Mother

My mom's health is declining somewhat rapidly. This came as a surprise to me. I guess I had always just convinced myself that in the state she's in she could live for another 30 years. I just assumed that since there are no toxins going into her body and that she is relatively stress free that her body would simply exist. As it turns out, she has been fighting multiple non-related infections for about a month now. She has repeated bladder/kidney infections, her feeding tube continues to get infected causing a more serious infection deeper in her intestines, she has a parasitic (sp?) rash last week, she has fevers that spike and then drop really low and no one can figure out why. She also has Hepititis C. And they are not sure how long she has had it or where she contracted it. But it's kind of a moot point now. But anyway, we met with her Dr. on Sunday (we - being me, my husband and The Doctah). He explained to us that they could keep administering antibiotics but she'll keep getting infections and it will prolong her suffering. So we expressed our feelings that at this point we'd like her kept comfortable but we do not want any infections treated with antibiotics. So she is on a constant morphine drip - it's a very small dose - but enough that she's not feeling any pain. She seemed very comfortable and relaxed on Sunday when we visited with her. The Dr. didn't give us a definitive time frame but he said that if she contracted something like pnemonia, that she would not last through it. I'm doing ok with it all. It's still kind of surreal to me and I'm sure it'll hit me eventually but I think after 16 years she's just ready to go and tired of just 'existing'.