Update on Grandma

So in my last post, I mentioned that my Grandma was in the hospital and would likely be placed in hospice. Well, that happened yesterday...

When I first went to the hospital on the 1st, I joked with one of my uncles and a few cousins that these doctors don't know Grandma, and that she will very likely live several more years. She is not the typical patient.

Yesterday, the ICU nurses told us as they were making the preparations for transfer to hospice that she may not survive the ambulance trip to the hospice facility. They told us that once in hospice, they would take her off the bi-pap machine that was forcing oxygen into her lungs, and she would no longer be receiving the IV drip of Lasix that was helping her body to remove the excess fluid that goes along with CHF.

Sometime around 4 or 5 (I really lost track of time once I got to hospice, so who knows when it really was), Grandma was settled in at hospice and had received some morphine and versed to ensure that she would be relaxed when they took her off the bi-pap. They took it off, and put her on a nasal cannula. A simple nasal cannula, the least invasive (because this is hospice, after all) and least effective means of delivering oxygen to a patient who can't breath well on their own.

I expected to see her deteriorate very rapidly after they changed her to a nasal cannula. However, after having that mask for the bi-pap removed, Grandma perked right up and look like she did before she went to the hospital. The nurse in me (and also in my sister-in-law) wanted her on monitors...oxygen saturation, blood pressure, heart rate...we wanted to be able to see exactly what was going on, because that is the way things are in the hospital. That is the way things are where we work. But not in hospice.

I just got home from visiting Grandma today. She was awake, and visiting, and doing well. She did seem to get a little winded if she talked for too long. Perhaps she is beginning to weaken. Little by little...

For those of you who may read this blog who do not know my Grandma...She is ready to die. For years, she has been commenting that she has had a good life and as soon as the Good Lord is ready to take her, she is ready. She lost one of her sons last year, and was really too much to bear. She is ready to go to heaven, to be reunited with my Grandpa, and my uncle, and so many other friends and loved ones.

So please pray for her. Pray that she can have peaceful, painless, dignified death that hospice tries to give each of their patients.