Today is Friday, July 12th, 2013; Karen's Korner #2610

My mom, who is 94 1/2, recently moved from assisted living to a local care center in her hometown. She moved to an assisted living apartment seven months ago, as she began having some definite problems with dementia.
 
A couple of months ago came a doctor's diagnosis of some medical problems as well. The five of us girls had to make some choices for mom's care:  do some medical intervention to try to lengthen her life or 'due to her advanced age and advancing dementia', choose to do nothing. We chose the later, thus the need for more care at the care facility.
 
She is now in hospice care and moving rapidly through some end-of-life stages. One sister wanted to know what hospice nurses find whenever they see mom. The nurse emails Jill and she sends the note to the rest of us.
 
Our latest update told of her being more sleepy and harder to understand when she talks, if she talks at all; the same things that we witness when we visit her. Most recently she was asleep for the few minutes when my husband and I visited her. But one of his most recent written comments by the hospice staff:  "She was quietly chanting '...help me Lord, thank you Lord...' over and over."
 
I don't have an end-of-life diagnosis, but like everyone alive:  we are short-timers in this life. So please excuse me if I seem distracted, sometimes to help me get through a day, a bad time, a crisis, good news, I may need to take the lead from my aging mother:  "Help me Lord; thank you Lord."
 
Think I might have to say it over and over......

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