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Wednesday 16 October 2002

Oh my lord, I am tired. I understand it's pomegranite season. I would enjoy a pomegranite after an uninterrupted night's sleep. woke up many times. Held my mom's hand from 4:00 to 8:00 because she was scared. I worked out a way to prop up my arm and sleep at the same time to arrange this. I accidentally gave her some meds every 2 hours instead of every four, but it doesn't matter, because the dosage was less than half of the maximum. Except this afternoon I inadvertantly went .3ml over the max, but not all at once. anyway, she still looks pained.

the hospice nurse came by today and doubled the amount of lorazepam I could give mom after I complained that the previous maximum dose was not stop her from shaking sometimes. So maybe this other medication actually has a higher maximum dose also. Anyway, the new max dose of lorazepam is still not enough to stop her from twitching. Margie says all dying people twitch and nothing you give them will stop it. I think she's right on this.

Everyone comes over and marvels how tough my mom is. She's one tough woman. things I didn't know about my mom: hidden, inner toughness. I think I should have suspected. Don't know her as well as I should.

I'm thinking about going to esperanto class, except i get angsty when i'm away for too long, cuz what if something hapened or something? Sheesh. I am foolish. The hospice nurse had to call my mom's doctor to report that my mom has high blood pressure. Yeah, let's start her on high blood pressure medication right wawy! Otherwise, she might have a stroke or something! anyway, the doctor made a note of it and told us not to do anything. My mom has always had high blood pressure, especially when she's stressed. I imagine she must be stressed right now.

after more than a day of not reacting to anything, she nodded in responce to a couple of questions today. One of which had to do with drinking water. She's in favor of it. She's gotten so thirsty, she bites the glycerin sawbs we use on her mouth. So i gave her water and fruit juice 0.1 mililiter at a time. She hasn't had very much. I've brewed some mint tea for next time. I think the fruit juice might be hard on her stomach, even though she only had 4 mililiters of it or so. anyway, she liked the juice. She squeezed brother robert's hand when he said hello. she's tough.

I'm not tough. Christi wants to sleep at home tonight. Me too. But who will spring to the rescue if mom starts wet respirating again? Prolly not me. I had to make christi wear my watch because the watch alarm no longer wakes me up. My dad wanted to give me a louder alarm clock. I said, "but I don't want to wake up mom." he said, 'there's not much danger of that." but then she did wake up today a little bit, sort of, so you never know.

I talked to him about euthanasia. he says that because it might be a mistake one in a hundred times, it should never be done. I said, "do you think mom is going to wake up again?" no, this wouldn't be one of those times that it would be a mistake. but if you're going to have rules, you need to follow them all the time. I asked if this is like Socrates refusing to escape from prison, because it was important to always respect the law, even if it was wrong in this case. He says yes. My dad is definitely not a post-modernist. no situational ethics for him. The rules are rules and they're right or they wouldn't be rules. He votes libretarian, but he's a republican at heart. He says that people say that we're nicer to cats because we put them to sleep when they're suffering and dying, but we can also sell cats for vivesection, so uh... I didn't quite follow his logic. Some of the ways we treat pets differently than people are worse than how we treat people, so every way we treat cats differently than people must be worse? I don't know. He ran out of the house to work before he could clarify himself. By the time he might suspect that he's wrong, it will be too late... I'd respect his wishes anyway.

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