I woke up this morning out of a strange dream. We
were in a my mother-in-law’s hospital room. Doctors and other personnel
were coming in, and removing tubes and medical equipment, and covering
her with perfectly clean brand new soft pink sheets. Someone asked them
what they were doing and another said, "We're taking out the toothpicks."
She had a serious stroke in January,
and it truly seems that she is only being held together now by toothpicks.
In her case, no one knew how long
it had been since the stroke began, so they were unable to give her
the drug which can help to reverse the effects, if given within two
hours of the onset. As a result, she is paralyzed on her whole right
side, with no really significant expectation of regaining any use of
that side. She also had another small bleed out a couple of days later
which took away the tiniest bit of movement in her right foot. She has
been able to regain some of her speech, and can communicate, if you
pay attention and translate. But she still has a lot of difficulty finding
the right words to say and she sometimes is really simply not all there
mentally. In the lucid moments, she still fully understands and is aware
of her situation and what's going on around her. Being aware is not
necessarily a blessing.
Because of her need for round the
clock care, she had to be transferred to a nursing home. She hates this,
of course, and we do also. Even a pretty decent nursing home is a very
sad place for people in her state. The personnel and the administrators
there seem perfectly fine and caring as far as we can tell, but there
are simply not enough personnel to provide all of the care everyone
needs. It's a non-profit home, so although the surroundings are adequate...that's
all they are, and it's a little rough around the edges in the aesthetic
department.
I've never personally known anyone
who has had a stroke until now, but I am here to testify that it is
a very cruel thing--the meanest thing I've seen so far, maybe excepting
terminal cancer. I never want to have a stroke, and I pray that when
it is my time I will simply drop dead as has happened in the past to
most of my relatives who have died. I sure plan to have my advance directives
in place so that no one brings me back to live as a stroke victim as
has happened to my mother in law.
Before this, she was an active 83
year old, volunteering twice a week at a charity thrift store, helping
to deliver meals on wheels to other seniors in her building. Everyone
she knew there loved her because she was such a kind and caring person.
The manager of the building cried when we told her she had a stroke
and would not be returning. She enjoyed writing letters to her friends
and talking on the phone, neither of which she can do now.
Now she's miserably unhappy, and
not adjusting at all well to the nursing home.
She's been back in the hospital
again for a week, and I think she is in much worse shape that she was
even last week. We talked to her doctor yesterday and he said he was
having a hard time adjusting her meds enough so that she could be taken
care of in the home. He said that he was half tempted to just take her
off all of her medications and let nature take it's course. My husband
agreed that that might be a good idea.
It's time to take the toothpicks
out and give her those nice clean comforting brand new soft pink sheets.