You are right, velvetjones. You can’t make this decision for them, and you can’t make it make sense to you. I disagree with them, too, but it is their decision, if he can’t make it for himself.
I feel really good that my mom wants comfort care only, as that is what I would want for myself, too.
Lately my one wish is that I die before I can’t wipe my own butt.
Dad has had a couple of “bad” days so we’ve been having end of life conversations with my mother in law. She’s almost 90, she has (I believe) early stage Alzheimer’s.
She keeps saying that as long as he’s not in pain and as long as his heart is strong he’ll continue to live, right? We have tried to talk about quality of life but it falls on deaf ears. She doesn’t want to think about that , she only wants him to keep on living even if it means a feeding tube and the remainder of his days in a nursing home. At least he’s alive, right?
This conversation happened last night with me pointing out his quality of life and her replying with “as long as he’s still alive” until my husband stomped out of the room shouting “enough”.
Later last night I started to think about her quality of life. Because dad’s the one in the hospital we spend all of our time thinking about his quality of life and rightly so but what about her. She’d be devastated if he dies. Taking care of him, in one way or another, as a wife and later as a care taker has been her life’s work. It occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t wrong to want him to be alive for her sake.
I don’t know, I still don’t have any answers. But I was reminded last night again that I need to butt out and keep my mouth shut. That’s very hard for me but I really need to work on that.
Quality of life… that’s what we forget about sometimes. My father died last week, and a few days before, he was still there enough to insist that he not go to the hospital for ‘heroic measures’, and we and the nursing home respected that. My sister found this essay on not eating or drinking that made things a lot clearer, and I wish I’d read it sooner.
If you ever truly want to be seriously depressed to your very core, go visit a sibling in a nursing home.
Mine has his brain working just fine. His body has betrayed him through the crap shoot of genetics and he cannot feed himself or pretty much anything.
He’s 51. If he lasts two more years, he’ll outlive our father. God, that’s a horrible fucking thought. And he died without us knowing he had MD at the time. He died of lung cancer, an nice respectable quicker killing disease.
Now, take your tweener kids to see their Uncle every so often.
The old people that are warehoused in these places are all drooling and catatonic.
My brother is not.
When I get home from these laugh-riot times ( not) I lay in bed, my soul is just wrung out and and cannot cry. I wish I could cry. It’s just not fair for him, my mom or our family. and he’s the last one and he’s determined to …i dunno …ride what ever it is out. Fuck hope.
When I go, every fucking time with the kids, I tell them one day, when they are settled in their careers and families and lives, they will get a visit from the police telling them that their Mom blew her head off. I refuse to waste away like those people. I refuse to be a burden to my children and a problem emotionally and financially to them. We all deserve a more dignified ending.
Suicide Booths from Futurerama are looking better every day.
I thought I’d update this thread.
My father in law has passed away. He died at around 2:00 this morning. Went peacefully in his sleep in the nursing home. He’d been in “comfort care” for the past week or so. He couldn’t swallow consistently and had been refusing food. We had to sign a “do not hospitalize” and had long talks with the doctor. Ultimately we decided a feeding tube or peg wasn’t a good idea. The doctor said there was little hope of a meaningful recovery.
So today we’re making phone calls and finalizing funeral arrangements and doing all of that necessary stuff.
He was a remarkable man and I’m happy to have known him however briefly. I’m glad that we can concentrate on the wonderful 87 years he had when he was well and let go of these last few weeks.
RIP
I am sorry, velvetjones, that your father in law and your family had such a difficult time with his death. I hope you all find peace now.
My condolences, Velvet.
Healing thoughts, velvet to you and yours.
Thank you for the update. May this bring peace to you and your family.
I have no words to help, I’m guessing that there are none. But you are in my thoughts.
I’m sorry, velvet. I’m glad this last states wasn’t years and years long. All suffering feels like too much, though.
Best wishes for your family and especially your MIL.
My father worked the day he died. Then collapsed and, although he survived in ICU for a couple hours, that was that. That’s the way to go. But not yet please.
My mother had Parkinson’s. For a couple years the main problem was mobility. Not too bad. Then came cognitive problems. Not too nice. Lasted a year. Then came failure of temperature regulation and her temperature shot up to 108. She spent a couple weeks inside a rubber suit with ice water circulating and spent all day mumbling, mostly, as far as we could tell, about her early life. Then that somehow got resolved and she went into a nursing home, not exactly comatose, but bed-ridden. Then she got pneumonia and they did something that could only be called vacuuming her lungs. She acted as though that was max unpleasant. She recovered, then got pneumonia again and my stepfather pulled the plug (so to speak). Not the way to go.
I spent all last week living in a hospital room watching my grandmother die. She was out of her mind with Alzheimer’s, and her body was shutting down. Not gonna lie it was a relief when she finally passed. It was also massive heartache. I hope I die before I get that old. I went thru this with my mother also. I hope I never have to do it again, and that no one has to do it for me. To me death is not something to be scared of. It’s going to sleep and never waking up, an eternal dream.