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Dad gets up for breakfast, watches football, and helps a bit around the house. Morale is significantly better. Dramatic improvement over lying in bed 20 hours a day.
This, to me, is a huge improvement. Mom on the other hand is slightly unimpressed. Not sure what's going on there, but perhaps she's still mentally present in the past few months rather than a few days of improvement.
They are awaiting some test results to confirm that the treatment addressed the cancer. She's under the impression that she will log on to their patient portal and see both the results and medical interpretation of same. Not sure that is what will happen, but we will see.
Thank you for the update.
It very much seems that your father is in remission.
What kind of cancer does your father have? What stage is ii in?
Test results are usually always present on a patient's online portal, but interpreting them is a totally different story. When I received m y mother's bone marrow test biopsies online, it took my an hour or two of research to understand just a small part of it.
Things broke bad very quickly Sunday. What my mom is describing as "severe deterioration" in Dad's physical and mental(!) health.
The hospice people picked him up Monday. Mom indicated that she hasn't slept in a bit and needs a day or two to get dad settled and catch her breath.
She specifically asked that my brother and I stand down and NOT just show up.
A peculiar situation. I hope that she and dad were able to have Serious Conversations before this. I know that for years they've talked about death with dignity, and have never been fans of long sickly hospice scenarios.
The typical narrative of go to my father's bedside, thank him for all the good times, cue music....that's not how this family works.
My brother, currently drug free and out of prison is an "X" in this equation. He and I did email (because I blocked his phone number years ago) and he seems "switched on" and gets the seriousness of this situation.
family dynamics at times like this are another factor that raises the stress level. we went through two of these end of life situations in our extended family late last year and neither would have qualified for a hallmark movie. (way too much weirdness and tension) honestly, i don't know any "normal" families.
i will keep you in my thoughts and wish for peace and healing for all affected.
No one has a perfect family; in fact, all families have at least some dysfunction. My heart goes out to you at this time.
One word of comfort: we all have to go through things like this in life - no one is exempt.
By the way, I had a feeling that things would be taking a turn for the worse at some point because of your father's advanced age.
Take good care of yourself and please keep us updated.
Prayers for your family and especially your mom. She is under an incredible amount of stress. Yes, family dynamics never seem to help but at least in this case your mom is able to act on her own. I’m so sorry your family is going through this.
Yowzers. The days ran together. Will provide a run down. Might put it in two separate posts for readability.
2/6-Mom called later in the day highly distressed. Dad was burning in like a meteor. I made a reservation and got on a plane early on...
2/7-The hospice place was really nice. Dad looked really bad and was non-responsive to anything. Mom was...fine. Apparently on 2/5 my brother had caused some significant drama that upset mom even more. Dad apparently had a stroke ,and there were apparently multiple types of cancer.
2/8-Got to hospice place early morning. Mom......doing ok. Saw my brother for the first time in 30 years. Dad was doing that agonal breathing. Not sure if mom recognized it for what it was. Mom was insistent that she, my brother and I go out to lunch together. Out of character for her but I'm flexible. Turns out that the lunch place was her and Dad's "special lunch place."
Out of courtesy my brother and I silenced our phones.
Sure enough that's when The Call came. The hospice people didn't have my mom's cell number.
So, I got to break the news to my mom.
Drove back to hospice. Mom is convinced that Dad was aware that we were going to lunch and decided to "let go" while we were at lunch. I am ambivalent on this. I know that there are differences of opinion on how aware non-responsive people are.
There are grandkids involved. Mom wanted to be the one who notified the grandkids. My brother wanted to act like a father and notify them after agreeing to let mom do the notifications. Drama ensued.
Cremation guy was super professional, and almost too polished. $1000 for a straight forward cremation. Mom bought a special urn for him.
Mom has more friends than I realized, which is great news. That being said she's a 74 year old widow who lives 2000+ miles from me. I'm not sure what her plans her. As said before, fiscally she's in great shape, so she's got options.
Drama at the end of the trip between my mom and brother. Result being she told him to gtfo out of the house and leave. He did so without the outrageous behavior he's demonstrated in the past.
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