Here’s the dirty little secret we caregivers share. A shameful secret that few talk about.
As the end nears you start wishing the person you love so much would hurry up and die.
I mean how much more can anyone take. The person you love is no longer conscious much of the day, if at all. The day is one of tedious tasks– morphine every hour, sitting quietly holding Bette’s hand while she moans and stiffens further into a fetal position, with her right hand becoming more permanently bent, as if that human hand was turning into a puppy paw, asking for a treat.
If she were asking for a treat I imagine her saying, “Oh, please dear God, take me. I want to go quickly and with dignity. These daughters of mine now have to put those horrible adult diapers on me. Such humiliation. Please, I’m begging, take me and spare them having to do this. I don’t want them to remember me this way.”
But Bette no longer talks. She just moans and whimpers.
“Is she in pain,” callers ask.
As the morphine cocktail – four fifths morphine, one-fifth cranberry juice to cut the horrific taste – dribbles from her mouth , I worry that nothing is getting into her system and, yes, there is pain. Hospice says it’s too late for an IV drip; Bette’s veins probably wouldn’t take it.
It’s 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., dinner time, 10, 11, two in the morning, four in the morning, the sun is coming up, coffee time, breakfast. More morphine. Change the diaper. Turn Bette over and sponge bathe her. Change the sheets. Cut a clean nightgown up the back so we can more easily get it over her head and change the diaper without causing her too much pain.
More moans. Not wimpy moans like a puppy with its cute paw raised for a treat, but an old dog’s moans, a dog who needs to be put down because he can no longer make it outside to pee. His food goes through him and comes out like sludge. He needs to be carried up the stairs at night, though he mostly stays on newspaper on the kitchen floor.
“Please God, make her die. How many more days must she suffer? When does it all end so we can live again? Go to work, sleep all night, be in our own beds?
“Damn, stop it. That’s selfish,” we remind ourselves. Shame. Shame. Shame.
A close friend calls and we remember that while her husband was dying she planned a three week vacation to Hawaii. We were appalled. “How selfish,” we gossiped.
Now we know how beat caregivers become. How much you need something to look forward to. Something where you can plan, control, mark out the calendar dates with certainty.
At the end, I feel like a watcher, not a giver. I am powerless at a time when the best mother in the world lays dying, gurgling and choking on the fluid in her lungs. But not the morphine she so needs.
Please God, hurry up and make Mum die.
So true. I experienced this with my father when he was terminal with cancer. What’s worse, is the person you’re caring for becomes something like the “walking dead”.
Once you know your loved one is terminal, and you see / believe it for yourself, you begin to disconnect (at least I do).
As each day comes, your defense mechanisms kick in to help you cope. For me, and maybe I’m unique but I doubt it, it’s as if I’m killing them in my mind. The goal, is to have them pretty close to “dead” in my head when the actual moment arrives. An attempt to lessen the emotion…
And what a horrible thing to feel guilty about… wishing your loved one was dead. I did for a while, until I realized, I was actually wishing for MERCY!
Recently I had to put my dog down. Without too much back story, I’ve had pets in the past, but this was the first one I picked myself as an adult and it had a more pronounced effect on me.
I had the option to let my dog live longer, and eventually suffer until I decided to put her down, or put her down immediately.
I put her down right away.
I side stepped the wishing she would die part, which makes me feel good. We didn’t have to go through that indignity together and suffer day after day knowing our time is limited. Nor did my she (my dog) have to suffer the slow decline she was facing.
Still hurts… but an argument for euthanasia if I ever knew one.