I am sitting in the ER watching my mother attempt to sleep.  The nurse just gave her pain meds, and they are just kicking in.  When she walked into my kitchen this morning, I said, ‘Mom, let me feel your tummy’, and sure enough, it was just as solid as a woman who’s six months pregnant.  ‘Oh, Mom, get your shoes on.  We need to go to the ER’.

This isn’t the congestive heart failure tummy.  This is not water retention.  We are waiting for X-rays, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say her bowel is twisted — again.  This poor woman.  This is exactly where we were a year ago.  Twisted bowel.  Surgery. Two weeks in hospital.  Complications.  And since December, she has been in out of the hospital with Afib and congestive heart failure.  She has lost 45 pounds in the last 5 months.

How much more can her body take?

How will this affect her dementia progression?

What am I saying?  Can she even survive another operation?

As she finally rests, I think how insignificant the decisions of the past few days have actually been.  Does it matter where she lives?  No it does not.

What matters today is that she just lives.