ARCHIVES - 1996 to FOREVER

This continued until about 22:00, when she truly went to sleep.

And I got to sleep around 03:30... and I was wakened at 04:00 by the click of her walker. She was going to the bathroom, and not far from her destination before I finally woke up enough to know what was happening.

And she was relatively lucid until I got her back into bed... and then she started in again, until about 08:00, when she went to sleep again.

I laid back down, but to no avail.

I woke her up at 10:00 and gave her the morning meds; she was lucid for about five minutes, then she started talking to someone else that she thought was in the room.

I told her that we were alone, then she told me that she was talking to the cat, and gave me a smirk like she thought that she was being clever. When I pointed out that there were no cats there, she said, "I know that: I'm not stupid, you know!"

And I have been talking down to her, as one would with a child, so that I can get her to understand... I need to stop that, and I've been trying my best.

She doesn't have enough wind to talk strongly enough to be understood, and that, combined with the fact that she can't find the right words, is very frustrating to her.

Her cousin Jan can in about 11:00, I think it was... about this point I lost track of the time and the sequence of events, so the following may not be actually factually correct, but is still the essence of the day... I'm sure that you'll understand.

After Jan had been here about an hour, and Karen had tried to get out of bed about four times, Jan went on a mission to get back Karen's pillow, which we'd left behind at Hospice when we left on Friday; while she was there, she had talked to one of the nurses and explained the situation (including, I'm sure, the fact that I was probably disqualifying myself as a good caregiver because of fatigue) and she called the on-call nurse, who was seeing another client. The nurse would be over sometime this afternoon, she said.

In the meanwhile, Kim had come over, and then Lynn, Karen's best friend when I met her, had come to see her.

Shortly after Lynn left, the nurse came... O'wait, Kim came after the nurse was here, 'cause she parked behind the nurse, and had to move her vehicle when the nurse left.

So the nurse talked to Karen, offering to put a catheter in, so Karen wouldn't have to go to the bathroom... and Karen turned that offer down, as well as any right-minded person would do. However, it will have to happen sooner or later, I'm sure.

After talking with Jan, and giving me the once-over several times, the nurse said that she would make arrangements for what they called respite care... something that Medicare will pay for, except for $5/day, which I will, of course, gladly pay.

Respite care only works for six nights and seven days, though... but the nurse said that the doc there has a reputation for changing respite care over to in-patient care pretty readily.

The nurse was going to make arrangements and call me back... and I got the call within the hour, and Jan and Kim and I got Karen out to the car, which was quite a trick. The wheelchair wouldn't go into her room, so I had her sit in an office chair with wheels and rolled her out into the living room, where we transferred her to the wheelchair. Then we had to negotiate two steps going down to the dining room, and then another eight-inch drop to the concrete on the patio and then into the car.

Karen objected a little at first when I told her that she was going back, and then she appeared to accept it after I told her that I couldn't take good enough care of her here at home... and in the car she asked me why I took her home in the first place... this kind of flabbergasted me, and I told her that I did it because she wanted her to go and that I loved her and wanted her to have everything that she wanted.

She said, "Just like always, huh?" and then she started talking to Patrick and Brian... the lucidity was there one minute and gone the next.

We got her settled in in a much bigger room than she had the first time... the nurse had noticed that Karen had so many friends that the smaller room was overcrowded, so she made the change.

Cousin Rowena came in with her daughter Brooke, who had just driven in from Albuquerque... I had never met Brooke, before and, like her mother, she is a charming lady.

Shortly after they left, Jan and I left... I'm just hoping that Karen does OK tonight, I will be back early in the morning after I get a good night's sleep.

I keep thinking that I should feel guilty about having to take Karen back, but I don't... a few more days/nights like this would have deteriorated my health enough where I would have been no use to Karen or anyone else.

After I got home, I made most of the necessary phone calls and delegated some of the others....

Debbie and Jeff will be down tomorrow, and Reta will be up from Oklahoma in the afternoon....

There are so many people that love Karen ... and we will all be so sad when she is no longer part of our world.

And I am bone-tired, and I haven't had a shower since Friday morning... so that's next on the agenda, after I get my pills fixed for the week. Then bed, and I'll sleep for as long as I can.

Fuck cancer. Just fuck it.