Hi Gerri,

First let me say how sorry I am to hear about your mom. I just lost mine in April to this disease and I can tell you, it was really hard. Hospice is a godsend, they do everything in their power to make the patient comfortable as well as helping the family. The cover every aspect of care, including pain management, comfort, spiritual, and are available 24 hours a day. They will teach you and your family how to best care for her when they are not there, but will be there as soon as you need them to be.
Every patient is different, there is no way to predict how long it will take, even my mom's doctors said she had a matter of months and she was gone in 3 weeks. The most important thing is you spend as much time with her as possible and you get hospice started as soon as possible to allow her as much enjoyment of the life she has left. While I can not say any of my mom's last weeks were "enjoyable", she was very alert regardless of the morphine because hospice focuses on managing the pain, not doping them up. We had countless hours with my mom where we could have very meaningful and heartfelt conversations, though not always lucid conversations, she wasn't sedated like we had initially worried about.
You will find the right balance, with their help, and you will be able to give her the care she deserves. I have no doubt about that. Please feel free to ask as many questions about this process as you need, I don't want to ramble on for hours about my experience because it may be totally different from yours. But it was just a few months ago, and very fresh in my mind, so I could easily share more with you.
Hang in there, it's not an easy road to travel, but you will be ok.
Amy