Today I Am An Orphan

Actually, that day would have been Wednesday, February 23rd.

My phone rang about 1:15 AM jarring me awake. Five months earlier I would have assumed it was just a wrong number, rolled over, and gone back to sleep. But that night I knew right away who was calling me.

"Hi, this is the night nurse at your mother's nursing home. I just went in to check on her and found her unresponsive. Do you want us to perform CPR? That means we would send her to the hospital."

"I'm not sure. How long has she been unresponsive?"

"I was in talking with her about 11:30 but I just checked on her a few minutes ago and now there's no pulse. Do you want us to perform CPR?"

The night nurse needed me to make a decision. One that I really didn't want to make.

Just the afternoon before, we - my brother and I along with the doctor - had decided to put Mother into hospice. I even had a brief conversation with the hospice lady early Tuesday evening. Coincidentally, it was the same lady I talked to when it came time for my father's hospice care two years earlier. The hospice would fax me the necessary forms first thing Wednesday morning.

But at 1:15 AM, I hadn't officially signed any of the hospice documents. Mother's advanced directives - signed when she entered the nursing home following brain tumor surgery last September - were still in effect. One of the directives Mother had checked was "Perform CPR".

The night nurse knew hospice was imminent for my mother. And when you're in hospice, they don't perform CPR. But Mother wasn't in hospice yet. She was still in a nursing home. Legally, the night nurse had to follow the advanced directive. So she called me. She needed to know. What did I want her to do?

Mother had come out of brain surgery like gangbusters. For all of October and most of November, she had done well with her physical therapy. She was walking with a walker. She played the piano during sing-along. Her mind - what she feared losing most - was intact. But right after Thanksgiving changes started occurring. She stopped eating. She became confused. She lost weight. The periods of confusion grew longer. She lost more weight. She stopped answering the phone. She wouldn't get out of bed. She slept most of the time. The doctors told me it was the brain cancer at work even though nothing was showing up on the CAT scans. We talked of VP shunts and forcing her to get out of bed to eat. We wanted to build her strength. Maybe that would help. But she was in Michigan, I was in Maryland. It got very, very hard.

"Mr. White, I need to know. Do you want us to perform CPR?"

"No... not tonight. No CPR."

K-