Kay - October 20, 2008

Anacortes Update:

Greetings again from the Skagit Valley, there have been some changes that we wanted to report concerning Kay. She seemed to be slowly regaining her strength after the blood pressure drop episode and the ER trip on the 9th through Wednesday night the 15th when we put her to bed pretty much as we always do by escorting her in to her room and tucking her in. It was apparent to Sarah on Thursday morning that something was very different. Mom was extremely lethargic and unresponsive all day and it was very difficult to feed her or get her to sip juice or do anything else but sleep in a slumped position on the couch. When I arrived home from work that’s where she was and she didn’t respond to my voice or to any attempts that we made to rouse her, her breathing was a bit labored and we truly thought that this was her time to shut down and go on to heaven.

Nothing changed throughout the evening and we had to carry her to bed for what we thought would be the last time. She was still with us in the morning, but there was no significant change in her condition. We had a Dr. appt. scheduled for 2:15 as a follow up to the previous week’s ER visit, so I rented a wheel chair and we managed with great difficulty to get her from house to car to Dr’s office. We felt that he had to see in her in this state and hopefully let us know what was going on. It was very unsettling to see her slumped in the chair with little or no response to anything. She had a slight temperature, but the rest of her vitals were, to our surprise, very close to what is normal for her. Doc could not explain it. He thought it might be a urinary tract infection that her body was shutting down to fight off or based on her appearance, maybe her body was shutting down to say goodbye. It was his idea to refer us to hospice in case her condition did not improve. He gave us a sample kit to try and obtain a urine sample if possible. We tried, but guess what? Not possible!

I did receive a call that evening from a very kind hospice care worker who listened in detail to my account of how Mom was doing and what had transpired over the last couple days. Because of the possibility of an infection going on and not conclusively the end of a life, she decided to hold off on an evaluation until Monday and left her number in case things got worse over the weekend. It is Monday afternoon as I write this and I don’t know if anyone has called Sarah yet for an update. Kay has improved a little bit, she is still very unresponsive to stimulus and just wants to sleep all day. Sarah is waiting for me to get home to help get her up and change her skirt and undergarment. She is not easy to move around without a little bit of cooperation. We don’t know if this is a hospice situation, we will see what the experts have to say if they choose to complete an evaluation. It seems to me that you need to have both feet in the grave and both feet on banana peels to be considered for hospice care, but time will tell. I will update again as we see how the rest of the week goes.

Thanks for your continued prayers!