Communication
How do you tell someone the most important yet distressing news they will ever hear?
My mother is dying. And she doesn't get it. Her doctor has sent her home to be cared for by hospice. She knows what hospice means. She knows that she is in more pain than she's been in to date. She knows that she's been given a morphine pump so that she can just dose herself whenever she hurts.
Yet yesterday, when she got me alone, she talked about how much "whispering" is done in other rooms. She said, "I hope y'all aren't not telling me that I'm dying. I'm gonna call my doctor tomorrow to see what my next step should be. We've got to get this taken care of."
I just let her talk, or rather, let the morphine talk. She still has plenty of lucid times, but that morphine gets hold of her brain. She forgets simple facts. She can't keep straight when the District Convention was because various family members have gone to so many different ones. In the same conversation on Sunday, she asked me four times what day it was. Then she got annoyed with herself because she realized that she'd already asked that question. I try to ease her frustration by reminding her that morphine is made from opium, so it's going to make her a little cloudy - anyone taking it would experience the same confusion.
Given her opiate-based confusion, I just don't think it makes sense to be blunt to her. The doctor won't give us a time frame but I think we've probably got around 3 - 4 months. Her oncologist has told us that there is nothing more he can do. He assured us that he finally had to follow this same course of action with each of his own parents. And he doesn't have the comforting hope of the resurrection.
It's not that we haven't told her. Her doctor did tell her that he couldn't do anything else for her. I guess he didn't actually say the phrase, "I'm sending you home to die." But what good would that do. Instead, we're trying to make her comfortable. We're trying to keep her distracted with visits from friends. Surely she will eventually notice that she's wasting away. Or maybe the morphine will completely have control of her by that time and she won't know a thing.
This has not been a good year.
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My mother is dying. And she doesn't get it. Her doctor has sent her home to be cared for by hospice. She knows what hospice means. She knows that she is in more pain than she's been in to date. She knows that she's been given a morphine pump so that she can just dose herself whenever she hurts.
Yet yesterday, when she got me alone, she talked about how much "whispering" is done in other rooms. She said, "I hope y'all aren't not telling me that I'm dying. I'm gonna call my doctor tomorrow to see what my next step should be. We've got to get this taken care of."
I just let her talk, or rather, let the morphine talk. She still has plenty of lucid times, but that morphine gets hold of her brain. She forgets simple facts. She can't keep straight when the District Convention was because various family members have gone to so many different ones. In the same conversation on Sunday, she asked me four times what day it was. Then she got annoyed with herself because she realized that she'd already asked that question. I try to ease her frustration by reminding her that morphine is made from opium, so it's going to make her a little cloudy - anyone taking it would experience the same confusion.
Given her opiate-based confusion, I just don't think it makes sense to be blunt to her. The doctor won't give us a time frame but I think we've probably got around 3 - 4 months. Her oncologist has told us that there is nothing more he can do. He assured us that he finally had to follow this same course of action with each of his own parents. And he doesn't have the comforting hope of the resurrection.
It's not that we haven't told her. Her doctor did tell her that he couldn't do anything else for her. I guess he didn't actually say the phrase, "I'm sending you home to die." But what good would that do. Instead, we're trying to make her comfortable. We're trying to keep her distracted with visits from friends. Surely she will eventually notice that she's wasting away. Or maybe the morphine will completely have control of her by that time and she won't know a thing.
This has not been a good year.
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1 Comments:
Hugging you.
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