Bath for the girls...

Lily is coming home.  It was up in the air for bit but it has been settled.  Sunday at approximately 10:30 a.m. - I will be at home while Lily's parents will be at the hospital.  A hospice nurse will arrive at my house with a bed and some equipment for her.  This set-up process will likely take about 90 mins and then Lily will be driven home by her parents.  Her mother will move into our upstairs bedroom.  The hospital bed will likely be in the center of our living room.

Weirdly, Lily's rambling, shaking and overall confusion has almost ceased to exist.  We have been told that due to the increase in her medication, her brain is no longer completely focused on fighting the cancer.  So, as she declines physically, she improves mentally.  What an unexpected paradox.

Here, we all were thinking Lily's confusion was from the cancer but instead it was a result of fighting the cancer.

Lily flipped-flopped on whether to keep fighting the cancer (despite her oncologist's opinion) or surrender the fight and go into palliative care. 

She ended up choosing the latter, thankfully.  I say thankfully because watching Lily endure the first round of chemo and radiation was so excruciating, I genuinely thought I could feel her pain, too.  Nothing like telekinetic or Spock-like, but something more akin to the visual and auditory sounds clashing and then being absorbed by me in empathetic way. 

I not only winced along during these episodes but I could feel pain in my chest. As if I was going to have a heart attack.

So, in preparation for Lily's return to our house, I decided to have "her girls" bathed and groomed (see picture above).

Of course, we didn't get off scot-free while at hospital today.  There was the uncomfortable talks with hospice coordinator about implementing a DNR, a designated person authorized to "pull the plug" if Lily goes into cardiac arrest but survives it without cognitive function, etc., etc., etc. All gruesome and disturbing scenarios.

There were more than a few times that either her mother, father or myself had to "step out of the room" as we didn't want break down in front of Lily.  

But we got it done.

After it was just Lily and I in her hospital room alone (with the constant heart monitor beeping and breaking the silence), Lily looked right at me in the eye and asked, "Why is this happening to me, honey?  What did I do wrong in my life?"

"You did nothing wrong." I said as my voice tightened. "It's genetics or god or an intelligent designer or whatever you want to call it.  And take comfort, that each one of us in this room love you more than anything.  And everyone of us is going to be in your exact same position, someday.  Actually, everyone of us on this planet will go through what you're going through. You are just lucky (or unlucky  - if you choose to view it that way) to know where and about when it'll happen."

"Yeah, two weeks, maybe," she said sobbing.

"Yeah", I said," sobbing back.

"I'm going to miss you so much [my name]," she said.

"Me too," I replied.