There is no knowing what will happen.
Brooke and I talked with a bunch of nurses (at the hospice critical care house) today and they all confirmed that as long as they are titrating or changing meds, trying to help Val get to a comfortable sweet spot of breathing and some lucidity, they will keep us at the hospice house. It just goes day by day. So we might stay longer than Monday, we might not.
Today Val is breathing okay (by our current standards, which is to say shallowly, with the use of cranked-up oxygen, and without frequent oxygen-starvation crises) and not in pain. However she is weak and extremely out of it, loopy and confused. She makes us give her a frequent head count of people present in the room so she can sort out the real folks from the imaginary ones. I hope that some of this can be attributed to the evolving medicines regimen, and we will be lowering her dose of methadone for a day to see, but I don’t know.
Tuley was able to visit for a bunch of hours today. She lay in Val’s lap with her head on her knee. Exactly what we all want to do.
Love,
D