Adventures of a Tribe

Evening Update

Posted on October 1, 2015

Jan’s behavior the past couple days has taken me back to when we were little. This face of mischief is Jan to the T. If we weren’t getting up to mischief, we were planning it, and he was the mastermind that thought it up and taught me well.

Earlier this afternoon I gave Jan one of his favorite strawberry popsicles, and I opened up a banana creamy for myself. He’d eaten half of his, and I told him mine was delicious and offered him a bite, and with the exact same facial expressions he used when we were little, he wrinkled his nose and in his mumbled speech he asked, ‘like it’? When we were young and he did that, I instantly handed him my popsicle, because I thought it must be bad because of how he was wrinkling his nose.  Today I handed it over to him and he smiled that beautiful smile and was instantly fast asleep.

We have given him various things to try eat, and he chews it up, gets all the flavor out and stores the rest it in his cheeks and falls asleep. I am constantly pulling food out of his cheeks so he doesn’t choke. He thinks it’s funny at this point. He looks at me with full chipmunk cheeks and says he’s swallowed when I ask, and then I squeeze his cheeks and he looks at me as if to say, how did that get there?!

When Trisha our hospice nurse came over, I told her that through the afternoon the hydrocodone/ibuprofen combo didn’t seem to be cutting it, so we switched to an oxycodone/ibuprofen combination, and it is working well so far. It’s amazing to me how quickly things change. One minute he can be pain free and the next, feeling lots of pressure and pain. One minute he speaks well and and the next, can’t speak at all. One second he can walk, the next, not at all. Every moment with him is a moment and memory I would never trade for anything. I love my big brother so much.