D N R (Updated)

Death has a smell. It is surprisingly clean and sterile. Death has a sound. It is remarkably silent. So silent that you become acutely aware of the sounds around you...the steady beep beep beep of a machine, the tick of a clock, the even puffs of breath from the dying.

My great grandmother is dying.

Yesterday my mom and I found her in her house. She was sitting in the kitchen half naked and clutching a candy sack and an ad from the paper. She thought it was the telephone. We called to her and she kept asking if we could hear her. She was aware enough to tell us that she had a severe headache and that she couldn't see. She didn't understand that we were right there in the house with her. I called 911. She was extremely disoriented. She fought the paramedics because she didn't understand what was happening. At the ER we waited for the doctors to tell us anything...to help us understand what had happened. It could have been a minor stroke. It could have been a pain medication overdose. We will probably never know.

The sedation medicine that they are giving her is causing her heart to weaken. She had a heart condition to begin with so this is wearing it away even more. She had to be taken off all pain medication. The look of agony on her face is something I won't soon forget. Our family had to make the choice to not resuscitate her should she have a heart attack. My parents have both told me that they don't want to be saved to only have a long and painful existence. It seems so easy to say that, but yesterday it was the hardest thing I had to witness. We've chosen to make her comfortable until the end.

Tonight, the doctor came in and told my mom and aunt that she was dangerously close to having a massive heart attack. So, they have taken her off of all the sedation medicine. They want to make sure that she is as alert as she is going to get. And if this is it then she'll most likely be moved up to hospice and all medicine will be stopped. She'll be given enough pain medicine to be kept comfortable which in turn will probably trigger the heart attack.

Last week she was being her old cranky self and basically making sure that everyone around her was as miserable as she was and if you weren't she was going to make you feel guilty for it. My mom takes the brunt of most of this and this time it was especially bad. I couldn't help but think how much better it would be when she was dead. And now here she is...dying. Tonight I told her I was sorry and that I loved her. Then I whispered sleep tight and I left. There is a very good chance that will be the last time I see her alive.

I think the waiting is the worst part of death. There won't be a sudden incident. There won't be those regrets that I didn't get to say goodbye. There will only be the long waiting and watching.

I probably won't be on again until the waiting is over, so to those of you who will stop by, thank you in advance for the thoughts and prayers.

UPDATE: We got a call last night but it wasn't news we expected to hear. Nanny's heart settled into a normal rhythm and she began to wake up. She knew she was in a hospital and she recognized my mom. The doctors have determined that she had a heart attack but the medicines have brought it back to it's normal condition. This is good news. The watch is over, but the family still has some rough days ahead. She can no longer live by herself (a feat in itself for a 90 year old woman) and will have to be put into a nursing home. She has always said she'd rather be dead than go to a nursing home, but at this point the family has no choice. She needs constant care that we can not provide. My grandfather and great uncle are coming in today to make arrangements. Nanny doesn't have a great relationship with either son so this has the makings of a battle. While this situation isn't critical any longer, it will still be a stressful one for my family. For those of you who called and/or left comments thank you. Friends are what get you though times like this.