yes,i know it's a little bit heavy for a Monday afternoon. sorry about that. in case you couldn't tell by the title of the post, i went to visit my mom yesterday. most of you have all the background on this situation, but if you don't here's the long story short: my mom's in a nursing home and has been for 5 years. the reason she's there is because she had cancer (lymphoma) in her brain that she was treated successfully for 8 and a 1/2 years ago. she was treated with radiation that left permanent scar tissue in her brain causing dementia, and severe physical limitations. she has reached the point where she cannot hear, cannot use the phone, cannot read, cannot get out of bed, and really has no sense of reality what so ever.
the only element to the situation that sometimes makes it less heartbreaking for my family is that she has absolutely no idea what has happened to her and is happening to her. every time i talk to her, she tells me the is going to go by plane to see my sister in Washington DC, and that she is looking for a house to buy in Connecticut where she will retire. she says she is going to buy a dog and have a nice house with a garden where we can all come to visit, and she will find a job teaching at the university again (she was a full professor with tenure prior to this incident). i actually believe that she believes she's been in the nursing home for a only week or two and she has no sense of time at all.
so yesterday, jon and i made our usual visit to go and see her. we always bring the same things; a dunkin donuts coffee coolatta with whip cream and a poppy seed bagel toasted with chive cream cheese. there aren't many things that she can derive pleasure from these days but she LOVES these. even though she's a slow eater, she usually sucks them down with gusto. but yesterday something hit me about the reality of her situation. for the first time she couldn't drink the coolatta on her own, unless i was holding it, and she barely touched the bagel. in other words, she was having trouble feeding herself. then she told me to put on some music, and when i put on one of her favorite Cd's, regardless of how loud i turned it up, she could not hear it.
and i guess that made me think, what is the point? she has no quality of life left, and she is only going to continue along this downward spiral until death. she will never get her place in the country, and she will probably never leave the nursing home. but the process is all so painfully slow that it's hard not to wonder if we all would have been better off had the cancer not been treated so aggressively. isn't it better to be in another world with the trees and the flowers and the birds she loved so much then to stay in this world surrounded by the smell of urine and disinfectant of the nursing home, unable to hear music, read, speak to your friends and family, or even watch TV? i know if she had any semblance of what was happening to her, she would not want to live like this. i know she never wanted her life savings to go to her care in a nursing home. so sometimes i can't decide whether it's better or worse that she is unaware of her situation. it is simultaneously more and less heartbreaking at once. and the only certainty in this is that it is slow and painful for everyone involved. i just hope for all of our sakes and for hers she will leave this world painlessly and peacefully dreaming of flowers and birds and dogs, and endless coffee coolattas.
