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Well we’re looking at euthanasia now. To be honest I’d considered this for dad before but I didn’t think it was legal. Apparently it is. We have to get two doctors to see him and confirm in clear language that he wants this, and we have to sign some stuff and Dad, of course, for liability, has to take the medication himself by mouth. It’ll take about two weeks for us to actually obtain the medication due to bureaucracy and frankly by then he may have been gone a week already; we’ll see.
Mom told me about the new option today. The hospice nurse came while I was out walking a client’s dog and then charging my car. She told me about the idea, I agreed it was a good one—might as well start the process even if he doesn’t make it two weeks—and then we went into Dad’s room and pitched the idea to him when he woke up. Unsurprisingly, he agreed right away. He’s beyond ready. He’s here only in physical form at this point; the rest of him seems partially gone.
Since yesterday we’ve also had and have been administering to him both Ativan and Morphine. I just ten minutes ago gave him my first dose of Morphine, in his mouth, on the sides of his cheeks and on his tongue. He seems to like the Morphine versus the Ativan. His anxiety has lessened. We also, on the nurse’s recommendation, stopped feeding him. We literally removed the feeding tube machine, wrapped it up, and I put it in the downstairs shed. The continual, slow peeling away of the onion layers, until we at last arrive at the core. It feels sudden, ceasing the food, but all of it feels sudden. A week ago he said he still had a “tiny flame” of hope and he said he wanted to proceed with the second immunotherapy dose. He even walked down the two stone steps five times and did exercises sitting on the edge of the bed and then standing up erect again, ten times. But now this.
God: So many thoughts going through my brain these last few days. A deep, deep heavy sadness. A sense of slowly building relief which I know will climax when he finally dies. A desire for more time competing with a desire for his end asap, so his suffering will be brief. The nurse said he isn’t feeling pain now but he likely soon will be, given the aggressive nature and expansion of the lung cancer invading his body. Not to mention organ shutdown. With no food, little water and Morphine, though, he’s been peeing and pooping very little, and he will likely mostly sleep and stay in bed. He’s profoundly exhausted and weak and frail; brittle. So thin. His legs are shocking. A once robust man dwindled down to almost nothing.
I had a nice chat with my dog-walking client today. She’s in her 70s. We’ve become genuine friends over the past year. She lost her sister to cancer a year ago. I’ve been filling her in on my dad. She and I talked for half an hour this morning. We both sat down in her tiny studio, baffled into silence at the shocking nature of death. What distinguishes us from the animals: We are self-conscious, self-aware of our deaths. And in my father’s case, he’s really, really aware. He knows he’s dying. He wants to die. He craves death now. I don’t blame him.
My O.C.D. is up. Of course it is. My anxiety is sky-high, and that’s when the O.C.D. rises as well. Thank God I started taking my Prozac again a week or so ago. Half my old dose but it’s clearly keeping the volume down to a more or less reasonable level. That said: Perhaps I should go back to my old higher does. I need it now. Underneath O.C.D. symptoms—for me recurring, intrusive thoughts, often of a violent, harmful nature—lies a very simple axiom: The deep desire for control. It’s a yearning to control my environment. Which of course is impossible, as we all know. We can perhaps—sometimes—control a little, but only a little. Most of life is out of our hands. We’re all surfing waves of luck, good or bad. Chance. Statistics.
My mom’s mechanism for coping is control, of course. Where do you think I get it from? My sister shares this trait. Mom pokes and prods my dad, fidgets, worries, tries to get my dad to move a few inches on the bed, sit up higher against the pillows, listen to a podcast or an audiobook, etc. It’s all a way for her to feel in control. And I understand this instinct; like I said, I have this machinery within me, too. And her husband of half a century is dying, for Christ Sakes; let the woman do what she wants. And yet: It irritates me. My mother’s control always has. There’s a long history here, of her tentacles attempting to control me, especially when I was a kid. Read my piece about my mother and our complex relationship HERE.
But there’s nothing to be controlled here. Dad is dying. He wants out as soon as humanly possible. We’re working on that. Things are getting stripped away more and more as the days go by. Mom needs to feel like she has a say in all this. Hence her reaction to Dad giving me his wedding ring. She was also originally resistant to ending Dad’s feedings. Again: I absolutely relate, empathize and understand her POV here. I can only imagine what she’s going through right now. Second only to my father.