Still Here - Mon. Nov. 4, 2024.

It's Michael.

In the last three days, Laurel has stopped eating, mostly stopped drinking, stopped getting out of bed, basically stopped communicating, and almost stopped being able to take meds.

In a very short time, she's gone from sleeping in our bed to sleeping in the living room in a hospital bed, to not being able to get out of that bed, to needing everything done for her and now this evening, to being on oxygen.

This all is not what I pictured when I thought we might be headed for a repetitive daily life while waiting for one of us to exit. If the last three days are any indication of the near future, it won't be Laurel who goes first.

Because of the new difficulty with pill taking, we've changed to a Fentanyl patch for pain management. The patch replaces two of the meds Laurel was taking multiple times daily. Hospice kept asking if we wanted to keep taking pills and I thought "What's the big deal?" Well, I see it now. As various skills stop working, accommodations need to be made. It's looking like the remaining meds can be given to her via oral syringe with a second syringe filled with water for rinsing her mouth. She can still swallow once the liquefied pills and the water are in her mouth but for delivery, straws are pretty much out (coordination and understanding issues) and since she's always laying down, drinking glasses are not really viable. I can't believe I'm writing about Laurel.

She has had trouble breathing the last three evenings. If we can get her past that, she sleeps well. Tonight was particularly bad, though. Nothing seemed to give her relief. It took an unusually high amount of medication (needed permission from an on-call doctor) and 2 hours before she finally relaxed and was able to fall asleep. As I'm typing this, she just burst awake in a major coughing fit, like she couldn't clear some fluid. Yikes. That was scary. I'm guessing that was a reaction to the large amount of medication she took for the difficulty breathing. The oxygen that arrived late tonight is supposed to help with the breathing so we don't need medication.

As I move around the apartment during the day, I see things that we'll no longer be using and am putting some of them away. One of Laurel's favorite treats, peanut butter on dark chocolate, was still in a dish beside our bed. The shower chair we borrowed from MELP down the street (free medical equipment). Her phone lies on the table. Her computer only gets used for these updates. We won't need the piano anymore.

This is not for the faint of heart.

I have two modes: basket case and fine. I vacillate constantly between the two. There seems to be no in-between. I often drop into a state of despair but it is always short-lived as I remember the excitement of being reunited with this wonderful woman after our brief separate vacations.

You know, there is one other mode. The one where my heart swells as I think about all of you special people traveling this very difficult road with us. Thank you.