The Joel Train

Mom thought she was pregnant in the last months of her life.  "Help me pull the baby out" she said to me once.  We were in the hospital again.  She started to hike her gown up and I fled.

Once she was back home, confined to a bed, Ashley's daughter Hannah gave Mom a little lion to comfort her.  It became the baby born from her body.  She would coo and snuggle it.  "Have you seen it?  Can you believe it?" And she'd marvel at it and kiss it's face.  After a few weeks she began to wonder why it didn't move.  Was there something wrong?  Had her baby died? We didn't know what to do then.  Should we take it away or maybe give her something else?  We just left the little yellow lion next to her.  In case she needed it.

I think Mom's dementia began with hearing loss associated with her very high blood pressure.  Or, if not the beginning, perhaps it was the first disconnect from the world around her.  I believe it softened her up for what would come. Then the pressure in her brain from first tumor caused lethargy and confusion.  The whole brain radiation used to treat the secondary tumors discovered 4 months later cemented and accelerated the changes in her mental state.  That's when the auditory and visual hallucinations began.  She would catch herself though.  She'd comment on the snake in the chair that wasn't real, then laugh and say "I can't believe that just came out of my mouth!"

The cancer had moved into her liver and her treatment was destroying her kidneys.  She needed to be re-hydrated each time she went in for her meds.  The nurses would hang a bag of saline and a bag of whatever cocktail she was due.  At the end of a particularly long week, her kidneys shut down altogether and her potassium levels spiked.  She may have suffered some brain damage.  I remember speaking to her on the phone and she sounded truly broken, only able to repeat fragments of my words back, over and over.  Then she was hospitalized again and re-hydrated over several days.  She improved but never recovered.  By the end of her life it was unclear if Mom recognized us as her children.  She always smiled and was welcoming.  But she was cautious about revealing too much and felt picked on when we'd ask her flat out.  We shared a birthday after all.  I hoped somewhere inside she was holding on to that.