There’s no sense or rhyme or reason to it is there. My partner was told that there was nothing they could do but they would operate to be 100% sure if that was what he wanted. They estimated he would live 6 months with or without the op. At that point he was very clear that’s what he wanted. So he went ahead and had a rough time. After that he said no more surgery whatever. He had made an Advanced Directive with his GP years before saying no unnecessary treatment if he wasn’t able to choose for himself. From then on, after he escaped from hospital, he was at home. The palliative treatment was the best they could get for him but it’s the things that went wrong unnecessarily that somehow stand out. He was very tall and took weeks to find him a bed he could lay down in properly. We kept being told they’d delivered a commode, which they hadn’t. This went of for weeks with no commode at all. Then suddenly 4 arrived! Even I can laugh at that now, but it wasn’t funny at the time. The odd comedy moment tho doesn’t make any real inroad whatever to the sheer misery of seeing him failing and in pain along with the sheer fear of his dying, alongside the fear of him being alive and in pain and more or less helpless. I’ve just relived all of that and yes I’m sad, but I can go and make myself a cuppa and distract myself reasonably easy. That takes time and there’s no way to rush it. Things do become better than they are at first. When you’ve done your best to walk the path as best you can with someone dying, that in itself is exhausting physically and mentally. Then you have to walk the path without them when you are already so tired and emotional and suddenly they aren’t there. It does get better tho. Not like it was before the illness but a beginning to find a different way to carry on. Hugs and love x
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We too found small things to laugh over. Due to the steroids my sister developed a hump between her shoulders and the palliative nurse said it was, a buffalo hump… I couldn’t help it I started to smirk and my sisters, face was one if horror a blasted buffalo hump on top of everything else,for a, few seconds, we had a laugh.