[Apathy123]

My mom got sick in May of last year, she had a liver transplant and the transplant ended up failing. She and I lived together and traveled together and basically she was my closet friend. I spent more time with her than with anyone else.

She got sick so fast and we found out that she had a limited time to live, and then a week later I found out she had weeks to live and I had to give her that news which gutted me. And then within days we found out she had days to live and she died within 2 weeks of us finding out she had weeks to live.

I'm still hard core grieving, my therapists supervisor told me I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be but I don't want to be here! I still flash back to when she was sick, when I had to tell her she was going to die. I feel lost without her.

[CANDC]

Hello Apathy, my heart reaches out to you in this time of grieving. Sometimes meds can give you something temporary to get you through a particularly stressful period. Contact your therapist, doctor or psychiatrist.

Getting sleep may be the single one thing that keeps me in balance. If you are not sleeping or having bad side affects, contact your doctor or psychiatrist and tell them what is happening so you can make adjustments.

I had a loss and found I had to add things to introduce something new into my life. It could be yoga, or artistic expression or music.

Many people find compassionate, caring people here at PC. Some people find the forums give them the compassion and empathy they seek. http://forums.psychcentral.com

Please feel free to private message me or any Community Liaison by left clicking on the name in blue to the left of their post) for questions or just to share

[Somberly]

Apathy, I am so very sorry for your loss. I understand how you feel about having to tell your mother she was dying. Before my dad died, he asked me if he was dying, and I told him his heart wasn't doing good and he needed an operation, but to have it he would have to go back onto the ventilator. He didn't want that so he started saying good-bye and praying for God's mercy. I immediately regretted having told him and I wish so much he could have died without knowing he was dying -- it would have been more merciful. I loved him so much, yet I caused him to suffer by telling him the truth. I should have just said no one knows these things. Later I told him where there is life there is hope and that I couldn't wait to get him home again, so I could take care of him. He nodded, but I think he was just humoring me.

I also have flashbacks of his suffering, especially when I found him in the ICU with the cannula out and he was begging for air, water and God's mercy. His oxygen saturation was low and no one was helping him. When he saw me, he thanked me over and over. It broke my heart to see my normally stoic father in respiratory distress. I got the nurse to put him back on a mask and to increase his oxygen -- why did I have to tell them what to do? I thought they were monitoring him in the ICU with a camera. After that I didn't dare leave him alone. I watched him die for 36 hours straight in Comfort Care at the hospital. Thankfully, the morphine and removing the feeding tube helped his breathing and he was peaceful during his last moments of consciousness. Once he was sedated his breathing became labored and it was difficult to watch and to hear his breathing through the night. Alone in the dark, I kept praying and counting his respirations over and over. I finally drifted off to sleep in the chair and that's when his spirit left this world. It's as if he had waited for me to fall asleep. I thought watching him die would be the hardest thing I'd ever have to do, but living without him is even harder. We lived in the same house for 55 years. He was my best friend and my hero. For the first time I am completely alone, no husband, no children, no friends or relatives close by. The friends and relatives that used to live nearby have all died or moved away. My dad was 86, and he had a lot of health problems, but I thought he had more time left, so his death still came as a shock to me. He died four months ago, two days after Christmas.

I can only imagine how difficult it is for you to lose your mother. I pray that we both will find the strength to carry on without our loved ones, and that the terrible flashbacks will fade and be replaced with happy memories.

[Apathy123]

Thank you Somberly. I completely understand how you feel. I lived with my mom too and it was her and I after my dad died, no other family live in the state.

She was unconscious for the last couple of days before she died, in hospice care. I had a fight with them too but managed to get her into a inpatient unit.

I was with her the night before she passed and since I live so close they said it would be fine if I went home for the night and they would call me if anything changed. They called me at 5am and said it was time, so I went to the unit and sat with her, her breathing was labored and eventually I fell asleep and she too passed while I was sleeping.

I keep waiting for it to get better and it doesn't. I wish you peace.

[Somberly]

Thank you so much, Apathy. I also wish you peace. Your experience is so similar to mine. I remember the RN in the ICU telling me to go to sleep, that my father was getting better and he would let me know of any changes. This was on Christmas Eve and I was so happy to have some hope to cling to. Then on Christmas Day I woke up with a feeling of dread. When I got to the ICU, I found my father in respiratory distress. This was not the first time I had found him suffering and alone. Previously, when he was being weaned off the ventilator I had found him looking distressed. He wanted me to remove the tubes from his throat. He couldn't speak, so he wrote on a piece of paper, "Help Me." He thought he could breathe on his own. I explained that we had to wait until the doctor said it was ok to remove the tubes. He calmed down, but I had never seen my father look so forlorn. He also asked my half brother to help him. My father was not one to ask for help, so he must have been in great distress to do that. I stayed all night with him, but I couldn't stay day and nght with him. I had to sleep. Sadly, there was no one available to stay with him while I slept, because my relatives live far away and they work. It's terrible when you can't trust the hospital to do their job, not even in the ICU.

I tried to reassure my dad that he was being monitored by a camera. He looked at the camera and made a scoffing gesture with his hand as if to say they weren't watching him. I later saw for myself this was true, and now I worry about how much he suffered when I wasn't there with him. It breaks my heart.

There was one nurse from hell who told me that her religious beliefs did not agree with keeping people alive artificially. I wanted to ask the Intensivist to have her reassigned, but he wasn't around. Then I decided not to say anything, because I was afraid she'd pull the plug on him in revenge. My dad had told me before not to make waves, because he might be the one to pay for it. The same nurse got upset just because I asked for an extra blanket (my father was cold to the touch, and I felt cold, too, even though I had a jacket on.) She brought the blanket after lecturing me about Chinese people who want six blankets on their loved one, which causes them to spike a fever (I'm not Chinese, but I think that comment was inappropriate). She told me in an arrogant tone, "You may have taken care of your father at home, and I'm sure he's wonderful and all, but he's in a different world now." Her lack of compassion made a bad situation worse. I asked her, "Am I annoying you? -- because that's not what I'm trying to do. I asked you if an extra blanket was contraindicated or not. I was not demanding one without your professional opinion. I am just trying to advocate for my father, because he can't speak for himself." After that, she backed down and gave me a phony sweet smile. Earlier, when I remarked how one of the doctors was rather cold, she declared, "What do you want, someone who knows what they are doing or someone who is touchy-feely?" I answered that I would prefer to have both. She replied, "Well, you can't have both!"

I know this is all water under the bridge, but I just can't believe how cold and uncaring some hospital personnel have become. Even the hospitalist who told us my dad needed to be in Comfort Care or have an operation that he probably wouldn't survive acted like an unfeeling robot who would rather be at the staff Christmas party. My dad told me about nurses laughing loudly at the nursing station in the middle of the night. How can they have no regard for people who are sick and trying to rest? A pox on all of those laughing hyenas!

Sorry to rant, but that's why I'm here. I really feel for what you've been through. I hope with all my heart that we will start to feel better soon.

[Apathy123]

I know how you feel about the substandard care. Not exactly the same situation but I did fire the first hospice that came round because they didn't seem to know what they were doing. The second wasn't much better they said my mom didn't need round the clock care and she clearly did she was days from passing away. I ended up saying that I was going to check myself into the hospital and they magically found 5 days of respite care available inpatient for her.

She passed during those 5 days or I'm not sure what I would have done. Care for the elderly in this country is atrocious like most health care. Even though we're getting to 8 months, the feelings are still raw and I miss her so much I can't even describe it.

[Somberly]

I know what you mean. I wanted to have my father switched to another hospital, but they said he was too sick to be moved. Once they gave him the morphine drip, it was too late and it seemed to hasten his death. It was awful not being able to save him. I miss my father terribly. Life without him is no life at all, but I don't think he would want me to commit suicide, so I'm stuck. I know I have much to be grateful for, but how can I be happy when I'll never see him again? I would be able to accept his death better, if I could be sure that everything that could be done for him was done, but I have serious doubts. My father was discharged too soon during his previous admission and other suspicious things happened, which would take too long to explain. A lady in the waiting room told me that her father was discharged with a perforated bowel. The insurance companies are killing people every day in the name of profit.

[Apathy123]

I know it's so hard to be without them after being so close to them for so long. I miss my mom terribly and it doesn't seem to be getting better. I know my therapists supervisor told me I'm exactly where I need to be but I don't want to be here.

They kept trying to push medication on her, "oh are you anxious or in pain" and I was having none of that because she wasn't in pain or anxious. They are too quick to dope up patients.

[ofthevalley]

I'm so sorry for your loss. I lost both of my parents years ago and I still grieve on a daily basis. My mom was my best friend as well. SHe kept me grounded.

[Somberly]

Originally Posted by Apathy123

I know it's so hard to be without them after being so close to them for so long. I miss my mom terribly and it doesn't seem to be getting better. I know my therapists supervisor told me I'm exactly where I need to be but I don't want to be here.

They kept trying to push medication on her, "oh are you anxious or in pain" and I was having none of that because she wasn't in pain or anxious. They are too quick to dope up patients.

I'm glad your mom wasn't in pain or anxious. My dad wasn't in pain but he needed the morphine to help ease his breathing. Removing the nasal gastric tube also helped his breathing. I'm sure he was dying from his disease, and not just the morphine, though it probably sped up the process. It's the treatment or lack thereof that led up to him needing Comfort Care which I have issues with. For example, two weeks earlier they had discharged him with an antibiotic without even doing a sputum culture. The doctor said there was a mixup at the lab. Then during his last admission they gave him two powerful nephrotoxic antibiotics by IV even though his sputum hadn't cultured for anything. No wonder his kidneys failed. At this point, I don't know if he had pneumonia or an exacerbation of his congestive heart failure, since they look the same on x-rays. He may have had both, but they only treated his pneumonia without knowing the cause. When I suggested he might be experiencing "braking" and that they should change his diuretic or try aquapheresis, they ignored me. Maybe if they had done that two weeks earlier he would still be alive. I should have gotten a second opinion, and I feel so guilty that I didn't. But he had had pneumonia six months before and recovered, so I thought they knew what they were doing.

Another thing is they gave him two pneumonia vaccines and he had his heart attack within hours of getting them. I wasn't there, because I was catching up on sleep. They talked him into getting the vaccines, but if I had been there, I would have asked them to wait until he recovered from his current pneumonia.

They kept insisting he take blood thinners and statins, but he was at a high risk of gastric bleeding and the Lipitor made him sick. He refused both. They kept saying he would have a stroke, if he didn't take at least aspirin. They had to take him off the aspirin, too. I'm so glad he didn't have a stroke. My poor mother died in October, 2014, a year after suffering a stroke which robbed her of her speech. She was in a nursing home. She didn't raise me, so I tend to focus more on my grief for my father, but it is so hard to lose both my parents within two months of each other.

[Somberly]

Originally Posted by ofthevalley

I'm so sorry for your loss. I lost both of my parents years ago and I still grieve on a daily basis. My mom was my best friend as well. SHe kept me grounded.

I'm very sorry for your loss. I lost both my parents; my mom in October and my dad two months later in December, 2014. My parents divorced when I was five, and I was raised by my father, but I miss them both.

[ofthevalley]

Originally Posted by Somberly

I'm very sorry for your loss. I lost both my parents; my mom in October and my dad two months later in December, 2014. My parents divorced when I was five, and I was raised by my father, but I miss them both.

I'm sorry to hear this. Losing a parent is so hard, I can't imagine losing both so close together

[battlescarr]

The lost feeling never really goes away. I can tell you, it's been a year and a half without my mom and I still have a big hole in my heart. My husband has been without his for almost 6 years now, and he tells me it hurts just as much as the day she died in his life.

My mom had stage 3c ovarian cancer, and lived for 18 months. The doctors in Dec of 2013 gave her 6 months, and we brought her home Jan 8th, she went to the hospice house Jan 13th, and we ended up losing her Jan 20th. It was a very short process, much like yours, and the shock factor doesn't change. What they fail to tell us is that they don't ever REALLY know how long someone has, it's just a guestimate. I spent so much time mad at the doctors and the staff that I couldn't see straight some days, I was seeing so much red. What I regret was being so mad and so stubborn to wanting to keep my mom alive I didn't spend the time with her that I needed, and when she wanted to talk about how it would be without her, I blew her off because I wasn't ready to have that conversation yet. I wish I would have... I missed the opportunity to ask her so many questions.

I was angry for a long time. I'm working through it, being here helps a lot too. My advice to you, unlike what I didn't do, is find someone close to talk to. Having my husband helped, but sometimes I wished I would have talked to a psychiatrist, someone who would help me out of my funk. I really did spend a lot of time angry and I lost quite a few friends over it, because I thought their problems were trivial to mine. I had no compassion for anyone other than myself and what I was going through, until I finally holed myself in my house and refused to be around anyone else. I am slowly working through that, but I am able to step outside now and enjoy life a little bit more.

I am sorry you are lonely and hurting. The pain does lessen but the feeling of wanting your mom back never does. If you ever want someone to talk to, I am here to listen.