A Cool Pillow

 Terminal Agitation can be a common symptom of the dying process. 

It can start a couple of weeks before death and can be characterised as being behaviours that are restless, unsettled and anxious in nature. Some patients are fidgety, others distressed, sometimes angry, sometimes confused. And the causes can be complicated and multifaceted.

Often patients are hypoxic, or have deranged blood work.

Their primary disease may be affecting their bodies adversely with pain, and sepsis, infection and organ failure being other important factors.

Hospice care is often all about managing these conditions.

Medication has its role and is a big factor

Communication and the simple but practical dealing with issues such as dehydration, constipation and retention of urine are others .

It’s a complicated issue.

This morning, in the wee small hours when nothing feels right 

Medications and communication and pain relief and positioning all had a role to play in the quietening of terminal agitation. 

But the final straw that helped the most, at 5.30 am when the patient was most forlorn ?

A cool, almost cold pillow against a cheek

A pillow that had been left next to a slightly open window 

A pillow smelling “ Vaguely of the Irish sea”

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/9cSXuoC

Lund

Running down the centre of The East Riding of Yorkshire, there's a river called The River Hull. To the west of it, chalky downs known at The Yorkshire Wolds undulate gently like languorous ocean waves. To the east of the river  and composed of boulder clay deposited by the last great ice age, The Plain of Holderness stretches out to The North Sea.

Growing up east of the river meant that I was much more familiar with that landscape - Holderness. To the west there were villages that were only names and seemed unembodied - Lockington, North Dalton, Beswick, Lund and Hutton Cranswick. They were but a bicycle outing distance from my home but the river divided us.

Village green in Lund

Yesterday, I visited the charming village of Lund for the first time and walked with Tony to Kilnwick - another heard of settlement never seen. The farmland in that district was was well-drained and fertile but young barleyfields of this current era are invariably bereft of insects, birds, wild mammals or weeds. It's like farming in a factory. Old hedges ripped up and fertiliser spread by machines.  The holy grail is always abundance but where are the insects meant to live? Where our feathered friends and the hedgehogs?

In that arable desert, you sometimes see lone woods like islands in a sea of green. As luck would have it, we stumbled upon Lund Moor Wood at just the right time for native bluebells. They hung on the plantation floor like a blue-violet mist cherished rarely by passing ramblers in the month of May before their beauty evaporates like the sweet songs of youth.

It was a marvellous show though I freely admit that, partly because of the light conditions,  my images  could not begin to do them justice.

Kilnwick Beck

from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/T4qLx0r

Blessing

 I want to be grateful 

No matter the fact

That I’m befuddled

Most of the time

They only thing

I know

Is that I’m His

And for today

That’s enough

Love the life

You have

In war torn nations

Quiet is a blessing

from R's rue https://ift.tt/dnQ1w5i