What A Mess

Lately, all the decisions in the world need to be made, hard ones, regarding finances, whether my mother should go on hospice, etc. All the things I'd put off thinking about are suddenly looming in front of me, and the comfortable discomfort I have cultivated for the 5 years since I took on my parents' care has shattered. I have to decide what I will do about the impossible 9 week prescription to the nursing home the callow young orthopedic surgeon has given, a nursing home where my mother is miserable and pining away, refusing to eat. Every time I see her, she tells me she is hungry, she is uncomfortable, she has to go to the bathroom. She won't talk to any of the nurses there. They probably wouldn't listen, wouldn't see she was afraid and confused, wouldn't care. She will eat a little, a very little from me, and take her pills, when I plead that she must. But the stuff they give her to eat is disgusting. It smells like wallpaper paste, and looks like it too. I want to give her a date shake, oozing with vanilla essence and flecks of walnut and date. She will love it, and it is good for her, full of fiber and vitamins. But the nursing home won't like that I am giving it to her. They want to put a tube in her stomach.