Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival

Hello, and welcome to Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival. We are a group of Catholic bloggers who gather weekly to share our best posts with each ot.her. To participate, go to your blog and create a post titled Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival. In it, discuss and link to your posts for the week--whether they deal with theology, Catholic living or cute Catholic kids. I'm mostly a book blogger so my posts are generally book reviews, some Catholic, some not. Make sure that post links back here. Once you publish it, come back here and leave a link below.

We also have a yahoogroup; signing up for it will get you one weekly reminder to post. Click here to sign up.

Question of the Week:  What do you think about women wearing mantillas or other headcoverings to church? (adapted from Faith). My answer:  What other people wear in church is not really a big concern of mine.  I don't wear headcoverings in church but if you want to, go ahead.  If it makes you feel more connected to God, more power to you.  It would just make me feel weird.

What a week.  A week ago today the decision was made to bring my dad home on hospice care.  His main problem is congestive heart failure and they wanted to get some more fluid off of him to keep him comfortable as long as possible so he stayed in the hospital through Monday.  If you had asked me Sunday afternoon or Monday morning what his goal was, I would have said that he wanted to come home, lay in bed and die in peace.  His life, his choice.  He was't eating, he talked about making peace with God, he was Anointed etc.  Once that ambulance was on the way to take him home, he started issuing orders:  He wanted a bath, he wanted a physical therapist to come walk him and he wanted to go to Mass in the morning.  I told this to the hospice nurse who came than night and she started working on a PT referral.  She thought it was appropriate to try to get him able to ride in a wheelchair and go to church.  Well, no PT has shown up yet; it seems that hospice doesn't provide services to improve your lot, only to make you comfortable and even though we have plenty of money (thank God) we are having trouble finding a PT who will come to the house on a private pay basis.  Also, Dad has a defibrillator implanted.  The hospice nurse wants it turned off, she said they can be gruesome as they shock dying people.  Dad doesn't want to turn it off.  Yesterday the hospice supervisor suggested we consider whether hospice is what Dad really wants now, or whether home health could be more appropriate for his goals.  

I'm going over this afternoon and will hopefully take him to Mass.  He wants to go and he was up in his chair for several hours yesterday.  My brother's mother-in-law is a nurse and she was with him yesterday.  She said she thought he'd be fine to go to Mass today so I'll give it whirl.  We all know he is not long for this world; we just want him to be able to do what he wants when he wants as long as possible.  

For some reason I haven't had much time to blog this week.  However, I did have two prescheduled posts that went up:  The Last Forever is a coming of age novel.  Critical Condition is Christian medical suspense. Overcoming Obstacles in Cooking is a cookbook for new cooks who happen to have a handicap.