What is the dying process?

Nobellily I like your name.

I think the dying process varies from person to person depending what their underlying conditions are but there are some things that most people experience when they are near the end. Others on here could probably help you better than I.

With my Mom I kept looking for the signs I was told to expect but they never happened.

I lost my sister to pancreatic cancer last year. She was diagnosed in April 2015 and was given 6 months to live, and she died in September at the age of 75. As her caregiver, I appreciated the hospice program and the nurses/aides who assisted. The last month of her life, her pain increased to the point that Morphine had to be used to control it. The more morphine administered, the more unresponsive she became. She couldn't swallow liquids, so all I was able to do was swab her mouth and lips with a wet sponge. It was heartbreaking to watch her slowly die this way. Along with that, as a caregiver to my mom, who was then 100, I was trying to comfort her in the coming loss of my sister. Mom had been my sister's caregiver for all of her life, as sis was mentally disabled with the mentality of an eight year old. Mom was heartbroken with my sister's death, and I'm still helping my mom deal with her loss.
Never in my life did I think I would be facing such a life changing situation as my sister dying before my mom and me comforting mom, instead of the other way around.
I pray mom doesn't suffer long, and dies peacefully in her sleep. Then I can finally grieve the loss of both of them.

Go to YouTube and look for a video by Barbara Karnes, Gone From My Sight. It's about 90 minutes and extremely informative and detailed about the dying process.

OH, AmyGrace, thanks for sharing. I do understand. It's hard to know what to think or feel. You lost your lovely mother. I can't imagine that. Thank goodness she didn't suffer.

I keep my eyes open for information about end of life, because my cousin has so many traits yet, her vitals are good. She can't walk, but she does move her feet around in her wheelchair. She eats well, but has lost weight. She doesn't have much muscle, if any. You can see the decline, both mental and physical. The doctors have said she's not ready for Hospice. Still....I just don't know... Will they come to me and say that she is now LATE and FINAL stage? I do read that they describe her as SEVERE in all her medical records.

My mother had good vitals right up until the last day. They told me her blood tests were normal, so was her BP, heart and lungs despite being anorexic and malnourished which caused her to be weak and fall. They could not understand how she had the energy she had, right up until her last few days. At 101, with being immobilized and sedated she had completely stopped eating and drinking. They told us she could have had another another year except for that.
Nature had a way of knowing when it is time. It may sound callous, but it is actually better it happened this way, quietly and painlessly because she was completely deaf and her dementia was accelerating. Another two years of living as a vegetable with someone changing her diapers and trying to feed her is not what she would have wanted.

Eyerishlass, I'm curious about the other end of life symptoms the people had that passed away, even though they had good vitals. I have read a lot, but do run across those cases where people were eating, drinking, but, died suddenly.

Is your mother on any pain or tranquilizer meds? This is what we experienced with our mother. She went into a NH because she could no longer walk and her dementia was getting bad. Up until then she was an active "cat on a hot tin roof" kind of person. In the NH she was in a wheel chair or recliner all day. I'm not sure if it was just the inactivity or old age catching up with her or maybe boredom, but when we visited she would often be asleep in the recliner and over the course of a few months, was harder and harder to wake up.
Then she fell and broke her pelvis and was put on morphine and tranquilizers to keep her in bed and pain free. The last few weeks of her life, she mostly slept and there were times we thought she was dead or unconscious as she couldn't be roused. Part of her sleeping all the time was age, morphine and mostly just winding down. She stopped eating and drinking the last week.

I work in hospice and the last 2 patients I had who died had normal vitals on the day they died. However, they did have other end-of-life symptoms.

Here is an article from AgingCare

www.agingcare.com/articles/end-of-life-care-for-dying-loved-one-123287.htm

There are also lots of resources on the site and online if you do a search of your question.