Dying In Maine

The morning after my last post, Matt woke me in the hospital to tell me that my mother had another stroke, a heart attack and blood clots that moved into her lungs. She was being transferred to the ICU at Maine Medical Center...she could only have days to live.

That day our pediatrician decided to let us leave the hospital, Arlo was responding to the antibiotics and he could go on oral antibiotics and be fine, not ideal, but under the circumstances it would work. So we were discharged from the hospital and we flew to Maine. We have been here since Thursday morning.

My mother is dying in the hospital bed with tubes running all over. She is on heavy pain medication and is not lucid. I get very brief moments to talk with her and we have all of our family here and friends coming all the time to visit and say goodbye. Poor Sam is going nuts in the cancer wing of the hospital, I am losing my mind, but we all need to be strong for each other.

One minute she accepts that she is dying and the next she denies it. She can't remember a morning conversation in the afternoon and she is stuck in this place that isn't alive and isn't dead.

The "plan" is to get her pain under control and get her home to die.

Arlo is crying so that is all for now.