Mom choked on her pancakes last week. The event set off a bad series of turns, and she has ended up in hospice. First, they wondered whether she’d had a mild heart attack, and had choked because of that; then they wondered whether the choking had set off a mild heart disruption. In any event, the end result was proteins in her blood that suggested a heart ‘episode’. Given her age, and the task of hooking her up to an I.V. and feeding tube, and then giving her a “stress test” the next day (I am not sure she would even understand) my sister and I decided to send her back to the facility under the ‘hospice’ definition; which essentially means she will get certain care she would not otherwise receive. It doesn’t mean she is close to dying, exactly. Just means she gets some personal attention until she is back and swallowing properly again.