Sad Day

It is a sad day in the Hahn house today; and probably not a very good day to pick up writing things on here again, but today we needed to make a difficult choice. We had to put our cat of 17 years to sleep. We got him as a friend for our other cat at the time as a 1 year old from an ad in the paper. We paid $20 for him (I think, Kris would probably remember). His owner at the time was going through a divorce and had a couple of cats already and didn't have room for Gizmo. I remember him saying that he figured if someone was willing to pay for him he would be assured that he was going to a good home.

Gizmo started acting strange on Thursday night, and by Saturday he hadn't gotten any better so after Kris and I talked it over we decided to see if the vet could see him on Saturday morning. The vet ran a couple of tests and said that the initial diagnosis was kidney disease, but the tests would tell us to what extent it was. Based on how Gizmo was acting I didn't think it was going to be good news. We got the confirmation today. His kidneys were shutting down, and it was just a matter of time. I am sure we did the right thing.

We were blessed to have had Gizmo for 17 years and he never had any sort of illness other than a kitty cold here and there. He was fun, and lovably stupid. He never did figure out how to push open a door. You could be on the opposite side of a door, looking at him thru a crack with an open can of tuna, and he would walk in circles, meowing because he couldn't figure out how to get thru the doorway for his treat.

Alison is particularly sad. We tried to explain to her that it just just Gizmo's time. She said she already misses him and he has only been gone for a couple of hours. But with each day that goes by I am sure it will become easier for her. She was already talking about going to the humane society to look for a new kitty.

When Punken died a couple of years ago, Ali had a dream that he came to visit her in her room one night and that made her feel better. Hopefully she'll have a similar dream with Gizmo to help her feel better.

Over

Well the watch is over. Kris's mom passed away later this evening. Please keep Kris and her family in your thoughts and prayers as we try and plan her funeral. We will probably be scarce/busy the next few days.

The one thing that sort of makes me mad is that Carole never received the Anointing. I didn't even think about it until this afternoon when Kris told me that the hospice nurse gave her such a short time. I told Kris to call our church to see if we could have the pries come over and give her last rites. Well he wasn't around when Kris called and the church secretary even gave Kris his cell phone number. She called an left him a message, but we never heard back. It makes me sad to know that she didn't receive an anointing before she passed away. Looks like it is just another thing for me not to like about our priest.

Not Long Now

I don't want this to turn into a "death watch", but Kris is going to be at her mom's tonight. The hospice nurse who was there today said in her opinion, there isn't much more time for her mom. Maybe 24-48 hours. I told Kris she should probably call the priest from St. Anthony's and we are waiting for a call back from him right now. I think that is all I am going to be "reporting" about Carole's condition until we have to announce a funeral.

Downhill

We found out that Kris's parents had to call the hospice nurse overnight because she was having difficulty breathing. As a result, we ended up spending a total of about six hours there yesterday.

First we stopped over there late in the morning and her mom did not look good. We had to make sure that her dad took all of his pills (which of course he didn't). Then as we were trying to get Carole readjusted in her bed, she got up and decided to walk across the room. I had to grab her arm to stop her as she was about to rip her catheter out. Then as she had stopped she turned around and said she was just going to sit down and rest while we readjusted her bed. The only problem was that she wasn't near a chair, well she was near it, just not in front of it, so she starts rocking backwards and BOOM! I was able to grab her arm and catch her so that she didn't crash hard, but she still hit the ground pretty good. It took a little bit but we did get her back into bed and re-situated a little more comfortably. Once she was settled we left and went home.

Then about 4:30 in the afternoon we got a call from her dad. He said Carole was having problems and he thought we needed to call 911 and get her to the hospital. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) he doesn't remember what is happening. So we went over to check on things and found out that Carole hadn't been taking her pain medication. We managed to giver her her medication and waited around to make sure it started working and she was comfortable enough to fall asleep. While we were there we also made sure that her dad had his dinner and took his medications. Then we left figuring we would need to go back a little after 8:00 to make sure Carole would take her long acting pain killers before bedtime.

I think that things are sinking in for the girls, especially Alison. I am actually surprised at how well Sarah is taking everything. Alison though is very upset by the thought of her grandma going away forever. I have a feeling that it might not be long. I am actually very surprised at how quickly things have gone downhill. Maybe things will be better in the morning.