Just a few quick notes before I finally hit the sack.
    Yep, we're still tripping the dark fantastic. I'm hoping we'll be able to get ourselves back to relatively decent hours before Tuesday, when the Hospice RN shows up between 1300 and 1400. Mom and I talked about it and agreed it would probably be a good idea to be awake and dressed to greet the man when he arrives.
    The heat was finally broken by a glorious rain and thunder storm this evening. Although the mugginess continues, when it's cool that's not a problem for me. The only problem it creates for my mother is that she prefers dry weather. Regardless, even she agreed that the cool breeze coming in the windows when I turned off the a/c as the rain approached was "nice". That's about as good as she'll ever give a rain storm or cool weather. We didn't have her birthday dinner today. From looking at the weather, we're planning it for later this week when the temperature drops into the low 80's and it's rained and cooled a few more days. Then, the house should be ready for stove/oven duty.
    Last quick note: I finally figured out what's been plaguing my mother regarding her increasing reluctance and ability to move around under "her own steam" (relatively speaking: I haven't been paying attention to the fact that she's been sweating at night and during her naps, even though I've noticed it, and haven't been increasing her fluid intake when she's up. This morning when I realized this I immediately took steps to alleviate the situation and she's fine and moving around on her own, now...as reported in this most recent post over at the new movement journal. I'm so glad she remains here at home. I don't even want to imagine what wouldn't have happened if she'd been dehydrating at a "sniff". Everyone would have probably decided, with very little observation, especially since she's "on hospice" that she was on the way out, would have made the assumption that her dehydration and lack of thirst was an indication of this (even though she's lacked reliable thirst for more than a few years, now), done nothing except "make her comfortable", probably with rubberizing drugs, and, sure enough, within a week or so the prophecy would have been fulfilled.
    Which reminds me...I want to write about my thoughts on "comfort care" and "palliation". But, I'm dragging, here, now...and I've got some errands to run when I awaken...assuming that I awaken an hour or so before it's time to awaken Mom (fingers crossed). Time for bed.
    Later.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 03:00   email  this post