My mom is lying dying and i'm watching general hospital. i know the names of several people in it now. i didn't even ask the hospice nurse about steroids. how long has she got? a week? two? it's soon. nobody on general hospital dies this way. for being around a hospital, they have remarkably few sick people. the occassional "accident" victim (was it really an accident?) more amnesia that you can shake a stick at, even cancer sometimes, but not this kind. tv cancer people alsways get to make a sensible goodbye and then die painlessly. brain cancer is pretty painless, tho. but no sensible goodbyes. when my mom was in the hospital and before she had an operation, she was on steroids and our family had gathered. she thought she was going to die that night. she was trying to have a deathbed scene. she was talking about me inheritting her jewlry, but she couldn't talk. we could figure out what she was saying eventually, but when we realized the gist, we stopped playing along. we knew she'd be alive in the morning. the next day, she kept repeating, "i thought i was cooked!" she was so happy and surprised to still be alive. we've never repated that deathbed scene. i don't know what her last wants and will is. i don't care very much about how her stuff will be divided up. i certainly don't need a year's salry worth of shop-at-home jewlry. somebody on general hospital has been shot. he's kidnapped a doctor to take out the bullet. none of these people have jobs. even the doctors don't show up to work or do surgery except when they're captive. they don't even die. they just disappear for a season and then whoops, the wrong guy has been buried or something. and they have perfect hair in the hospital. people with head injuries don't get shaved patches. but despite all this wonderfulness and their perfect hair, they're always unhappy. half the time they're trying to kill each other. don't they know it's futile? these people hardly ever die. yet all the tv commercials are for pharmaceuticals. medicine to fight side fx of chemo. nothing to forestall death. the hospice nurse says a couple of days.