Realized it's been forever since I posted anything about my situation.
My brother is still hanging on. About a month ago, he had a hospital admission due to throwing up "coffee grounds", which is a sign that blood was in his stomach. I was taking a break in Tehachapi when I got the call, staying at a truck stop and hanging around town. Scans showed no sign of bleeding in his upper GI tract, so we all thought he had been swallowing blood he was coughing up from his lungs. After 4 days, hospital discharged him back to his nursing home, and we put him on hospice status.
Docs were/are still unable (unwilling?) to tell us why he has deteriorated so much following his successful radiation treatment. Oh well. I promised him after that GI scan that there would be no more scans/MRIs. etc. He is too weak to sit up comfortably, and transporting him to the hospital for exams was a painful ordeal.
When we first signed him up for hospice care, I did not expect him to last more than a week or two. But yet, he is still here. He is pretty skeletal from massive weight loss, and he says he is in pain most of the time. He gets morphine 3x/day, and also gets smaller doses as needed. I am sure he is addicted by now, but who cares.
He never did talk much (he is an asperger's person), and talks even less now. I am sure he knows he is dying, although he never says as much, and I don't want to be the one to broach the subject, since I have no idea how he will react. One of the consequences of being in hospice is that he is no longer on the laundry list of psych drugs he had been taking. He went through some withdrawal, but now seems to be clearheaded. I'm not so sure that's a good thing, but...
Me, I am spending my time in cheap motels in Orange County. With the upcoming heat dome, I might as well stay where there is A/C and I am close enough to visit every day. It's as grim as it sounds. I can't begin to tell you how penned up I feel. But he has no one but me to visit him, so I stay. Once the heat dome dissipates, I will most likely head north to Tehachapi again. It's about a 3-hr drive between here and there, I can come down here to visit him for a couple days, then head north again. (Rinse and repeat.) I'm so much happier staying at the truck stop!
My brother is still hanging on. About a month ago, he had a hospital admission due to throwing up "coffee grounds", which is a sign that blood was in his stomach. I was taking a break in Tehachapi when I got the call, staying at a truck stop and hanging around town. Scans showed no sign of bleeding in his upper GI tract, so we all thought he had been swallowing blood he was coughing up from his lungs. After 4 days, hospital discharged him back to his nursing home, and we put him on hospice status.
Docs were/are still unable (unwilling?) to tell us why he has deteriorated so much following his successful radiation treatment. Oh well. I promised him after that GI scan that there would be no more scans/MRIs. etc. He is too weak to sit up comfortably, and transporting him to the hospital for exams was a painful ordeal.
When we first signed him up for hospice care, I did not expect him to last more than a week or two. But yet, he is still here. He is pretty skeletal from massive weight loss, and he says he is in pain most of the time. He gets morphine 3x/day, and also gets smaller doses as needed. I am sure he is addicted by now, but who cares.
He never did talk much (he is an asperger's person), and talks even less now. I am sure he knows he is dying, although he never says as much, and I don't want to be the one to broach the subject, since I have no idea how he will react. One of the consequences of being in hospice is that he is no longer on the laundry list of psych drugs he had been taking. He went through some withdrawal, but now seems to be clearheaded. I'm not so sure that's a good thing, but...
Me, I am spending my time in cheap motels in Orange County. With the upcoming heat dome, I might as well stay where there is A/C and I am close enough to visit every day. It's as grim as it sounds. I can't begin to tell you how penned up I feel. But he has no one but me to visit him, so I stay. Once the heat dome dissipates, I will most likely head north to Tehachapi again. It's about a 3-hr drive between here and there, I can come down here to visit him for a couple days, then head north again. (Rinse and repeat.) I'm so much happier staying at the truck stop!
