My mom is still here. What a time we've been having though. We've been told both that it could be anytime now, but also that the 25ml/hr of saline that she is receiving is possibly prolonging things. So now, we have to decide whether to discontinue it or not. My only concern was that if they discontinue it, that they will have more problems giving her the ranitadine and anti-emetic drugs. She's now been on fentinyl for four days-they started it on wednesday because she was having problems breathing and the fentinyl helps to dry up lung secretions as a side effect. Now it's also important because she has been in some pain. Her brother came out on thursday, but left again on friday. This I find a bit strange-given that her death was iminent, wouldn't he just stay until after the funeral? Whatever though. He was there, and that was important. My mom was, unfortunately, not really able to communicate with him. She is now pretty much totally unresponsive, even in the moments when she is actually awake-or seems that way because her eyes are fully open instead of the half-open state that she has been sleeping in for close to two weeks now. She has literally become a skeleton.

This is taking a lot longer than any of us-including her-thought. We are all getting so tired of going up to the fifth floor of the hospital and past all of the elderly dementia patients who are waiting for beds in a nursing home ( or are dying themselves). The smells, the sights, the bumps of the elevator...it's just getting very, very exhausting. And I'm slowly developing a cold, though thankfully not as bad a cold as my last one. I need to be able to keep going up to the hospital!