Saturday, March 9, 2013

Still sick although I think I'm getting better

I had a setback last night after venturing out to pick up some much needed supplies and regular prescriptions.  Standing in line at the pharmacy and again at the checkout was brutal for me.  Plus all the benches were full of people already sitting in them so I couldn't just sit for a while to rest.  I felt really weak so I crashed when I got home but by night I was back to a tight, constant cough.  And when I say constant, I mean there weren't 2 minutes in between coughing spasm all evening.  I had to sit up in bed slightly forward, leaning against a pillow to keep myself from leaning back on the pillows in order to get any kind of productive cough at all.

I bought a humidifier/vaporizer and used just the humidifier and that made things much worse.  After shutting it off, within a half hour the cough was loosening up and continued that way up to now with my coughing massively productive and up to an hour or two in between coughing spasms.  I only got an hour here and an hour there of sleep last night but I managed to get 3 hours in this afternoon.  I feel much better although I still feel like crap.

Unfortunately the product is back to indicating infection so if it hasn't cleared up at all by Monday I'll call for an appointment and see if I can get some antibiotics.

Obviously still no knitting and won't be tonight either.  As soon as I got home last night, the pharmacy robo-called to tell me I had two more prescriptions in so I'm going back to get those shortly.  I might wait until Tom gets home if he gets home soon.  He went in at 8 this morning after working from noon to 11 p.m. last night.  The other tube laser operator is on vacation so he's picking up some overtime to help us catch up a bit.  I hate to see him work this many hours and I wish I felt well enough to take care of him when he gets home.  I haven't even got the laundry done this week.

Maybe I'm on the downhill side of this now and can look forward to doing my part.  For some reason our water bill went up $10 last month so I need to work on getting that down.  I have some tricks I can do but obviously we can't stop showering to cut the bills a bit.

My older sister called today to tell me that our mother continues to fade but still insists on dialysis although with her dementia, no one is sure if she's really capable of making decisions anymore.  No one is going to force her to stop, of course, but she doesn't even know a dialysis day from a non-dialysis day so it's hard to say what the right answer is.  But the outcome is certain, even if the date isn't.  She's got blockage in her carotid artery and is a major stroke waiting to happen.  She didn't bounce back from the minor one last week.  Plus she still has an infection raging in her somewhere.  Two in fact.  And the cancer.  Yet she hangs on.  She only has weeks left and if she stopped dialysis, she could go home and spend her last days there until she slips into a coma and just moves on.  She hates the nursing home and hates being so dependent on everyone for everything from eating (she can't feed herself, has difficulty swallowing, and can't even go to the bathroom without two people helping her) and misses her home.  And Daddy.  He's not well and can't go to visit her as much as he would like.  Plus he's suffering from depression for all the pressure that's on him.

P is heading down that way this week to help out and my aunt is there off and on.  I mostly just listen whenever I talk to my sisters.  My only concern has been that no one "talk" my mother into something she doesn't really want but at this stage she doesn't know what she wants.  She doesn't really understand that death is inevitable and that there are two ways to do this:  peacefully and with great discomfort and pain.  It's hard to play the waiting game where you stop at just the right moment but not a second too soon.  I really think she's passed that right moment because her discomfort grows with every hour. 

Well, Tom should be home soon and I should probably stick the clothes in the dryer before I have to wash them again.  It would be nice to have socks that match but it's not a necessity.


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