Tonight it looked to me as though my mom's kidneys were starting to fail, as she now has rather swollen hands and arms in addition to her legs. She is pretty much unresponsive and is not able to speak anymore. Generally though, she seems to be comfortable, except about every 1.5-2 hours when she needs to be turned. The turning itself is when she is most alert-I gather that it's uncomfortable and somewhat frightening, but after a few minutes she relaxes again. We are all getting quite tired. My cold today took a more miserable turn and as I found out, those hospital tissues are rough as sandpaper. I haven't looked but I bet my nose is red and raw. I think my mom and I were almost in competition for mouth breathing...

I can accept in my brain that this is going to happen, and soon, but I guess the heart doesn't want to believe it. It's rather unreal. But I know that she will soon be free of this, able to sing once again-something she hasn't been able to do very well since she got sick a year ago. Singing was always one of the things she loved the most-in fact, she met my dad in a choir. Watching her breath tonight though was a challenge as she does cyclical breathing-common with dehydration deaths. That's where she will breath fast for 3 or 4 breaths and then not breath for quite some time and then do one or two slow breaths, then back to fast, then maybe normal for a few breaths. It's very hard to watch though. When she does the slow breaths you think "is this it?" I hope that we don't get called in the middle of the night for a very practical reason-that the good ol' seroquel that wonderfully puts me out tends to not wear off for a while! So mom, if you can, how about after 6 in the morning if you are going to become free during a night?

The old saying "God never gives you more than you can handle" seems to apply. Sometimes it feels like I can't handle it but when I take a step back, give myself a minute to breath, reorient myself through something like hot tea or some satsuma hand cream and remember that I have lots of support-not least of all God!-I realize that I CAN do this and that I have become a better person for having gone through this. As I tell people sometimes, my mom was diagnosed with cancer when I was 19. As a teenager, even at 19, you still often view parents as more of an annoyance than anything. Well, that certainly changed for me, and not just with my mom. I view my dad very differently now as well. Of course, he still likes to purposely annoy me (I sometimes call him the little brother I never had) but in general I would say that our relationship is stronger than it was a year or two ago. And given that I am living with my dad, I would say that that's definitely a good thing. I hope that we will both be able to give each other space and time though to grieve in our own ways...