Pal­lia­tive care (from Latin pal­liare, to cloak) is any form of med­ical care or treat­ment that con­cen­trates on reduc­ing the sever­ity of dis­ease symp­toms, rather than striv­ing to halt, delay, or reverse pro­gres­sion of the dis­ease itself or pro­vide a cure. The goal is to pre­vent and relieve suf­fer­ing and to improve qual­ity of life for peo­ple fac­ing seri­ous, com­plex illness.”

– Def­i­n­i­tion taken from Wikipedia

It’s just after mid­night, early Thurs­day morn­ing. I have to say that I feel like I’ve aged a whole month over the past few days … and prob­a­bly three of those “weeks” were as a result of the last 36 hours.

Meet­ing Emila for the first time … wish it was under bet­ter circumstances

First of all, I swear … I think between Hubby & I, we’ve had a com­bined total of 6 hours of sleep since Sun­day night. Pure exhaus­tion has taken over at this time and auto-​​pilot mode kicked in by Tues­day evening.

First off, it’s a sad state of affairs when … get­ting into our car Tues­day evening for a quick jaunt out of the hos­pi­tal for a much-​​needed shower and some fresh air … I actu­ally com­mented that the car seat had been the most com­fort­able thing I had sat in all day long.

Sec­ondly, squish­ing your­self (well, actu­ally my big bootie) onto a small cush­ioned foot stool just so that I can feel as if I was lay­ing hor­i­zon­tally on a bed is not very com­fort­able. So much for that awe­some full-​​body mas­sage Hubby and I had this past Saturday …

But mostly, I think the sleep depri­va­tion was more because of the con­stant anx­i­ety of hav­ing my Dad in the ICU and not know­ing exactly what could hap­pen next. It was the con­stant worry that Dad’s prog­no­sis was not (ever) going to func­tion­ally improve. It was the fear that we wouldn’t know exactly how my Dad wanted us to pro­ceed in his care … espe­cially because he wasn’t “awake” to tell us. And even moreso, because my Dad did not have any Advanced Direc­tives. He had not writ­ten down any of his wishes for us.

By Tues­day after­noon Mom, Dr. Bro and I had a very frank dis­cus­sion about what we all felt should hap­pen next. We dis­cussed, as his imme­di­ate next of kins, what we all believed Dad would have wanted us to do. The good thing was that he had had the same dis­cus­sion with all of us at one time or another. The sad thing was know­ing that if we respected his wishes, we would run the risk of los­ing him sooner than we were ready to let him go.

Hold­ing Lit­tle Em for the first time

In the end … and after dis­cus­sion with the rest of my Dad’s sib­lings, we decided that we would respect my Dad’s wishes. We would remove the G*d-awful “Breath­ing Tube” and see how he did with­out the res­pi­ra­tor. We would not … other than pro­vide com­fort mea­sures only … per­form any extra­or­di­nary mea­sures to extend his life.

So today, just before noon, we removed the breath­ing tube. And the entire fam­ily stood around him pray­ing … say­ing our good-​​byes to the incred­i­ble man we all loved so fiercely. And we waited … and waited.

And as of right now … we’re con­tin­u­ing to wait. Except we’re no longer in the ICU … we’re in the hospital’s Pal­lia­tive Care/​Hospice floor. Which is where we’ll con­tinue to be until Dad’s finally at rest … where I hope his grand-​​furbaby Rain is wait­ing patiently to cud­dle next to him.

Thank you all for for “cloak­ing” us with your kind prayers and pos­i­tive vibes .. it means the world to me and my family.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Related Posts:

It’s Hard To Be Brave

No More Rain

Deep Breaths

Up In Smoke

Who’s Your Daddy?

The proud Aun­tie & Uncle … Don’t we ALL look exhausted in this photo?