Halloween

Continuing on in the "settling in" process. Not too much comfort again today. Mom seems to be able to achieve comfort for 5-10 minutes at a time unless she's fortunate enough to fall asleep which does still last for several hours. For the time that she's awake, it seems that just in the last few days, since we arrived home, she's needing to be more and more upright. She's less and less able to tolerate any degree of recline at all before she struggles with her breath. I occasionally attempt to approach the subject of medications that could ease her struggle for breath, but she won't hear anything of it right now. Often when I raise the head of her hospital bed for her, she is still not comfortable even when it's all the way up. The hospice nurse made her first regular visit today. Mom's lungs are "clear but diminished at the bases", and her oxygenation saturation level is 92-93%... which is good. When the nurse got here and told Mom how sorry she was to hear about the loss of her husband, Mom burst into tears. I can't even imagine being trapped in there with no way to talk about her grief, but at the same time I'm reluctant to bring it up to her often because I don't like to upset her. Not sure how to handle that one, maybe there's nothing I can do. Annie's on her way driving with the dogs, stopping over in Virginia tonight and arriving tomorrow morning, staying until Tuesday. (She'll be here to help me interview Mercy on Monday morning). Adam and Chris will visit tomorrow until Sunday. Mom's Lazy Boy arrived this morning, she was anxious to sit in it, but again, needed to continuously be scooted up in the chair to feel like she was upright far enough. Not as much comfort there as we had hoped for. Tomorrow's another day. Mom will be glad to see her doggies and the rest of her family. She stayed today with a friend of mine, Tita, who is a caregiver I've worked with in the past. Tita stayed with Mom while I went to see Molly's school's Halloween parade and take her trick-or-treating around town for a couple hours. Tita took good care (much better than JOY!) but was still frustrated at how difficult it is to communicate (probably not as frustrated as Mom!). Lesson for today was that while I can't always fix the particular thing that might be bothering Mom, her particular discomfort at that moment, I do seem to be able to find other ways to make her feel better... by massaging her shoulders or stretching her arms or putting on some music. Sometimes we have to step away from the frustration of the moment and chalk it up to "I can't understand what you need right now", and move into another direction and just focus on what we CAN understand and what we CAN affect.