It has been a month since my Mum passed away in hospital now and I still cant move past the fact that we weren’t with her at the end. I am petrified that my Mum thought we abandoned her, or didn’t want to be there or thought she wasn’t important enough for us to rush to get there!
She had lung cancer with MSCC and had been moved from a rehab hospital to an acute treatment hospital as they thought she had a chest infection. Even though she was palliative she wasnt being classed as end of life at this point and they were still actively treating her with antibiotics etc. But as she wasnt end of life we werent allowed to stay with her out of visiting hours even though I wanted to. She was really struggling to breathe at the point but she was still very alert, could talk and was eating some soup, the wars said they would ring us if she deteriorated. I rang at 9.30am the next morning to see how she was, again they were still treating her and didnt say we needed to come in so we would just get there when visiting hours started. The palliative nurse then rang a couple of hours later to say we needed to come in and when we got there we were 10mins too late. Speaking to the nurse a couple of weeks later they said she deteriorated so quickly that it surprised and upset everyone looking after her.
I have read so many stories saying sometimes people want to die without family there to spare you, they wait until you leave the room etc. But I cant believe this with my Mum, she died 16 hours after we last saw her and an hour before visiting hours started, my brother was racing from another country to get here to see her and she knew that, so I dont believe she wouldn’t of wanted to see him again before leaving us. I really believe she was actually hanging on for as long as she could to see us all again and we didnt make it, we let her down and she was on her own, we took too long to get there and i dont know how i am ever going to forgive myself for that. Im scared she felt unimportant and unloved.
I understand how you are feeling. My partner died four weeks ago of lung cancer. He had only gone to the hospital for a blood transfusion and had started on antibiotics for a chest infection. He was drowsy and poorly but I didn’t think he would die a few hours later. The hospital called me but by the time I got there, he had died. I am tormented by the
fact that he was alone and I didn’t hold his hand and comfort him at the end.
Your story as you said previously about mine is scarily similar i had done an overnight stay with my mom and she passed the following morning and i was not there with her. Luckily my Auntie had come early in the morning as she had a weird feeling to go to the hospital so she was there when she passed I was already on my way to visit but I didn’t make it in time. Do not feel bad there is nothing you could have done and we couldn’t have known it would be the last time we saw them when we left. They tried their best to stay for us but their body needed to go. They are now out of pain and looking down and watching over us. X x
I know its just hard as I feel like so many things went wrong during her whole illness, not getting her to hospital quick enough at first, lack of communication between hospitals resulting in delays, not being able to get her home when she wanted, feeling like we didnt always advocate for her enough, the fact she was on her own in the hospital alot in those 8 weeks due to rubbish visiting hours so the one thing I wanted was for us to all be with her at the end and we couldnt even do that, its hard to accept.
I wasn’t with mum when she passed. Mum was 95 and had been in and out of hospital. I was working a lot too! only a week or so mum was on a discharge ward waiting to come home. I not visited hospital for 10 days, I had two phones connected at the time, the hospital rung my other phone obviously I wasn’t aware of this at the time as think the battery had died. Her oxygen levels were going down. In the end I was notified by police which I didn’t like. Hospital had both numbers for me! if I knew I would gone in straight away! I can’t turn back time, I wish I could it would help me so much.