EmeraldPrincessOnline
The heartbreaking, gut-wrenching saga of Terri Schindler-Schaivo languishing in terminal thirst and starvation at the insistence of her so-called husband and her betrayal year after year, layer after layer of the court system, has stymied my appetite for food. The angst is almost unbearable.
Closer to home than Terri's plight, tonight I learned that a family we are close friends with who are keeping their aged, debilitated, agitated mother at home, "caring" for her in her final days are committing a similarly unspeakable act. The seeming ideal of being surrounded by family caregivers and living out one's final days in one's own home, is an illusion at best. What appears on the surface to be a lovely picture really is a mirage. The woman's doctor has proclaimed that since she is refusing food and drink (as of two weeks ago) because her pain is so great, that her death will come in the next three days. I was feeling so sad for all of them as they prepare to lose their mother. But wait, there's more!
The blockbuster tidbit of news that leaked out this evening is that the doctor had ordered morphine to help control her pain in her final days, but the "family" has decided that "she doesn't need it" so they're withholding it from her, meanwhile, she's writhing in anguish. And they (the seven siblings) are all bawling around in crisis about their mother dying -- yet won't even give her the medication to ease her pain through this end-of-life phase. Boo-hoo-hoo.
What in the hell is wrong with these people?
I had already lost my appetite before hearing this, but when I learned of her pain and that the family says "she doesn't need'' the morphine, I feel not only anorexic, I am angered. I feel such an absolute rage that helpless people such as this woman in her final days are surrounded by their devoted caregivers who really don't give a rat's ass.
All they're clucking and cooing about is the lament that they didn't get her to sign over her estate while she was still competent and did not give any one of them power of attorney.
They discovered $5,000.00 tucked away in a book at her house today. Now they're going through all of her books in search of any additional cash she may have stashed over the years. She probably hid it with good reason from those vultures.
They don't have a legal leg to stand on.
They just have wait a few more days now, (morphine might have stretched the time even longer) clamoring to be at her right hand when she exhales that last agonal breath.
I just want to puke.
