User blog:Gideoncrawle/Writer's Workshop and MIL updates

It is now official: my MIL is dying. Tomorrow we will be looking for a hospice, but I should be able to launch the Writer’s Workshop as planned. I have finished preparing my opening remarks, but I may be posting them a matter of hours earlier or later than planned. This shouldn’t be a major problem, though, since the Workshop was never planned to be a real-time discussion. Being a blog-based affair, the discussion could go on for days or even weeks, depending on how much back-and-forth there is.

My MIL went back into the hospital a couple of days ago, with the same basic problem as before: a gradual fluid buildup in the lungs and chest cavity that increasingly restricts breathing. After coming home from the hospital last week—she was probably released too soon—she was weak but otherwise OK for a couple of days, but then began having increasing difficulty breathing and became increasingly confused (a result of CO2 buildup in the blood, as I mentioned before). She resisted going back to the hospital, which suggests that she was ready to call it a lifetime. When she passed out, though, her son (who still lives with her) called an ambulance, and to the hospital she went.

She was not in as much immediate danger this time, but she clearly doesn’t want to spend an extended period shuttling in and out of hospitals, and one of her lungs has now collapsed.

She has decided that, the next time her lungs fill up—a process that takes about 5 days—she wants to let Nature take its course, hence the need for a hospice. When she is transferred, she should have a couple of good days, then a few days of physical and mental decline. Then, the end.