Fewer Good Days
Second week in hospice care.
There used to be good days and bad days — at least I used to say that.
Now it’s becoming hard to find a good one.
Today I woke up at 7:30 in pain.
Pain everywhere.
If I moved, muscles on one side screamed.
If I shifted, the other side hurt.
If I held perfectly still, my left hip throbbed.
I drank some liquid painkiller, and the pain got worse.
I took a pill, and after a while, it eased just enough that I could turn over.
Even in hospice, there isn’t enough medication to take the pain away completely.
On the bad days, it gets so severe that I can’t even raise my power recliner to reach my power chair.
Simple Pleasures
Today I tried eating some chocolate-frosted oatmeal cookies — my own 2×2 squares made with oatmeal, water, and Splenda.
Either I’d lost my taste buds or there was no flavor left in them.
I made frosting with a new recipe: equal parts butter and cocoa powder, with sugar or Splenda and a touch of milk.
It tasted great, for a moment.
Then I lost my appetite again.
After three or four hours, when the painkillers started to work, I made Amish noodles — the real kind, with eggs, not just flour and water.
I added leftover roasted chicken and some salad, and managed to finish about a cup of chicken and noodles.
Not a good day, but better than none at all.
Parting With Books
Over the weekend, friends came by for several hours to collect some books.
They weren’t vultures picking over my property — they were helping me find new homes for my library.
Letting go of books is difficult.
They’ve been my constant companions all my life.
What’s left are advanced physics, history, and sociology volumes — each one a doorway into another world.
If you read, every book gives you a glimpse of someone else’s life.
Reading many books is like living multiple lives.
Even when they’re not biographies, they let you see through another person’s eyes.
Burning them would be unthinkable — like killing off the author, just a little bit.
The Value of Reading
Fortunately, a friend knows a woman who plans to homeschool her children because she wants them to learn how to read.
That’s becoming rare.
Today’s public school graduates often can’t read more than a few screens of text before they lose comprehension.
I wrote about that recently, after learning that MIT had to start remedial reading classes for incoming freshmen — not all of them, but far too many.
The Literacy Crisis in America: Why Can’t Kids Read, Why Voters Can’t Reason
Closing Note
The pain grows worse, the good days fewer.
But if I can pass along books — and perhaps a little curiosity — then maybe this last deadline isn’t wasted.
See also: Life After A Pandemic: Second Edition
“Last Deadline” Series
Part of John McCormick’s “Last Deadline” series — reflections from a journalist writing through his final chapter.
Explore more from John McCormick and his books.
Series so far:
- Hospice, The Last DEADLINE of a Correspondent
- A Correspondent’s Notes: Day Two in Hospice
- Hospice Notes Day 3–4: Pain, Swelling, and the Relief of Oxygen
- Hospice Notes, Week Two: Pain, Cookies, and Letting Go of a Library
- Another Day in Hospice — A Good One This Time
- Hospice Notes: Good Days, Bad Days, and Broken Pipes
- The Mechanic, The Sailor, The Journalist, and The New Definition of Self-Reliance
- Dispatch From the Frontier: The Mechanics of the Long Sleep
