My 81 y/o MIL lives with us. She is mildly diabetic, doesn't take Insulin. But she operates within a really, really narrow range of blood sugar and diet. We went camping last weekend for one night. My 21 y/o son calls me a few hours after we left and said Grandma was acting weird. We came home and she was acting like she was really really drunk. She wasn't. She hadn't taken her medicine and went to the supermarket and bought a danish, her blood sugar was 275. Medicine brought it back to 125 in a few hours. My point is that diet is really important.

My grandma outlived her husband by 2 years, she was physically weak(much weaker then he was, he had bad stroke, never knew what hit him) when he was still alive, but happy and strongwilled,
but it went all downhill after he died. Her weakness was the heart.. and it got weaker and weaker... Some odd behaviour, but mostly explainable... mostly fear of being and dying alone.
And the worse it got, the more it pained me, and the more time i spent with grandma... Even when i was already overworked on the job, tired all the time...It was worth it.


Some people literally loose the will to live.
That's a psychological condition, but it will cause physical decline just the same.

So it suppose it's just as possible that she's given up mentally when her husband went, and instead of her heart, her physical decline is just an increased rate of dementia... Combined with the "giving up", things get even more difficult...

All in all, there's nothing anyone can do about it. That's life, and it's tough to deal with... But we for those we care about, there simply aren't any other acceptable alternatives.

For your own future memories, it will give you peace of mind to know you did what you could... When the going get's though, the tough get going.

Dottore,

Thanks for posting your concerns. I have learned quite a bit on a subject foreign to me. While my 80 year-old father shows no symptoms, the responses to your post, especially Jim727, have been so informative, so well written, that I feel better prepared, come what may.

The long and winding road.

I wish you calm in the storm.