Categories: uncategorized
Date: 02 September 2006 20:49:15
That's a little how today has felt. A life in waiting. Not quite so blatent as waiting for Dad no longer to be with us. Less forward looking even than that.
Dad's pain has considerably increased, a pitiful thing and as much as my heart can bear to watch, being powerless to take that pain away. The morphine just doesn't seem to be touching it, but the increased dose has the single blessing, for him, of putting him sufficiently to sleep that only the sharpest stabs of pain break through and make him yell. Which is good and yet not so good - he's a dead weight to lift and try to move and cannot get comfortable without assistance. We've been told to try to get him from bed to chair for at least a few hours, which is a grand experience for all concerned as we manoevre this willing but incapable, astute but foggy, dwindling yet still quite hefty man from one position to another. Heaven help us if he suddenly needs to go to the loo!!!
Trust him to take a turn for the worse at 6pm on a Friday evening, just in time for the weekend. They can do nothing really till Monday. So here we are waiting. Waiting to get through the weekend so he can be assessed on Monday. Waiting to see if he'll wake or if he needs morphine. Waiting to see if he's awake enough to give him his tablets or try to get him to drink. We've been told not to give him anything if he's not awake to swallow properly without prompting, but how do you leave him without so much as a drink of water, let alone his painkillers? Simply waiting, unable to settle to anything, unable to know what to do for the best, daunted by the knowledge that with one less sister in the equasion for six weeks, we'll be struggling to maintain the two people here that is so essential at the moment and I may face doing this on my own.