quick update

Tonight will be the second night in a row I've slept at Trinity Medical Center in Birmingham. Nana's still hanging on, somehow, but is now un-responsive and her blood pressure keeps falling. The kidney doctor (who was British! we also have an African nurse [from Tanzania] who is so very nice- then again, all the nurses here are) said they could put a feeding tube in her, but we said no. Nana always made it clear she never wanted that, and really, her systems are all failing (especially her kidneys; her arms/hands, legs/feet, and abdomen are all swollen because of the backup of fluid) and the nutrition wouldn't get to her. David and Mona (uncle [Mom's brother, Nana's son] and aunt) keep visiting on and off. We've all been staying so long with her. It's so different than it was with Daddy. No one expected him to go as quickly as he did. He was still responsive and even gave me "our" kiss-kiss thing at 6 am the day he died (for reference, he died sometime in between 10:45 am and 1:30 pm on October 6) so it was, well, for being 'expected' as a cancer patient, the timing was unexpected. With Nana it's all just very gradual failure of her systems. She's on the maximum amount of oxygen so her SpO2 is fine. The morphine they've been giving her every four hours has really helped. This morning around 4 am, Mom and I were sure she was going to pass away. She'd gotten really conjested (which her doctor described was what they used to call the "death rattle," but isn't really painful; the patient just doesn't have the strength to clear his/her throat so his/her breathing sounds like a rattle...I thought of dementors O_o;) and kept struggling for breaths, but that's when they turned up the oxygen, and it helped immensely.

We'll see. It will be so, so hard to get used to a world without Nana, but she's 75, had seven grandchildren, got to see me graduate, came to my Wind Ensemble concerts, all my high school band concerts, all my ballet/clogging/jazz recitals, and was just there for us always. She stayed the week after Daddy died with us, and that was so kind. I want her to be at peace, but I surely will miss her.

Sorry for the novel-length's first paragraph. I'm on the computers at Trinity, so I figured I might as well make an update. Besides monitoring Nana and sleeping, it's been so boring except when Mom and I are talking or David and Mona come and we all start talking about stuff- usually just life in general, so we won't be moping all the time. The Birmingham News' puzzles and sudoku keep me going.