mom and almost dying

 Fuck can life be cruel. My mother-in-law got COVID 2.5 months ago. She was in the hospital and by week three they said there was nothing left that they could do because every treatment they had tried had failed. 

She is 74 with pre-existing conditions (emphysema and COPD) and to top it off  she had developed pneumonia from the COVID.

During those weeks in the hospital they had cathed her to make her more comfortable and everyday we called she was becoming to week to talk to us. They even tried the heated hi-flo o2 and nothing was working.

The doctor said that her prognosis was getting worse and that we needed to start evaluating how we wanted to proceed since mom said she did not want a DNR or a DNI. She was also refusing the feeding tube.

We knew at that point she would continue to decline because she was closing down and retreating into herself because in the state of Montana if you have COVID you may not have any visitors and as long as you have symptoms they will not retest you to see if you are in the clear. (Apparently the elderly can have COVID up to 3 months)

The doctor gave us two options. Put her in a coma, feeding tube and intubate or she will be released into my care on hospice.  

She chose to come home and die (we had to get an oxygen concentrator that could handle at least 8 liters of o2).

The first two weeks of her being home was the hardest for me because i moved in with her and never really left her side. 

When ever the nurses came (which they were constantly trying to push morphine to make her comfortable, but she was on lorazepam every 2-3 hrs, and did not want the morphine) they kept trying to prepare me and read pamphlets for people passing and the signs to look for and telling me she was in full renal failure and the list went on of all these things that proved she was dying....

And i belived it. She was out of it, hardly eating, fading in front of me..

last week she graduated out of hospice and onto home health........................