The Blood Clinic

The matriarch and I hate going to the new blood clinic. It is like a medicalized factory--numbers are called, people go in, get poked and come out. While the technicians, no longer nurses, are nice they do not have time to be social or empathetic, some don't even have the wherewithal to be considerate. One of the ladies from the matriarch's previous clinic was moved to this one and she has made an effort on our previous two visits to be the one to do the blood test for the matriarch. And, she has been extremely nice to my 99 year old mother-in-law. One would think the doctor could be the same.

After this last visit, where, yet again, the matriarch bruised after the poke, I phoned to ask if the cumidin dosage was too high or if, maybe, we could stop going to the blood clinic. I don't want my mother-in-law to die--despite it all--and I believe quality of life should be the most important idea to be considered but, really, going for weekly blood tests for blood thinners is problematic. Especially with the change to this new clinic. My mother-in-law is 99, she is not going to live forever. If she picks up a cold at this clinic, it is going to be a huge discomfort. The weekly blood tests are not an inconvenience--well, not to her--but she cannot socialize at this new place and she dreads going to it. And, I don't understand why the doctor keeps her on cumidin; it is to prevent a stroke, he tells me, but what is that? What else could possibly kill her? At 99, it is not so wrong to die nor so unexpected.

None of us wants to die, but I think, sometimes, we get tired of living. My mother-in-law still wants to live--as long as she eats on her own, it is not a worry. But the blood thinners, I think, are prolonging her life. It is a weird situation to be in to say you don't want someone to die and, at the same time, be against things prolonging someone's life. The doctor has said we can now go to the clinic every two weeks; the matriarch's blood tests are stable. But she is bruising, so I doubt it very much, and I suspect the doctor is watching the matriarch. But I don't know for what...at 99, she could die anyhow. So why keep up this pretense of preventing her death? Is that healthcare?

The matriarch lives a life where she wants to go out for lunch all the time. There is only so much money to enable her to do so...we get her out twice a week to a restaurant and I still take her for daily drives and there are the visits to the clinic, to the nail salon, and to the hair dressers. Who am I to judge this type of existence? I am not supposed to be judging it. But, then, how do these acts define my existence? I don't think it is selfish to be questioning these acts as the sum of existence. I mean it amounts to my husband and me, catering to my mother-in-law's whims and is that we are supposed to be like when we get old? Living on our whims? My mother-in-law could live on for years like this or she could die tomorrow--neither situation would be unexpected. But, I begin to think it is wrong for an existence to be reliant on blood tests and stroke prevention. Or, maybe, it is not. I don't know. I go to a funeral today for a man I respected who was in his forties. He wanted to live to see his son grow-up. Should I be comparing his life to the matriarch's?