Ode to Mawmaw: Give us Grace

Join me in the 3rd installment of how it looked from this Nurses ICU eyes as his grandparents exited this world.  This episode features my Mawmaw and how she much like my Papa, faded off into the land of Pillgatory...

The Average Life expectancy has increased by over a decade from when I was a child but there hasn't seemed to be a correlating increase in the Quality of Life during those final years.  

I aim to shine a light on what is really happening to our elderly population and how we can have meaningful conversations to have the most Enlightened Ending for you or your loved one.

So join me and I'll share some of my favorite memories of Mawmaw and follow me as I tell you the story of how my Mawmaw faded away in a Nursing home as her mind slipped away.

Transcript

Ode to Mawmaw: Give us Grace

So in the last two episodes, I've covered my papa and grandma. Now I'm going to move on to my Mawmaw and Pawpaw, and for people out there that aren't quite sure exactly what the words I'm saying mean just like my dictation program couldn’t figure out. A Mawmaw and Pawpaw are your paternal grandparents and Grandma and Papa are your maternal grandparents in south GA. So in reverse order from this point in time, Mawmaw is the next up in my backwards timeline.  Now enjoy the story of Grace Moore.

I love my Mawmaw dearly and she was so sweet to me at least that is. There's something about being a grandparent, I guess, that helps you just 100% love somebody without any reservations.  Apparently Mawmaw scared my cousins and a few others in South Ga a lot more than me but we lived over 3 hours away and they definitely saw her a lot more than me since they lived down the road from Mawmaw and Pawpaw.  I didn't really notice her mean side until she was around 90 and her dementia slowly got worse and worse. 

My Mawmaw and Pawpaw We're married 71 years and both made it to 94.  I thought Pawpaw would easily make it to 100 but after 71 years of being fussed at he finally decided that he’d had enough and told Mawmaw Si a Nara.  JK I’ll tell you more about Pawpaw next time but for now let me tell you some Moore about Grace…

I was told growing up that Mawmaw was born without a middle name but apparently it's Burley and she didn’t want that name so bad that she tried to have it removed off her birth certificate.  I didn't know until probably my early 30s that she had false teeth apparently my whole life. She kept them in all the time even at night and brushed them like real teeth.  She also only communicated to Pawpaw through fussing at him

And boy was she a good cook I mean she wasn't like a gourmet, New York chef kind of cook, but she could throw down awesome country Soulfood. I'm talking super taters, fried okra, zipper peas oh, and her breakfast. An average breakfast usually included over easy eggs, sausage, bacon, cheese slices, toast or biscuit, cheese grits, and usually something that required yellow label or cane sugar syrup.  And if you know you know.

Now it's interesting to me how they ate pretty heavy food and made it so long but a lot of the times specially for dinner, there were a lot of whole food plant-based items. Of course we had the main meat, but there were usually a lot of vegetable sides. I think there is something about the simple life that they lead to help them make it to 94 in relatively good health, and I would say from 90 to 93 was a fairly steady slow decline but from 93 to 94 it seem to rapidly deteriorate. Even as an experienced nurse, at the time of their death is still kind of took me off guard that it was actually the end for them. And much like my papa she slipped away within the walls of a nursing home in the land of PILLGATORY!  

On today’s commercial break I want to take the time to really clarify how nurse coaching can improve people’s lives in so many ways.  Think of a time when a Nurse went above and beyond to help you or your loved one during a vulnerable or scary time.  Now imagine that you have an hour or more to explore the different possibilities on how an important medical decision could impact your life with this same nurse.  The nurse doesn’t have any other patients that they must also attend to but is giving you their undivided attention to help you save time and energy from going down the wrong path in this complex medical system alone!  

In a redneck voice why don't you sound stupid. Why would I ever need an experienced NURSE for help with anything? I can just passively accept what my insurance companies allow my doctors to do and I'm just fine cough, cough. Snort and spit. And then gag a little.
Oh I'm sorry who are you again?

I’m Bubba Trubba and and if you can’t fix me with a pill, I don't want it!  I am just a victim of my surroundings edit ain't my fault that I eat a sausage, biscuit, cheeseburger and fried chicken every day.  And I'm pretty sure that there's no such thing as acute biscuit poisoning so don't come at me with your new age hippie bullshit!

Oh no worries, you can take care of yourself exactly how you like in this country, Nurse Coaches are just available for those that aren’t afraid to put in some REAL WORK in order to achieve their best HEALTH possible.

WHATEVER… I’m just gonna take my 100 prescription pills with MEALS EVERY DAY until the day I die, and I’ll Show YOU!

Show me What?

In raspy redneck voice:     “True Living”

Not quite sure what to make of that High Jacked commercial but welcome back.  

And I don't remember the exact timeline, but essentially as you will learn more about in my next episode, once Pawpaw went into the hospital his last time which lasted a few months in that little South Georgia hospital.  The family finally had found a way to get my Mawmaw to willingly go to a nursing home because it was attached to the hospital Pawpaw had been in soooo long.  Like most families, we were doin our best to keep her and Pawpaw in their own home, but it became the perception that they weren't safe enough there. And I will go into more detail as the show goes on, but we really need to have a conversation about our loved ones final years and what's more important; Their ABSOLUTE safety and protection from a fall or maintaining their freedom and final wishes.

But Back to Mawmaw, when she got in the nursing home and lost Pawpaw her mind really started slipping.  I honestly don't know what would've happened if we started pulling all of her meds away at that point, but like most people in a nursing home, she was on a handful of pills and would have frequent burst of agitation. We still visited her as often as we could, but after a couple of hours or so, both her and my family were quite exhausted.  Luckily, there was a nice park that we could take her and the boys to and eat watermelon and just enjoy being in nature. She was an avid bird watcher her whole life and that's something I carry within me till this very day.

I don't have a whole lot more to say other than I could not help but see my first glimpse of PILLGATORY… my mind didn't have a name for it yet, but I could see it and it made me feel a deep unease within myself.  It seems like a slow motion train wreck, that I could do nothing but watch even though I knew the quality we had been stripped away from her. I would've been probably thought of as coldhearted for suggesting stopping all her meds and at the time. Not even sure if I was aware enough to suggest it. But The longer I stay in your system the more it breaks my heart… and don't get me wrong. We do lots of amazing things within the hospital walls, but it doesn't fix DEATH!  So why do we continue to force meds down our loved ones throats or even worse Feeding tubes in order to delay the inevitable for Quantity over quality?

I feel Blessed that  I got to see her coming back from the beach a week or so before she passed and apparently after we left, the nursing home staff said she every night we go to the front porch of the nursing home and say Pawpaw is coming to pick me up almost refusing to go to her room at night and did this about 7 eight nights in a row, until she finally went peacefully in her sleep and Pawpaw picked her up…

So join me next time as I detail my final but chronologically first grandparents exit on the finale of this stretch of Scrubs in the Trenches…