:-( The next stage...

 And here we go...

Okaasan is sliding ever so slowly into the next stage of her end of life.

Now she has stopped eating - or actually swallowing. The care home doctor says she can't go back to her normal life in the care home, because she is going to need tube feeding. And the care home hospital can only keep her a month or two on this tube feeding - so...

The social worker is looking for a facility - I guess that is a hospital? - that will accept her and feed her by drip feed. Dear Son (and Okaasan for sure, and I actually) don't support stomach tube feeding.

So it'll have to be drip feeding.

Sigh.

And she COULD have the Corona Virus vaccine at the care home soon - they are waiting for their batch to arrive to start giving jabs. It would make getting her into another facility easier, if she's had it.

Because. While she is, obviously, dieing of old age and lack of will to swallow/eat...we don't want her to die of Covid with all the tubes and pipes and panic of THAT death. We hope she can just get weaker and weaker and  naturally slip away one day. Probably one day soon...this summer?

Or, if the State of Emergency is lifted here a week from now - and the care home opens up to family visits. Can we get in to see her once a week, and will our visits give her the motivation to eat again? Avoid all of this?

The timing isn't great. She WAS eating something at the big city hospital 10 days ago. But not now.

I gather that if you stop swallowing for too long, restarting in the elderly gets harder and harder. So, it would have to be  a big change in the coming weeks to get her back to eating again.

All of this actually happened 4 days ago. But this week has been horrendous for us with a sick cat and me on less and less sleep...plus a dentist big visit...and all sorts of other things.

So. Just telling you now. I haven't had a quiet moment near the computer with enough brain cells to muster.

As has been said by many commentators, the Covid situation has reached into the lives of so many people - directly and indirectly.

IF there wasn't a Pandemic we would have continued our weekly visits to Okaasan. Had the little happy trips out with the wheelchair to see flowers in gardens and visit coffee shops. Karaoke in the care home canteen room.

She would probably be happy and eating now. Going to day care to practice walking, and ball catching. Making simple handicrafts. Snoozing near the TV.

But. Now she is too weak to sit up. And giving up on eating. Sliding to the next stage of end of life.