So my mom was taken to hospital again yesterday morning - fever & abdominal pain. I spent the entire day worrying that it was her appendix because it would be inoperable given her condition. My sister stayed at the hospital to ensure they admitted her. They generally try to ship geriatrics back to their nursing homes. This is the downside of socialized medicine. They want to keep turning the beds over and they definitely don't want to be doing the paperwork on somebody who has just reached their time to go. You can be sure if we were paying for it, they'd be falling all over themselves offering procedures and treatments.

My sister and I texted back and forth all day and around 3:30 she sent one saying "mom doesn't even have her appendix anymore! Who knew?". She twigged to it after an orderly who was assisting in the room commented, "Wow, you don't see appendix scars that big anymore."

Anyway, Laurel called late last night and they finally had a diagnosis - abdominal aortic aneurysm - add to that inoperable. It's caused by breakdown of the aortic wall and just keeps getting worse until it ruptures.
You know, every time one of my parents goes into the hospital, the staff says "there's nothing we can do, your father/mother only has hours/days/weeks left" and every time, they've responded to antibiotics and fluids and bounced back. Anyway, this time they advise us there is no bouncing back. And then right after, they say "it could be tonight, it could be 6 months from now." The one thing they're sure of is it's painful. Poor mom. The only possible blessing is, since she's so far gone with dementia, maybe she isn't aware. She appears to be comfortable and only shows pain when the doctor presses on her abdomen but who knows, it's not like she can tell us anything. I guess we'll know more in the next few days.
On the plus side, she's in Scarborough General where my brother-in-law built the emergency wing and is on the board of directors. My sister just had to go in and say her name for mom to get the VIP treatment.