A poem and comments on end of life

Like the eagle high over the lake, I ride the thermals of your love, circling, above  the ground, its grasses and ponds, its cares and unknowns. 3-21-17

There’s no play book for what Mary and I are going through, even though thousands of couples do this every year. What do you do when you are the one dying? Others comes to visit, carry on upbeat conversations, send encouraging cards and emails. I am not sure what to do. I am making this up as I go, so is Mary. I try to ask questions of visitors, happy to have their presence. They go back to their daily lives, we go back to this unclear path,

As the end draws near, I also find that there is relatively little information on what is happening to me and what the end looks like. When does it start?  We had company for two weeks during March, wonderful people, my brothers Mike and Tim, Mike’s wife Joanne, their children. Then we had a houseful for my birthday. All the kids, the three Minneapolis grandchildren, April. I loved it, Thursday through Sunday.

Sunday noon I threw up my lunch. Monday and Tuesday I threw up my breakfast. Monday I had some diarrhea but today I had a large bowel movement with a stool 8 inches long. For the past several months my usual bowel movement has been a stool about 2 inches long, followed by a wipe which activates another stool, and then a third one. What is going on? Today, Tuesday, I had nothing until tonight when I had half a cheese sandwich and some apple sauce. Based on the vomiting, we called day surgery yesterday and scheduled a paracentesis today. There is only 5 days in between today’s and the last one. Today they drained 3.7 liters. Five days ago they drained 4.2 liters. Today I am weak. I mostly laid around. At the hospital I had to ride in a wheelchair to check in and to get to the surgery room. You see my exhaustion.

The question for us is Is this the beginning of the end? Or is this a let down after two weeks of intense visiting? Or is it caused by the ascites becoming more active and needing to be drained more frequently? We don’t know. The only information we have is that the oncologist told us that the end was a gradual slowing down. Well, that seems to be the case, at least for the past two days. I weigh about 160, though in the days after a paracentesis I often gain 5-8 pounds which I then lose as a result of the drain, about 2 ponds per liter. I have lost a good deal of body mass. I can nearly circle my arms with my fingers, a far cry from my gym-toned arms of just 6 months ago. My shoulders and upper back show a lot of bone, my legs are thinner, the bones more obvious.

I don’t know what all this means. Not anything good I am sure, but still there is no clear map to tell me that this landmark means I am this far from my destination. Why do I tell you all this? I m trying to set out landmarks for those that come after. I hope that after I am gone, Mary will complete this work.

3-21-17