Grandma in hospice

Ok, I figure I'll share the info that I stuck up on Facebook yesterday about grandma. The only bit that I didn't share in the note (I added it as a comment) is that the hospice nurse said people in grandma's condition usually have six more months. But that's just usually. Not always. A six months estimate could be wildly off.

... ... ...

First, a key point.

Grandma is happy, and isn't in any pain.

The rest of the news isn't good, but at least there's that.

Grandma has just gone on hospice. (Our hope is that she'll come out of hospice. Unlikely, but not impossible.) This is because she had a minor surgical procedure a couple days ago, and has barely been eating since then. Which isn't a good sign.

We do know that she has a mass on her pancreas. We don't know what it is. It's probably malignant.

After grandma received treatment for colon cancer a couple years ago she said no more surgeries if the cancer returned. My mom is respecting this decision, and so our focus is on making the rest of her time as comfortable as possible. (And as I said, she's pain free.) This means that finding out if it's pancreatic cancer (I think that's pretty likely) won't change treatment, so we aren't doing a biopsy. Particularly since the procedure to do a boispy is invasive, and there's no point of doing that to her if we aren't going to treat it anyways.

Again, this is us respecting grandma's wishes from a couple years ago, espeically since she is still vocal about not wanting surgery. And she's weak enough that we don't think she would handle surgery very well anyways.

Grandma is finally being released from the hospital today, and we're hoping that she'll start eating again (and improve) once she's back with the people she's been living with and who she knows.