My sister and I are facing one of the most difficult decisions any child should have to face.

My mom, whom I’ve mentioned before, has end-stage Alzheimer’s. For those of you lucky enough not to experience this, this is what it means; she can’t move, talk, eat regular food, recognize family, communicate in any way, or seemingly understand anything going on.  Lovely.

Well, Mom landed in the hospital Sunday night.  The initial thought was that she had a bad cold, but it quickly became apparent that more was going on.

After three days of testing, we now know she has a number of things going wrong—all of which are typical for Alzheimer’s, but that of course, is of little comfort.

Plainly speaking, she’s not going to get better.  We can choose to do extreme measures that will offer a temporary solution (if the measures themselves don’t do her in).  We can go with a more conservative treatment plan that could be uncomfortable for her, and will still only be temporary.  Or, we can “keep her comfortable.”

“Keeping her comfortable” we found, has different gradations.  We can continue some medicines but not others, or cease the medicines and just continue the feeding tube.  Or, we can just give her pain medicine.  

What’s the best decision for Mom?  I know what I would want for me, and I can assume from what I know of her, she would want something similar.  But we never had that conversation.  Death was never discussed in our house, even when Mom was lucid.  Between her natural obstinance and paranoia (bless her heart), and my own reluctance to broach the subject, we never discussed her wishes.

So my sister and I are getting as much information from the doctors as we can, researching on the Internet, talking with family and trying to make the best decision from our heads and from our hearts.

And then, I'm going to make my own wishes known, to spare my children this decision.