When "Perfect" is Peverse

The hospice nurse visits mom's apartment once a week, on Thursdays. She arrives with a brief agenda. She asks for updates (nothing new), offers to answer questions (hardly any), and takes mom's vital signs.  Every single week since hospice began, mom's vital signs have been "perfect".  On Thursday, after checking mom's blood pressure, pulse and oxygen absorption, the hospice nurse cheerily reported that all signs are excellent.  She added, "just like a 20 year old". 

That news is disheartening. I think to myself, "that's not perfect; it's not the news we are preparing ourselves to hear".  Mom says out loud what I was thinking. "Well then how am I going to die?" Really good question, Mom. She signed up for hospice because she has decided that she does not want to live any longer. Her life slips away; but the slipping is going much too slow.  Her cancer is probably growing back again in her colon, but we don't know for sure. By agreeing to go on hospice, she has freed herself from being poked and jabbed for blood tests and other diagnostics.  No MRI, no X-ray, no CT scan.  Why? There is no point to uncover the disease, to know what or where it is.  Even if we know for sure that a tumor grows, there is no action to be taken to attack it.  She will not undergo surgery, chemotherapy or radiation.  She will not suffer the discomfort of hospitalization to fight disease.  She will not be rushed in an ambulance on yet another 911 call and endure a long wait and ordeal in the hospital emergency room.  She has already surrendered in advance.  She waved the white flag even before the enemy clearly presented itself.  In essence, by agreeing to enter the hospice program she has given up on trying to live.

That's where the perversity enters. She wants to succumb, to be overtaken.  Yet, her broken down body keeps chugging along, producing vital signs suggesting that she is vital; when she is anything but.  Last week, when the chirpy nurse announced mom's strong indicators, mom said to her aide, "If I'm not going to die, I may as well get my hair done". Together they struggled to sit her up and change her from her perpetual nightgown into a jogging suit (a ridiculous name for something that covers the shriveled limbs of mom's body which lacks the strength to sit erect in a chair).  When I visited her this week, I found her laying in her bed with her roots dyed and her hair permed. Even though her hairdo is lovely, it is overshadowed by her slack face, her folds of skin in layers,  after 50 pounds melted away - while she dies excruciatingly slowly in her bed.