Oh yes, I have a blog

I'm still alive.

So is my mother-in-law.

Even more miraculously, so is my sister-in-law.

The last two weeks have been two of the most difficult weeks of my life. I've watched my mother-in-law go from being a woman who tired easily and was a little vague every once in a while to someone who was barely conscious half the time, then someone who was clearly out of it and dying, and now who is someone whose symptoms are responding to treatment, at least in the short term.

It was terrifying to see her struggling to form thoughts and sentences, and to know that she really had no idea what was going on a large percentage of the time. She'd look at me and give me a very polite British "yes..." and I'd know I might as well be speaking Hindi to her for all the good it was doing me.

It is heartbreaking to watch my husband half-help, half-carry her to the bathroom because she's so frail now she has trouble standing sometimes.

It's frustrating to explain over and over again that the doctors have given her one to three months to live. Sometimes she gets it. Sometimes she thinks we're mistaken. Sometimes she's sharp and funny (or cranky) and lucid. Other times she's very confused. No one can tell us how long the steroids that are helping her will continue to work. They could last five weeks, or cut out tomorrow.

When she first responded to the treatment, they announced she was no longer a candidate for the hospice we'd been talking to - for them, you must have 14 days or less left to live - and then they sent her home from the hospital. Apparently the hot new thing is "Hospice at Home." Do not be fooled by the enthusiasm with which Hospice at Home is presented. It sucks. The hospice people are really nice and really helpful, but they are only around for an hour or two, and not even every day. That leaves family members to care for their terminally ill loved one the rest of the time. Non-medical family members. It became clear almost immediately that hospice at home was not going to work for us. As my sister-in-law got more and more hysterical and my husband got more and more depressed, I scrambled around trying to find an alternative. An alternative that we have to pay for, because even though Nora has Medicare and Kaiser Permanente, no one will actually cover the cost of caring for her 24 hours a day. Don't get cancer or Alzheimer's. You'll be screwed. We finally got her in to a hospice up near our house that has a longer-term time frame yesterday. It's a lovely place, designed for people in her situation, staffed by people who seem to be truly kind, caring and compassionate.

She gave it an hour and then announced that she wanted to go home, but we told her she had to stay there until Friday. Today she seemed to like it a little better. We'll see. Ultimately it is her life and her money, and if she wants to pay for round the clock nursing care at home and die at home, then those are her wishes and we'll make it work. John and I feel very strongly that the hospice is the place where she'll get the best level of medical care, but we don't want her last days to be miserable either. It's a tricky set of priorities to balance. And in the end, she'll die no matter what we do. How's that for uplifting? But it is the cold hard truth.

And that's where I am. Tired, ok, beyond tired, cranky, grateful for my wonderful friends, family and co-workers, who've been as helpful and supportive as anyone could ever ask them to be, up and down at any given moment, stressed out and maybe a little overwhelmed and definitely in need of a good stiff drink.

How are you? I'm totally out of touch with the blog world right now. What's new?