. I’m working my ass off in college because of her, I’m trying like hell to keep my recovery for her. I want to be alright because I know she always worried about me and everyone else.
Being in this position isn’t easy. The past few months her nurses have told us she wasn’t going to pull through this pneumonia but Grandma always did. So now with her being in palliative care I don’t even know what to expect. I don’t want her to die, I’d give anything to have her stay alive and be my Grandma again, but I don’t want her being this hollow shell of a person any more.
I live everyday wondering if my life is going to change forever that day. I never go without my phone any longer and when I’m out I have the ringer on and I always dread the day I see my moms name pop up on my phone at an odd time of the day. It’s all killing my mom too. She’s reaching a breaking point with this and she’s not herself as of late. She seems distant and exhausted. I understand why she is the way she is, I just wish there was something more I could do for her to help get her through this.
Life As I Know It 