Mother's cancer

Diagnosed spring, 1997. lumpectomy. Radiation to end of June 1988. Collapse July4 1988 resulting in emergency hospitalization. Family gathering planned for august called early.
Her life was despaired of. My surgeon brother flew in from the west coast, calls in an old cardiac surgeon to install a pericardium drain. Not a hopeful pathologists report. slow improvement. We held the party. It felt like a wake. I was not employed. I volunteered to be it but could not manage the DNR. Ann took that.
A few days later we had her released to hospice. She bore that for a week and came home with a visiting hospice nurse and doctor. We had an open morphine prescription and an oxygen concentrator. We never started the morphine. Slow improvement. She sent my sister back to Detroit. months of wheelchair and assisted bathing. I was doing all the cooking. The nurse turned over to an aid. The chair retired for a walker. In the late autumn of 1999 the aid realised that mother was not dying. Hospice Withdrew.
I do not remember Christmas.