My prediction could it be was the storm prior to the calm. 

You remember my grandma is home in hospice care? She likely will not live much longer, and we've come to the predictable milestone of assessing progress
daily.
Hour by hour may be the next stop, I understand.
The storm. Grandma was confused -- and not simply mildly confused, but all-out hallucinating. In nursing, we assess if hallucinations are auditory (patient
hears them) or visual (patient sees them) -- or both. Grandma had both. Based on Grandma, monkeys were on the ceiling, along with Zi Xiu Tang Reviews a big-bosomed, African-
American woman was talking to her.
(It's OK to chuckle. We did.)
In and out of lucidity, she also was agitated, flailing during sex, even just in her weakened state.
It's disconcerting.
You read about the confusion and delirium that typically accompanies the dying, but when it really occurs, it may be shocking. I assured her bedside
caregivers: So long as she is safe (not likely to injure herself or others) and pain-free, then she is OK, however unpleasant, strange or irrational
everything is.
So much like childbearing: When a woman actually hits active labor, it's not hard to be alarmed. "She's crying! She's saying, 'I can't do this anymore!'
She's saying it hurts so much!" Yes, yes she's. All normal. All OK. This is actually the process. She can handle it. We are able to handle it.

In my grandma's case, we can, really, only speculate: Is that this just a component of the process? Did cancer spread to her brain? Is it just electrolyte or
blood-sugar the process of anorexia and dehydration? Or, one of my theories: Have her ammonia levels increased because of some kind of liver failure, which
can cause encephalopathy?
Knowing WHY won't change much. In hospice care, we address symptoms for patient safety and comfort, but we aren't attempting to fix anything. The question,
then, returns to "Is she safe? Is she in pain?"
So she'd that storm, which lasted the greater part of a night. We have medications to assist calm her, that they did. When I arrived, then, a couple of hours
after I watched a sweet little girl born into her mother's arms -- an amazing, beautiful irony for me personally -- Grandma was, largely, back to normal. The
storm had passed and she or he slept comfortably in the bed in her sunny living room.
And that we talked. Every now and then she'd say something odd or off or downright weird, but she was, once we note within our nursing assessments, alert and
oriented to person, place and time. She knew whom she was, where she was and that it was October, though once she said hello was 2004 and that i was my
sister.
Within our talks, Grandma shared stories. She seemed aware of what she was doing -- handing off treasures, laying before me important pieces of her.
As she talked, I soaked in the palpable sacredness from the encounter, which begat sweet sorrow when i realized what she was doing. She was saying, when i
often hear the dying will, "Please remember me."
In fact, many end-of-life it's advocated we capture stories from our dying family member. Since "reporter" is in my blood, I knew to get this done, but
others might not. So, main takeaway today: Record your loved ones' life stories, maybe even now, before they're dying. Tell your friends they will be
remembered.
And a story:
It had been The second world war era, circa 1943. My grandma was 10 years old, a gangly and grubby Tom-boy of the girl. She seemed to attract mischief and
had a backside to prove it.

Her mother, Dixie, had purchased via catalog shopping some "caramels" pitched as candy for dieters. These "candies" were, essentially, laxatives. Yep, lose
weight by elimination: Seems "get-thin-quick" gimmicks have been around for a long time.
If my great-grandmother was without a slender waist in 1943, she certainly were built with a slender pocketbook, so her children were not within the practice
of having much candy. They were, actually, often searching for items to peddle towards the neighbor kids for pennies.
"I was always searching for something to sell," my grandma said. Without doubt makes up about much of her mischief.
Grandma Dixie had hidden her "candies" high on a closet shelf. But my expert-at-trouble grandma ferreted them out.
She brought down the box, retracted the paper, and stuffed in regards to a dozen "caramels" in her pockets, vision of fistfuls of pennies in her head.
And, sure enough, the delectable "caramels" were big sellers towards the scrappy, poor neighbor kids who didn't see much candy. My grandma and her "caramels"
were really like the ice-cream man on a hot, summer day.
"Oh, sometimes I possibly could get 3 or 4 cents a caramel," my grandma explained, blue eyes snapping. "I don't know where they found the cash, but when it
came to getting a caramel like this, they did."
While my grandma counted up her coins, my great-grandma returned home determined the missing laxatives. She knew exactly whom to interrogate -- the notorious
Claudia Rose -- and hoped that my grandma had eaten them herself and would have a nice case from the runs.
But nope. My grandma and her mortified mother circumnavigated the neighborhood to Zi Xiu Tang Bee Pollen recall those "caramels."
"And all of the neighbor kids was at their outhouse," my grandma said.

She chuckled remembering.
"I always believed that would make a great story for inside a movie," she said. "Except for that lickin' I got. Now, that was not funny."
I'll remember you, Grandma. How could one forget that?