A long Wednesday

Mary is in full Comfort Care now.  Her heart and lungs are still working away while her liver, kidneys, brain and other organs are close to fully shutting down if they have not already.  For example, her foley collection device amount for the past 12 hours is damn near zero.  Comfort care means no blood tests, no temperature or blood pressure tests, none of the routine hospital things that cause irritation or discomfort to the patient. We are in a very quiet single room and they have set up a twin sized rollaway bed for the overnight family member.  Tonight it is me.

About noontime today, we thought she would leave us.  She then muscled through a few tough hours.  As of 10PM tonight she has an oxygen feed, a low flow saline IV, a morphine drip and on demand ativan to provide comfort during the night.  None of the staff is willing to predict about Mary now. She has blown through all of the predictions we have collected so far.  The spiritual care provider, a wonderful woman named Lori, said that she wants the doctors to stop giving predictions because they are never right.

In Mary's case it is clear that it will be soon.  She has not moved an arm or a leg all day today.  She is not cognizant of us on any level that we can detect.  It is highly unlikely she will make it through tomorrow.

Part of knowing Mary is knowing how precise she was with words.  And, one of the words that used to drive her crazy was the euphemism "pass" instead of "die".  When my father died in 1996, Mary often questioned my use of the expression, "...my father passed away...".
Mary would say, "Why don't you say 'he died', why use the word 'pass'? After all, what he did was die."
Now here we are and it is Mary who is about to die.  Not pass, not expire, none of those 'soft' terms.  Mary wants us to say that she died.  So I am not being brutal or insensitive or difficult. I am honoring the wishes of my beloved spouse to use the terms she preferred we use.

Tomorrow, Daniel heads back to Pennsylvania and Lara, Scott and the girls head home to Pasadena.  Reenie changed her ticket to stay through Tuesday next week to help me with the next steps after Mary...dies.

And Mary will die soon.  The longer she goes on, the sooner it is likely to happen.   There is no escape from liver failure.

I will keep you posted.