…unless you want to analyse/refine future decisions.

Over the past several years, my mother in-law fell a few times.

Because she took a blood thinner, Coumadin, we worried that she’d fall, break open a major blood vessel and bleed to death before someone could get to her.

Thank goodness, in her falls, she merely scraped her skin or bumped her head.

However, when she bumped her head, blood vessels under the skin on her face burst and she built up a hematoma between the size of half a ping-pong ball and tennis ball.

Therefore, after she fell in April, we consulted with her doctor, who recommended that my wife’s mother stop taking a blood thinner, which would raise her risk of a stroke but, at her age, falling and bleeding to death was the greater risk.

Here I sit, two weeks after my mother in-law either a) had a stroke and fell, or b) fell and had a stroke in her bathroom.  She was discovered sometime before the call we received at 5:51 a.m. requesting which hospital emergency department to send her to.

As the days pass, the minute details of the days that followed diminish.

I’m cataloging as much as I want to remember here today.

27th October – spent most of the day in emergency room A05.  Pretty much nonresponsive.  ED doctor’s assessment of stroke with possible paralysis on the left side.

28th October – still mostly nonresponsive (or simply just very tired and sleepy) but more movement on the right side.  Slight movement on the left side.  When awake, requested water, cold, ice water.  Sponged water into her mouth until we decided to let her take sips of water.

29th October – When awake, she was  alert, remembering, by answering yes/no question, everything up until time of stroke/fall.  All extremities working but weaker on the left side.  Drank more water.

30th October – Able to hold whole conversations and drink water/juice.  Requested to sit on bedside commode, take a bath and have her hair combed – wanted to look like a proper lady.  Extra exertion without a lot of food intake definitely weakened her.

31st October – More tired than yesterday.  Given swallow test – able to hold ice in her mouth and swallow water/apple sauce.  Expressed great feelings of pain during test.  Requested not to be woken up for a while.  Seemed to have suffered an event (possibly another stroke) a little later.

1st November – Generally nonresponsive.  Water built up in lungs, causing her to choke.  Didn’t want her to choke to death so family requested Lasix to help remove excess fluid from her lungs.  Also given Demerol for pain because she moaned when moved.

2nd November – Some responsiveness – lifting of right arm, twitching of left hand, multiple facial expressions but cannot open eyelids.  Very weak.  Family wet her lips with sponge of cold, ice water.  Weak attempts at swallowing.  Overall weakness continued.  Considered moving her to nursing home in case she woke up enough to request food and/or physical therapy and there was nothing left for the hospital to do.  Given anti-anxiety medicine in anticipation of move.  IV needles removed.  Strength deteriorated throughout the day.  Afibrillation worsened.  Breathing got shallower.  Family came to sit by her bedside (granddaughter, grandson, daughter in-law, son in-law, step-daughter).  She stopped breathing twice but found will/strength to start again before her only living direct descendant, her daughter (my wife) arrived from work.  Died minutes later (less than half an hour).  Body gasped for breath a few times after heart stopped.  Family began mourning process.

Other details surface but are outside of time – eating in the hospital cafeteria, visits from friends/church family, consultations with doctors (cardiologist, neurologist, hospitalist), the kindness of nurses/techs/housekeeping/food services, specific phrases spoken by my mother in-law, sitting by my mother in-law’s side, holding my hand against her face, wiping a cold cloth over her forehead, watching her chin quiver and tears roll down her face when she couldn’t move her extremities, knowing that she was probably still there in some subconscious form right up to the end, even if she could no longer talk.

That’s enough for today. Reliving the last dying days of the world’s best mother in-law are dredging up raw feelings.

Time to enjoy life, sweep the driveway and decks, and give back to the world what my mother in-law gave me.  My mother in-law did not dwell on death.  Despite tragedies in her life – the death of one of her twins a few days after birth, the loss of her husband 14 years ago, the untimely early death of her son at 51 (the other twin) – she found a way to live, she sighed, read her Bible and moved on, rarely complaining about much that she couldn’t find a way to fix herself, except the decline of the national/world economy, which fed her fear of worse days to come (which means you/me/us have to step up and fix it!).