After three months of bouncing back and forth between hospitals and rehab centers, the decision has been made to call in hospice and allow mom to go home. She has been stroking continuously during the previous 12 weeks, losing a piece of herself each time. The only pain she has experienced during this period was from the daily blood tests, MRI’s with contrast and other invasive tests that left her black and blue and exhausted. Her strokes are painless. Actually, we only know they are happening when she becomes childlike and silly followed by more degradation of her speech.
As a result of the loss of her speech, we are not always certain of her mental state. The repetitive questions that the doctors used to ascertain her mental clarity were now useless. She could no longer answer, “Do you know where you are? Do you know what year it is?” The humor Mom and the rest of us found in her answering those questions 20 times a day gave way to sadness as the year became 1948 and the name of the hospital became unintelligible.
I am personally relived that Mom is going home and that hospice will be involved. I wanted to do this two months ago but some in the family were not yet ready to admit that medicine and the people in the white coats did not have all the answers. Mom is dying and we as human beings can do nothing to change that fact. Two months earlier, Mom, my sister and I were in her room at the rehab center. We had just helped her dress for bed and she was now settled into the bed ready to sleep. She looked up at me and said, “Me go home”. I was startled by the childlike structure of her sentence and a wave of emotion came over me at her request. I softly said, “I know”. She then said, “E.T. go home “. I caught my breath, “Yes, E.T. go home.” Finally before drifting off to sleep she said, “Does anybody get to go home from this place.” I left the room in tears.
We are fortunate to live in a country that has first class healthcare and services for the sick and injured. But many have come to believe that the medical profession can “cure” aging and dying. That just isn’t possible. Additionally, doctors and other healthcare professional cannot unilaterally manage the healthcare of another. It is a team sport. If one is not willing to eat a healthy diet, exercise and follow basic health guidelines then the expectation that you will see your hundredth birthday is unrealistic. (Yes, yes…somebody always mentions the “guy” who drank scotch along with his cigars every day and lived to be a 100. He is the exception to the rule.)
But the decision has been made and Mom is going home. Going home to the world that my father and mother created; to the place that houses her memories and to the place that she feels safe. Her home will not be the same as she left it. Twenty-four hour healthcare givers will be in and out to help her with the daily tasks of living. She appears to understand that this is a condition of her going home and she is still very excited to be going home. I don’t know if mom understand what it means to go home under these circumstance but for the first time in three months she is happy.