My grandfather's retirement community has officially moved him to the nursing home, and he has had a bad week, even before the official decision. He has been growing weaker and weaker. Saturday morning he had an unresponsive episode; they got him into bed and he woke up, and then he asked to go to the hospital. The hospital gave him some percoset and sent him back to the nursing home. He kept saying "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do." He told us he was ready to go. Dolts that we are, we finally realized he was asking how to go about leaving. He's been refusing to eat and take his supplement for about a week now. We told him all we could do is make him comfortable, and he could stop fighting if he wanted.
Saturday night he refused to take any of his medication, and again this morning. He'll only take the morphine and the oxygen. Multiple myeloma is one of the more painful kinds of cancer, and he had been refusing the pain medicine. The nurse told us that was actually counter productive to his wishes, because then the body is tense and fighting, rather than relaxing into death. When he was telling us "I don't know what to do" we told him to take the pain medicine and just relax, to rest, and let go.
It won't be long now.
I'm around if you need me.
Posted by: Uncle Orca | April 23, 2007 at 12:21 AM