"Susan, Bob's condition has dropped, Wayan said
apprehensively, “he was watching TV and just fell over with his eyes open. I
thought he was dead. I’m taking him to the clinic.”
I knew Bob had had several days of hands trembling so
erratically he couldn’t feed himself. He often couldn’t get up out of a chair
on his own and needed assistance to walk.
I was just winding down from dinner with friends when
Wayan’s call came in. I dashed off to Toyo Clinic. Bob was already on the bed
when I got there. His vital signs all looked normal but he was in a deep
snoring sleep that he couldn’t be roused from.
The doctor pinched him with no response but when he tapped
his eye lids, Bob winced. We called his
name but his face registered nothing. When they put the IV in he curled up in
pain raising his legs. And then he settled back down into snoring once again.
At one point I took his hand and he squeezed me back. It felt like he was trapped in deep sleep
with his eyes tightly shut and yet there was a part of him that was aware.
We decided on the IV in case it was dehydration again or
we needed to give him pain medication.
But we did refuse a CT scan to see if it was a stroke. “What is the
point?” we thought. Bob’s advanced medical directive made it clear he didn’t
want his life prolonged in his current state.
I find it difficult to get the down and dirty of the last
stages of Alzheimer's on the Internet and there are no resources here in Bali to fall back on.
I Googled and read and found there are missing answers in the very
complicated world of dementia. I was
hoping for a detailed description of end stage Alz so I could ascertain if
that’s where we were. I needed something
other than this void of not knowing - some reassurance that we were doing the
right thing. One of my biggest fears is that I’ll accidentally hurt Bob in my
efforts to help him.
I found this site a helpful reminder to honor just what
Bob wanted -
http://www.alz.org/national/documents/brochure_endoflifedecisions.pdf
This morning when I went to check on him, he was awake and
talking. He talked to his daughter on my cell phone and generally seemed to be
his old self. The trembling had lessened considerably. But as the day progressed it became stronger
and we found if we gave Bob juice or food it lessened again. We're pretty sure this problem is from low
electrolytes caused by dehydration.
Bob’s appetite was the usual ravenous and he was talking
in his normal incoherent way. Now it’s
almost evening and it looks like he can go home.
I’m exhausted! I can barely
keep my eyes open. All this almost dying and coming back has me trying to
accept the end one minute and then breathing a sigh of relief when he gets
better the next. And that relief is
tinged with guilt because I feel I shouldn’t want him to recover since he
didn’t want to be like this in the first place.
Alz World is confusing for all of us!
If anyone reading this knows what end stage looks like in
detail, please write and tell me. Or if you know about this trembling I’d like
to understand it as well. In the
meantime I’ll e-mail our Bangkok
doc and see what he can tell me.
No comments:
Post a Comment
I welcome your comments and hope you have found some inspiration in these stories. If the comments section isn't working you can email me at: alzworld2@gmail.com