Shortness of Breath

As noted yesterday, things can change quickly. Susan experienced increasing shortness of breath today, but as opposed to routinely managing it with morphine (and the panic associated with it with Ativan), Susan was reluctant to take either drug for a particular fear: what if they don't work? Susan's fear of not being able to breath is probably the number one issue facing her seeing that she is not in pain from the cancer.

With this worrisome development, I contacted Dr. Rabow (Susan's palliative care doctor), and he pushed me to try to convince her to take the medications. With his recommendation, Susan relented, finally taking morphine (again, a very small amount of 2mg since it is not for pain), and I think it helped her to get to sleep. 

She fell asleep relatively early but she has been getting up in the middle of the night trying to communicate something but is very foggy. I find that if I sit with her, her mind clears and we can actually start to talk about various things. It is strange that these meaningful conversations happen in the middle of the night as opposed to during the day, but I guess there are so many distractions during the day that this is the way it is.

So is this a milestone of decline that I had talked about as opposed to speculating that she could live for weeks or even months or more? It's hard to tell, and of course, my objectivity is suspect.

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