I had it all worked out, on paper at least. I had a plan of action for when the time came to say goodbye to Jim.

It still hurts like hell.

I brought him back into the ER in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.

He’d woken up full of delusions. He had to leave go hime/get to the arena/ball diamond/ work. It changed every few minutes.

Usually, I play along with his need and get him dressed and a snack and then we can go back to sleep. (Fighting the delusion just keeps us both up all night)

This time though, when I was about to put on his sock, I saw his foot infection had grown much worse since we’d gone to bed.  So much so that I called 9-1-1 because I knew I’d never be able to get him down the half staircase and into the car.

By Thursday, it was confirmed his entire foot was dead and I had the choice of amputation or discontinuing the antibiotics and letting nature take its course.

Sedation is hell on dementia patients. If he survived, (his frailty score is 7/9, so not good odds) we’d have lost the last of his personality. Not to mention the mental anguish he’d experience at seeing his missing foot, for the first time, over and over again.

Putting Jim on palliative care was the easiest, hard decision I’ve ever had to make.

Part of me is relieved. Dementia is a horribly, ugly death. I feel that we’ve cheated the system by letting his foot infection take him. But, I’m okay with that.

Thankfully, he has no idea what’s happening. He’s content, quick with one liners and sings to the nurses. He’s going out on a high note.

His daughters were here to say goodbye a few weeks ago. We knew the end was near, but no one guessed it was this close.

This sucks but it is by far the best case scenario we could have hoped for.