As I mentioned earlier, Michael’s Grandmother’s health is failing. In fact, that’s an optimistic way of putting it I think. She’s lost kidney function and has refused dialysis. When we traveled to see her, she was barely coherent, and spent most of our visit asleep.<\/p>\n
As a small update, she’s been moved into a skilled nursing facility, which is a facility that’s between a hospital and a nursing home. They’re giving her 30 days to show signs of improvement, and then they’re most likely going to place her into hospice.<\/p>\n
It’s hard, putting those words down like that. They sound cold and hard–and I suppose in a way they are. They don’t really share the details of the situation, such as how unhappy his grandmother has been since the death of her husband (Michael’s grandfather, just to be clear.)<\/p>\n
What do you do with someone who has lost all interest in living?<\/p>\n
Theoretically, her depression should have been treated. However, depression in the elderly often goes untreated, so this came less as a surprise and more as a disappointment. For some reason people seem to assume that the elderly should be depressed.<\/p>\n
This is, of course, patently false. They elderly should be no more depressed than any average person. However a variety of circumstances, from failing health, to the deaths of friends and spouses, to the loss of independence, to over-medication and drug interactions, conspire to place elders in a fragile state.<\/p>\n
And now as my grandmother has moved in with us, I wonder and fear whether I’ll miss the signs if and when they appear. I have knowledge, but that doesn’t mean I’ll know enough to take action.<\/p>\n
It’s a hard line to walk, allowing someone to live their own life, and knowing when to take action to improve their quality of life. When someone reaches the state Michael’s grandmother has, where she no longer enjoys life, it seems cruel to take any steps to increase her life span. Yet, wasn’t it our responsibility to keep her from reaching that state in the first place?<\/p>\n
Despite all I have read and studied and pondered, I don’t know the answers to these questions. I know what I believe, which is that life is to be valued. But I still don’t know what that means, what actions I should take in response to that belief.<\/p>\n
Life is a funny thing. You have to laugh at it. I just don’t know what to do when someone has stopped laughing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I mentioned earlier, Michael’s Grandmother’s health is failing. In fact, that’s an optimistic way of putting it I think. She’s lost kidney function and has refused dialysis. When we traveled to see her, she was barely coherent, and spent most of our visit asleep. As a small update, she’s been moved into a skilled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pefxA-pp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}