Memorial Weekend was coming up several years ago and we usually do the same thing every Memoraial Weekend. Dusty’s family has a house and land on Blue River. It is a beautiful river that is usually pretty clear and it has several springs in it, which means that it is cold as well. The State of Oklahoma lets trout out in the river for them to spawn and then gives permission to fish them as well.
Dusty’s family will get up Saturday morning and after a hardy big breakfast, will start to count how many people we have and then compare to how many flotation devices we will need to float the river.
We will take flat bottom boats, canoes, fishing tubes, and kayaks to start our 3 or 4 mile trek down the river. We stop and enjoy the sandbars while eating a snack and also take several opportunities to skip flat rocks. 
But this particular year I got a phone call the Friday of Memorial Weekend stating that my grandpa had gone to the hospital with a sever pain in his neck. They had done a CAT scan and it revealed he had a mass the size of a grapefruit in the side of his throat and neck. I don’t know if there were no treatable options for him or not because he had already made up his mind he wasn’t fighting it and had lived this life on earth to the best of his ability and was going to pass on.
So when I got this call I immediately got in my car and made a 5-hour drive to be with my grandma and to say goodbye to my grandpa. When I had arrived he had been signed up with home health and they had already set him up with a bed for his comfort. My grandma immediately gave me the syringe of pain medication to put in his IV for pain because she did not want to do it. I had never done that before either but I did it anyway. I was going to do whatever I needed to do, no matter if I knew how or not.
The nurse from the home health called to check on him during the weekend and offered several times to come out and check on him, but there was nothing anyone could do except just to keep him comfortable. The comfort of knowing the nurse was a phone call away eased my anxiousness somewhat!
My grandpa passed on that weekend and was in pain no longer. The nurse of the home health came and did her final paperwork and we started making arrangements for the funeral.
“The force of life and the power of death” was in a book my Mike Ireland and I thought it was such a good quote!
The care and comfort that home health nurses give to their patients and their families cannot be measured by a star review. They are measured by the feelings that you did everything you could for your loved one, during the process of life and death. Home health is something you will never regret doing to help in the process of healing!
Do everything you can do and give all you’ve got to get through, and let home health help!