Momma kitteh fell and broke her hip last week. She gets out of the hospital today. She's 90 and as far as I can tell, there is no way she will ever stand up again, much less walk. The break was pretty bad and required the insertion of a rod and screws. She's 90 and could barely walk even with a walker before the fall.
She's now jacked up constantly on serious morphine doses for the pain. She's not the kind to complain and sitting with her at the hospital is the first time I've ever seen her cry and scream from it.
She's going home to Hospice care. She'd been on Hospice Palliative, which is long term, prior to the fall, but this certainly looks like straight-up Hospice now.
To quote Han Solo, "I don't know how we're going to get out of this one."
Sometimes you don't.
I'll catch you all on the flip side.
All of my and Mrs Ohioan’s love at this difficult time.
ReplyDeleteYou have my sympathies. It is always hard, especially when it is slow and they are in such pain that the end is kind of a relief.
ReplyDeletePrayers.
ReplyDeleteA 90-year-old on the hospice track breaks her hip and the US healthcare system puts her back together. Do you think that would happen in the single-payer systems that are offered as models for us?
ReplyDeleteAs Foxfier says, prayers. You are fortunate in many ways.
Tom:
ReplyDeleteAs it happens, my father just died last week in Australia, a country that has universal medicare+supplemental private insurance. He was 87, and starting about 10 years ago he had a major heart attack followed by a series of strokes that eventually left him almost completely paralyzed aside from the ability to move his head and talk. He spent the last five years in a nursing home, where they were actually making more effort to keep him alive than he wanted (he was very angry when he had a bout of pneumonia, and instead of letting him die, they put in a lot of effort and pulled him through. He was still angry about it when I went to Australia to visit him a year later). At no time did anyone say anything about restricting how much they would do to keep him alive, in spite of his frequent announcements that he was ready to go any time now, thanks.
Meanwhile, in the US, my mother-in-law was in similar condition (joints frozen and in constant pain from rheumatoid arthritis, mostly paralyzed from a stroke, completely bedridden in a nursing home). As far as I could see, her standard of care, and the amount of time that she spent on her drawn-out, painful death, was pretty much identical to what my father had.
Watching a parent gradually die, immobilized and in pain, while the doctors sometimes seem to be putting in special effort to prolong their suffering, is hard no matter which country it happens in.