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A month after adding the protein powder to the drink, a blood test showed that the protein level had risen. As usual, my walking was not stable and I often coughed, so I decided to take a very small amount (half a tablet at breakfast) of a drug called Aldacton for about a month . I don't know if it's because of the medicine, but I stopped coughing so much, and when I'm feeling well, I can walk with the helper's guidance. Sometimes I went to the bathroom and stooled. Defecation occurs regularly every few days, and no laxatives are used.

 

Helpers come multiple times every day. Depending on the day of the week, there are days when they come three times and days when they come twice a day. I also had more time with each helper's visit. In the past, helpers stayed for 30 minutes or 1 hour, but now they always have 1 hour each time to take care of my excretion and meals. Even so, the expenses of my Nursing Care 5 are the same as before, and are within 50,000 yen per month in cash spending including bath and body massage service . Whenever the helper visited, he tried to take me out of bed and managed to walk around the room or use a wheelchair while supporting me with his hands.

 

 

Finally set out for heaven

 

Approximately three and a half months after my 98th birthday, I passed away at noon on November 27, 2020, in a deep blue sky that seemed to escape into space.

 

A week before that, I lost my appetite and hated to drink. I had almost no drinks for about 3 days, so my daughter asked my doctor to start the infusion. This is the first IV drip for me. When I started the drip, I became a little more energetic and started to drink a little by mouth. I took a bath with a drip bag.

 

When my daughter came to see the situation at my house on the night of November 26, the day before my death, I was sleeping with a painful breath that I had never had before. The helpers on that day gave me a glass or half of "shiruko" and "amazake", so my daughter wasn't too worried about me. However, she noticed that all the IV bags were empty. It's all 2 bags. By noon that day, both bags were almost full, so in about 6 hours, 2 bags (1000 ml) were in my body at once. She was worried about the effect, and at around midnight I started to have bad coughs with sputum and was breathing painfully. My daughter had to wake up many times in the middle of the night and use the sputum inhaler, which she had been taught how to use for the first time the day before.

 

The next morning, I was still alive and the first visit of a visiting nurse was scheduled. When my daughter asked the nurse to see what was going on, she said that my daughter should call a doctor, so she booked a doctor's visit in the afternoon and she went out of my house for about an hour. And when my daughter returned to my house around noon, I was already gone. At first she thought I was sleeping as usual. She was glad that my painful breathing was cured. However, when my daughter approached me and looked closely, she noticed that I was not breathing. My body was still warm and my complexion was as usual. During the hour my daughter was out, I could leave for heaven alone quietly. It was an ideal way of dying for me.

 

It was "happy" that I was able to go from my own home to heaven without going to any institution or hospital. At the funeral, my daughter put up a picture of "Happy 98th birthday" and played "Sen no Kaze ni Natte" that I requested before hand, and I was able to have a bright and fun funeral with my children and grandchildren all gathering at my house.  Everything was as I planned. I had prepared the clothes I would wear in the casket. I also prepared what I wanted to put in the casket (four types of diplomas for nurse qualifications). I also wrote down the name of the temple in the neighborhood I want to use for the sutra service.  Everything was done according to my wishes.

When the spring comes, my ash will be scattered in the sea as promised. I had already booked and paid for the charter boat for ash-scattering from Yokohama Port.

 

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