24 April 2006

RIP Elsie Morgan

My Nana passed away on Sunday 16th of April at the age of 84 having suffered a massive stroke on the preceding Monday. She was given a matter of hours to live initially as her blood pressure and respiratory rate were very labile and family members rushed from all over the country to be at her bedside. In fact once she had some fluid resuscitation she perked up a fair bit. Due to the fact she had been on the floor for up to 15 hours and was behind on fluids. She looked quite stable once this was corrected. She had a complete dense left sided hemiparesis but was conscious and aware of her surroundings. She could communicate by writing with her right hand but her motor function was too poor on the left of her face for her to articulate words well enough to be properly understood. Almost the whole of her very large family made it in to see her. Those that didn’t were out of the country. Her two surviving brothers, four children, five of her eight grandchildren and two of her five great grand children all managed to be with her in her last few days and had the chance to say goodbye. She was initially in quite good spirits cracking jokes with us. Later on, however, as her conscious level again started to decline she seemed in less good spirits and indicated several times that she had had enough and wanted to go. She had looked after my grandfather for several years after he had a similar stroke. She knew what was in store for her if she survived and that her independent active lifestyle was, almost certainly, going to be significantly reduced. The prospect of finding Nan a place in a nursing home in the knowledge that she would certainly not like the idea was looming however the insult of the stroke and aspiration pneumonia from her period of unconsciousness in the end compounded into an insurmountable hurdle even for this tough and determined woman and she died at 10.30am Easter Sunday morning.

She received an excellent standard of care from the medical and nursing teams at Stoke Mandeville including a head CT within 12 hours of arrival, early recognition and treatment of dehydration, aspiration pneumonia and early onset of nasogastric feeding. She was turned, washed, and changed regularly and the nursing staff were, on the whole, very tolerant of the large number of visitors. The medical team and the nursing staff also were very tolerant of me sticking my oar in whenever I could collar them. I spoke to her consultant and every member of his team and to most of the sisters on the ward and I was impressed by their professionalism and competence. I know from experience that having a medically qualified relative interfering is a real headache and you spend ages dealing with them to the detriment of actually getting on with the delivery of care. I tried really hard not to be one of those relatives but in some ways I think it is inevitable that you will want to be involved to a greater extent than medically naïve relatives. I more fully realize now that because they sit there next to just one patient they are more aware of the time it takes for the team to react to a change in the circumstances of that patient.

Her funeral is tomorrow.

1 Comments:

Blogger Jo said...

There's a great Michelle Shocked song called 'The secret to a long life is knowing when it's time to go', which is a sentiment I hope I get to act on when the time comes, and it sounds like your Nana did. My limited experience to date has led me to conclude that a good death is a lot harder to pull off than by rights it should be. So I am glad for everyone that it went ok, and I heard from my mum that the funeral went well also. Hope you and Pete are ok too. xx

11:11 pm  

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