It’s been 6 months now since I lost my fiancé under terrible circumstances. I’ve done all of the counselling and we keep going over the same facts every week.
I can’t stop blaming myself for her death.
for context I feel like it’s time to tell the full story of what happened the night she went to hospital.
It was November 17th 2022. From the moment we woke up at 8am she had felt sick and began vomiting. This had happened a few times before and a couple of times I had called an ambulance for her to be taken to hospital (after a few hours of vomiting).
Today I had decided that I would monitor her myself as I had been told an ambulance would be 5 hours and I had no way of getting her to hospital myself (I do not drive).
There was a moment she began to feel better and even managed to get herself out of bed and come to the living room to lay down.
Around 10PM she began vomiting again and I started to monitor her again.
Eventually this turned into dry heaving and I assumed the worst was over. I stayed up to keep an eye on her whilst she slept. 3am her breathing became unusual. It was loud, wheezy and almost like she was gasping for air. I called an ambulance and was told somebody was on the way. They stayed on the phone to me and within minutes my Fiancé stopped breathing.
I began CPR and moments later a first responder arrived. We, together, worked on her for a further 20 minutes before an ambulance team arrived.
After a further hour of them working on her in the flat to get her stable, we finally rushed her to a hospital.
She died 5 days later…
I cannot get over the fact that my own decisions that day led to her death. If I had done as I usually done and taken her to hospital earlier that day, If I hadn’t have waited, she would still be here.
Would you blame me? Am I truly at fault as I believe?
I have to be careful as I have OCD and I’m not supposed to offer people or ask for reassurance. However, I’m assuming you don’t have OCD and you’re just feeling normal grief guilt. Most people wouldn’t think of someone vomiting with them dying, I wouldn’t.
No matter what guilt anyone feels unless your intentions are to kill someone, you aren’t to blame. I read somewhere that if you had known then what you know now, you’d have probably done stuff differently. I know I would. My husband took his own life after I’d blocked him and sent him a nasty message mid week. He had addiction issue to drugs, gambling, work the list goes on. After dealing with it for 9 years I’d had enough and wanted time to myself. I never imagined he’d kill himself, so of course I thought I was to blame. A lot of people told me he was sick, it wasn’t my fault. I still felt guilty as I kept thinking " what if" now I realise I couldn’t control what someone else was going to do. Maybe I could have pulled my husband out of it this time, but he couldn’t stop his addiction to drugs snd that’s what I believe clouded his judgement. He would have probably tried it again.
@Bennett58 No you are not to blame. I went three months blaming myself. Things had been tense between us as we had just moved 5 weeks earlier. My husband wasn’t in a position to help with the move, so I packed up our old home and did all the cleaning and then when we moved I had all the boxes to unpack. He was getting progressively worse and struggled to walk. Doctors weren’t a lot of help, just kept upping his medication. A week before he went into hospital he had a few falls. On 16 December he had a fall at home and I had to call the ambulance. We had a blazing row that morning and we both said things in the heat of the moment. I even told him I was moving out. We didn’t know that when he went into hospital he wouldn’t come home again. Two weeks after his admission he passed away. The guilt was overwhelming. It wasn’t until I spoke to a counsellor that he asked me if I intended getting up that morning and having an argument. Obviously that wasn’t the plan. It is something we all go through when our partner passes. I can only say in time that feeling will pass. You will go from blaming yourself, blaming your partner or as in my case the medical profession as well. Take care of yourself, it is what your partner would want
@Bennett58
I’m so sorry for your loss. You didn’t intentionally set out to cause her harm that day. As already said, you weren’t to know that your partner being sick would lead to her death. I’m sorry it was so tragic for her at the end.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I’m sure most of us would like to go back and do things differently but that’s not an option.
Please try not to be so hard on yourself. Guilt is part of grief too.
I would have done the same as you, she had gone to hospital before & came out again, with such a long wait for an ambulance I’d have kept a check on her & as you say she settled down, you weren’t to know that she would suddenly deteriorate, even if she’d been in hospital the outcome may have been the same.
If you could talk to your partner know I think she’d say she would have done the same as you.
Grief has us questioning everything, you will come to terms with this & see it from a non judgmental stance.