July 19, 2026 - Choosing Peace - Tami's Decision to Come Home

 The Decision to Transition to Hospice Care

I apologize for the length and weight of this post. It is by far the hardest thing I have ever written.  I fear that this pales in comparison to the next post I expect to write. 

Some decisions are choices and others are simply reactions. As my last post indicated, we spent a few days in the hospital the 11th thru the 13th due to bleeding related to her largest tumor. Well, Tami had a standard pre-chemo blood draw on Thursday the 16th. That morning, along with the continued bleeding, Tami noticed abdominal swelling (to put it mildly), redness, and tenderness. At the urging of her Oncologist, we went back to ER after her blood draw.  

By the time we were seen, Tami was in sepsis, and severely dehydrated. So, they started an IV with fluids and antibiotics. They also did a CT Scan. The CT Scan showed that the primary tumor ruptured, and that the cancer spread so much that there are too many blockages to be operable. 

As I have previously stated,  there are clinical terms that seem a bit euphemistic for almost everything in the medical world.  The term that both doctors used to descibe this one, is a terminal event.  The definition of terminal event is the final health incident or complication that directly causes a person's death.

The first person to convey this was the surgeon that would have performed the emergency operation.  To paraphrase his comments, if he operated on her, he would do additional damage her body and completely remove her dignity. Also, he added that it would not treat the cancer at all. All of that, and it is extremely unlikely she would ever leave the hospital. 

The Internal Medicine doctor we saw in ER at the end of the that night repeated a majority of the same information and conclusions. More than once, both doctors had indicated, there is really nothing left for them to do for Tami regarding the underlying cancer. He gave us two choices. The first was, the choice to stay in the hospial over night and continue fighting the sepsis, with the understanding that even if they fight the sepsis, this event will cause her passing. The other options was to go home and begin the process of hospice.  When pressed for a time frame, his opinion was that no matter what we chose, we were looking at days, with the outside being a couple of weeks. 

Tami did not want to spend her final days in a hospital, away from the people and things that matter the most to her. So... Home we went, with a referral to hospice care. 

Personal Note: I am suspending all other obligations and will remain by her side until the end.






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