Bad bad news

I've been saying it enough times to people over the last few months but now a professional has told me the same. It somehow has more gravity and is more of a shock. 

My mother is dying.

Mum has been in hospital for 6 weeks now and we had not managed to see a doctor older than 25 years in all that time. The young girl looked out of her depth most of the time every time we asked for an update and gave airy-fairy unsatisfactory answers to our questions. Finally after much pushing Kay and I managed to get an appointment with the consultant on Tuesday and the news was not good. 

Mum is dying.

The arterial narrowings in her abdomen and legs have caused poor blood flow to her lower legs.  The huge postcard-size ulcer or wound on her leg is never going to heal, because oxygenated blood cannot get to it. Now she has infections in it and similarly the antibiotics cannot reach the wound. This means Mum has a permanent leg infection. The wound is getting bigger and bigger and turning the leg gangrene. The toxins building up are making her confused. 

She also appears to be losing blood somewhere internally (from her low blood count) but to find out where would involve uncomfortable tests which for a 94-year-old very frail patient would be horrible. So they are giving her blood transfusions as well as fluids as her blood pressure has crashed.

She is so weak that the physiotherapists have given up trying to get her to stand let alone walk. She is bed-bound. So going home is never going to be an option as she cannot even get from a chair to a commode now let alone to the bathroom.

She is in so much pain, they are drugging her up to the eyeballs with a strong cocktail of opiates and other painkillers. Ninety per cent of the time when I visit (which is every day) she is in a deep sleep and no amount of shaking or yelling in her ear will rouse her. Her lunch lies untouched at her bedside. I sit and write text messages on my phone while she sleeps and then I go home again. On her more wakeful episodes she talks in a whisper and comes out with weird stuff. On Monday she asked me what time my husband Greg was coming home from work that day. He's been dead seven years. It was like a knife through my heart.

The hospital have said she does not have long. From what they say it might be a matter of a few months, but obviously they cannot say for sure. To me she looks like she will barely manage it through the next few weeks. They want to move her to a nursing home to get more palliative round-the-clock medical care. This is now being arranged. Although I have guessed this all along, hearing it from someone else's mouth as a definite fact is hard to take. This is my mum. WAS my Mum. IS my Mum.

As if that news was not bad enough, on the same day, my best friend rang to tell me her husband died the night before of a heart attack. I have known him over 40 years. She was my best pal at university and my bridesmaid. By association he became a good friend too. He was fit and healthy and had not been ill until Monday night. At 73 he was not particularly old.  He was taken ill suddenly and died in A&E. It has been such a shock I cannot get it out out of my mind. 

What with the news of my Mum too, Tuesday was the worst day imaginable.