Sunday Morning

It was a terrible night and we had to make some hard decisions.

We had to medicate her.  In other words, we had to spike her system with drugs to sedate her.  It was hard, took all night, and was immensely stressful.  Satomi didn’t fully respond until 8:00am Sunday morning.  The nearly 16 hours of terrible pain started with numerous tablets of Tyleol with Codeine and Vicodin, and ended with full syringes of liquid morphine, Adavan anti-anxiety pills and Decadron.  I’m sure there was more but I just can’t remember.  Her reistance to the morphine was shocking.

Medication couldn’t be given orally so the adult diaper played an important role.  Many medications had to be crushed and put into a gel cap for insertion.  If this wasn’t done, there was a huge risk of vomiting.  All this and Satomi’s persistent memory lapses just made it a frickin mess. 

The Hospice RN that visited us at 9:00pm on a Saturday night explained that Satomi’s symptoms are classic for elevated intercranial pressure due to tumor growth or swelling.  To properly manage her pain, it may be necessary to keep Satomi in a sedated state.  She may not ever regain consciousness. 

After seeing the effects of the pain on Saturday night, we all agreed not to put Satomi throught that again.