## 251216: A steep further decline

Well, Monday started with a surprise.  The nursing staff called, warning me
that Mom had become much less responsive or able to produce meaningful words,
had skipped breakfast, and slept most of the morning.  In other words, it
looked like she was already heading into "transition", a radical decline just
overnight.  I headed over and beheld this for myself, and spent the rest of
the day essentially by her side.  They were spoon-feeding her a "thickened"
water -- apparently that is a thing, that eases swallowing with less chance
of liquid going where it shouldn't.  The staff said I could keep doing that
for her once in a while too.

I was there basically all day.  Mom kept reaching for my hands, and trying
to speak, but not really making it.  Maybe not *actually* dying while holding
my hand, but the point is I'm here with her and that's what she wanted.  At
one point the Hospice music guy came by again, and asked me what Mom might
like to hear this time.  He ran off a little Beatles and Dylan, and then went
to a more classic piece he figured I'd recognize even if I didn't know the
title, which is actually "Time to Say Goodbye".  Now, give that a good deep
listen and think about where I'm at right now.

I figured I'd stick around as long as possible, because anything could happen
any time.  Dinner came, and of course I wound up eating it instead.  Around
8PM the staff came to clean her a bit and settle her in for the night, and
once she was clearly asleep I managed to slip out and get back to the house
for my own overnight.  I mean, at this point all I really need to do over
there is sleep, and I've been told I could just sack out in the big recliner
in the corner of the room.  The nursing-center staff is now encouraging me to
fill out the daily menus for what *I* might want, which is nice of them; I
really only do dinner these days, maybe a small snack during the day -- sort of
not-quite intermittent fasting, which seems to keep my overall appetite down.
Sheez, if I ate all of the meals they've been bringing Mom, even if they had
her on "smaller portions" by design, my BMI would skyrocket.

Now it's Tuesday morning, and the decline is even more profound.  She doesn't
seem to be recognizing me, although I'll keep trying over the day.  We all
agree that she is very likely still *hearing* people in the room, as that's
the last faculty to go.  She couldn't swallow the pain-meds slurry; usually
they crush the pills into something like pudding to make it easier to swallow.
I helped the nurse by aiming my flashlight into Mom's mouth while the nurse
tried to swab it out a bit and moisturize in there, but it looked like
swallowing is just out of the question now and she simply squirted the mix
inside Mom's cheeks in the hope it would eventually absorb, or go down, or
something.  The pain meds are of course the main important thing here.  For
some reason her pulse is also really rapid, like 120 bpm.  That's like, think
dance club, about twice any normal resting rate.  And the oxygen concentrator
isn't really having much effect, because of all the mouth breathing.

Every so often Mom emits a rather horrible gargling noise, which is probably
a weak attempt to cough.  The rest of the time, it's the steady drumbeat of
the raspy exhalations.  The staff suggests keeping her head to one side or
the other to facilitate "secretions" drainage.  The Empath booklet [referenced
in a previous section] talks a lot about secretions in the normal course
of these progressions.  Later they turned Mom farther on her side and the
gurgling seems to be reduced quite a bit.  But every outward breath has that
labored baseline rattle.  We're not trying to spoonfeed thick-water today,
because she'd probably just choke on it.  Now, common knowledge is that a human
dies pretty quickly without water, whereas we can last quite a while without
food.  They don't do IV for people in this condition here, and that would be
kind of contrary to the DNR.  We all know to let nature take its course.

This is going to be a brief-ish entry, because things appear to be happening
rather quickly.  Today might be the day, really hard to tell.  And I have
a bank to go fight with; their website tried to 2FA my login from a "new
location" last night, the code they texted didn't work, so then I tried
"secret questions" which just sent me back to the "choose method" *without*
showing the option for secret questions anymore, and then locked me out.
Duh, hire web developers who actually know what they're doing.