Conflicted

It's not uncommon in these situations to not know which way to go. I've been here more times than I care to count. I know if it were me, I'd more than likely feel the same way. But it doesn't make it any easier.

Yesterday morning I got the feeling the old lady was saying good bye to me. I remembering thinking it was the day she was going to run away. We've all been expecting it. We all knew she was planning something.

We have suspected before that her falls were staged. To get more drugs outta the docs. But none of us expected this.

So the old lady fell again last night. According to her, she took her 2 Tylenol PM's (which she is not supposed to take anymore, but the pharmacy keeps sending them to her because she keeps calling them and ordering them and the mail person walked them to the door, into her bedroom and delivered them because the mailbox was so full of her magazines they wouldn't fit) and decided to use the commode before she went to bed.

She fell on the way to the commode. She was NOT using her walker, which we have drilled into her head to not leave the bed without. And she had moved the commode farther away from her bed so she had to walk farther to get to it, all on her own, yesterday.

But I don't think she planned on breaking her hip. Which is what she did. Or the paramedics did when they picked her up off the floor, twisted her body and put her on the gurney in the hallway.

Oh when I saw them do that I wanted to kick their asses and show them the right way to do things, but I didn't. I think I might just have a talk with the hospital administrator about this.

One of the paramedics, a girl my son went to school with, was on call when they picked up the batlady. When I met her at the door she said "This is the second time you've been on one of my calls this month Linda, what's going on here?" And winked at me.

So, anyway, the old lady is in surgery right now. They are going to put a screw in her hip to hold it in place. They can not give her anesthesia because she had so much Morphine it dropped her blood pressure down to a dangerous level.

I'm not even gonna get into how the old lady has not been taking her meds, on purpose, and taking the wrong shit, and how she probably brought this on herself. But she now has to go into surgery, have a screw put into her hip, with only a general anesthesia.

Which brings me to the conflicted part. The decision has been made by all concerned, that in the event her heart would stop, there will not be any efforts made to resuscitate it. Not an uncommon decision by many, especially the elderly.

Knowing her, she will probably scream herself into her heart stopping during surgery, in the hopes they will give her and knock her out.

I know that most elderly end up dead shortly after a broken hip too. The recuperation is tough, very tough, too tough for frail old people. Mostly, they die of pneumonia. Because they give up the will to live.

I think the old lady gave up the last time she was in the nursing home. Possibly before that. I'm just not sure what to pray for. A speedy recovery? That her heart will stop and end her pain? It's a difficult decision at this point.

I want her to be happy. But I really don't think she ever was. I certainly don't want her to be in pain, although I think it might make her happy cuz the docs will finally give her the dope she wants.

So I guess I will just put it in Gods hands and let him make the decision.