It Breaks My Heart

This has been a long week for my family.  My grandmother was admitted to the hospital last Sunday night.  She was having a very hard time breathing.  This is especially bad since she is on oxygen 24/7 already.  Earlier in the week she got to the point where she was to weak to walk to the bathroom so she had to use a bedside commode.  If that wasn't bad enough she also got to the point where she was to weak to stand up and wipe herself.  I had to hold her up and my mother, being the great daughter that she is, had to wipe her.  Even after having us to help her she was struggling to breath because of the stress on her body.  The doctor finally ordered a catheter so that she would not have to get out of bed.  In order to do this they had to lay her down, which caused her to have a major panic attack because she was unable to breath.  She starting yelling "Dear God I am going to die".  This is was so heart breaking!!! It is so hard to see someone that you love struggle to catch a single breath.  She was finally able to calm down some.  After this episode the doctor order her an extended breathing treatment in addition to the breathing treatment that she normally takes every four hours.  He also allowed for her to have a treatment every hour as she needed.  They still do not know exactly what is causing all of this.  She has COPD for as long as I can remember.  Her having this is probably part of the problem but not the main problem.  They did a chest x-ray, which came back fine.  In the meantime she starting having blood in her urine.  They took her in to clean out her lungs this morning, which hasn't really changed anything except that her lung are a little more clear.  They were going to do an MRI to see if they could find a tumor or any signs of cancer but decide to do a CAT Scan instead since her breathing was so hard and would have messed up the MRI results.  The CAT Scan also can back fine.  However, the blood work came back showing her CO2 levels very elevated.  To help reduce the CO2 levels the doctor order her to wear a BiPAP.  She had this put on at 5:00 and has to wear it through the night and then they will check her leaves in the morning.  Seeing her have the mask put on was another hard thing.  Grandma is very claustrophobic and started freaking out when they put the mask on her.  In order to calm her down they had to give her a Valium.  She is finally asleep and doing pretty good with the BiPAP machine.  She will occasionally wake up and try to rip the mask off and my mom has to pull her hand away and then she is fine.  Her blood pressure is also elevated.  All we can do is pray that she gets better and that nothing happens to her.  We just lost my grandpa in July.  I am so thankful for my family that has been here to take care of her and make sure that she gets what she needs.  I love her and hate seeing her this way!!!