My 79 year old mother is in the palliative care section of the hospital, and has stage four lung cancer and end stage COPD.
She has been in and out of hospitals for the last three years, due to the COPD, two broken legs and breast cancer. She’s been through a lot.
To make matters worse, my mother has been partially disabled for the last 40 years due to an undiagnosed neurological condition. It’s meant that her legs don’t work, but nothing else was affected. Her brain is perfect. It’s meant that her hospital stays over the last 3 years have left her bedridden.
Then, two weeks ago she had a severe exacerbation of COPD and ended up in the ICU. She endured 10 days of hell, being hooked up to multiple breathing machines, tubes up her arm, medication galore. We thought she was going to die.
But then, last week she was finally able to be moved to the palliative care section of the hospital. However, her breathing hasn’t improved over the last week, and she doesn’t have much time left.
I just wish there was more that I could do! I’ve been going to the hospital every day to make sure she eats. The hospital don’t help with meals. She is receiving a very basic treatment.
I’ve been trying to get her transferred to another palliative care facility that has better services. I’m willing to pay for it. But the doctors are saying that she isn’t well enough to be transferred.
Today we hired someone to visit my mother each day. She loves meeting new people, and I just wanted to do something.
The worst thing right now, is that the doctor has been telling my mother that she is dying and trying to see if she wants assisted suicide.
I’m not sure which came first, did the doctor tell my mother that she could just die now if she wanted? Or is my mother so fed up and angry that she started mentioning it on her own?
All I know is that she has lost hope. She used to feel like maybe the cancer could be treated with drugs to slow it down. But now she’s being told that they can’t even do that because she isn’t fit enough.
Today when I visited this morning she was in a rage. She had taken off her oxygen mask and her face was red from lack of oxygen. I tried to put the mask back on but she wouldn’t let me! She said “I just want to die!!!!”
I tried to explain to her that that wouldn’t be a very pleasant way to die. That the doctors could make her more comfortable. But that in the meantime she needs to wear the mask.
She was super angry and kept demanding to know why doctors weren’t coming to just inject her and end her life.
In the end, the nurse sedated her. I don’t know which was worse. After that her eyes were half closed and she was no longer alert enough to talk. It was actually really sad. But it was what she wanted. She said she just wanted to sleep. An escape.
I feel pretty powerless. I feel like so much more could be done to make her final days nicer! Things like music, art, kind visitors and good conversation, good food, sunshine.
Instead, the doctors and nurses just treat her like a dying person and won’t do anything to make her life better, apart from doing the basics and sedating her.
