Monday, August 29, 2011

Two Wishes

Doris was moved out of ICU Saturday night. She is out of danger as far as her blood pressure is concerned. There has been remarkable improvement over the past few days. Saturday morning she was alert and very passive. Her eyesight was blurry and her hand eye coordination was a bit shaky. She required assistance with eating.
Yesterday morning we arrived as her doctor was checking her over. There is talk of her needing oxygen at night to keep her levels up. This is something that had been discussed as she was usually tired and weak.
There was a difference in her. We saw the mom that had been missing for a while. She was happy and somewhat worry free. She inquired about her bills being paid, told me where things pertaining to bill payment was and remembered some banking that she had done a few days before her incident. She did not remember what happened to bring her to the hospital, but did remember feeling tired and weak the day or two before.
It was after a few minutes that she asked about the chemo and whether or not she would be able to finish it. The three of us in the room fell silent for a moment. "Well, at this point in time it's on hold. We're going to have to see what your doctor thinks. First of all we need to work on getting you stronger and in to rehab". She seemed content with this answer for a moment and then turned to me and said "I have two wishes. One is to see my grandson be born and the second is to visit my grand daughter's new home(just bought a 100 year old house in upstate New York)". Had to clear my throat a little and told her I would do my best to make sure both those things would happen.
She is on 3 types of blood pressure medication and her bp is good. This is the only medication she is on right now. Gone are all the other things she was taking, but also gone is the shoulder pain and wrist pain from her arthritis. Gone is the constant worrying. She asked about things with an air of confidence around her that I hadn't seen in a long time.
Here's the weird thing...When I was sitting with her in ICU she was holding my hand very tight. This was on the day they claim she had the stroke. She had woken up and was staring straight ahead and had a tight grip on my hand. She said to me "do you feel that? Someone is pulling us". I had told her I didn't feel anything. She told me not to let go of her because she didn't want to go so I stayed right there. A little bit later she relaxed her grip and fell back asleep. Yesterday she told me she had a weird dream that her and I were in a storm and being pulled out of her house and I held on to her to keep her from being sucked away. Gave me the willies for a minute. Maybe I read to many books, but I believe they weren't quite ready for her yet.

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