This is the first time I've blogged: I've hummed & hawed about it for days and hope it will be useful to me or even better to somebody else...
My (absolutely gorgeous) 3rd husband retired in 2008 and started voluntary work with the National Trust as well as doing masses of long-distance walking, a favourite hobby. He and I had been together since 2005, both veterans of 2 failed marriages each, both with 3 kids tho his are all grownup. I wanted to get married: he didn't. Not surprisingly!
So J was happy & free & enjoying retirement and was buying a new house big enough for us and my 3 kids, near trees & fields & with a garden for him to potter in. Then, after having a routine checkup, that little lump that had been in his neck for a while, causing no bother at all, was diagnosed as tonsil cancer. Actually, it took weeks of panic & stress & extreme angst before it WAS diagnosed but that was that. Surgery to remove the healthy tonsil happened (still not quite clear why) then a bigger operation on his neck: massive scar which still annoys me: I do a bit of sewing & I'm damn sure I could've done a neater job. Another annoyance is that he still has a droopy eye caused by some nerve damage during surgery but these are cosmetic grumbles. We thought he'd had a stroke when we first saw him after the operation so shouldn't complain. But I do anyway, to myself. My poor boy.
Radiotherapy with the horror movie face mask followed. At first it went suspiciously well despite warnings about burnt skin and so forth. Then overnight (it seemed) J was in excruciating pain. As the treatment went on the inside of his mouth and cheek was horribly burned and so painful. He couldn't really eat/drink/swallow and his taste buds & salivary glands were badly affected. His intake of morphine went up & up and many tinkerings with prescriptions for morphine patches went on. They did seem to work, eventually. Eventually. Our Mac nurse was great: a real godsend.
While this was going on J's elderly mum (with fast-developing dementia) was becoming physically frailer and was diagnosed with cancer of the liver (a secondary, never found the primary source). She spent a week in hospital then a week in a hospice (a tranquil & light & airy place) where she died peacefully in her sleep in the wee small hours with her daughter and other son at her side. This was August 2009.
J and I visited her every day: he was so morphed up he doesn't really remember much of that. I do: I used to look at her dying in the bed and look back at him slumped on the sofa in her room, skinny & exhausted from the pain and try to decide which looked worse...
We got married in October 2009: J proposed in his quirky way the week before his radiotherapy was to start. It was a lovely happy wedding and all 6 of our kids had parts to play. Apart from having to drink little & often for his dry mouth, J recovered remarkably fast. Now, his sense of taste (in food if not wives) has returned almost 100%. His saliva is still very sticky, which makes kissing him a bit weird but hey, we're just fortunate to be able to kiss at all. I am very very very grateful to have him fit & we hope healthy.
2010 brought my father's prostate cancer diagnosis: a big shock but we were reassured that it was slow growing and treatable with hormone tablets and injections and perhaps in a year or so, radiotherapy. No surgery, no chemo. Sounded do-able.
It wasn't. Bone scan showed it had spread to dad's hip. A 'spot' on his liver allegedly came & went but with hindsight was probably there all the time. But he attended appointments, took his meds, got about... Then in Sept/Oct 2011 he went downhill very very very fast: he could't sleep in bed all night because of his hip & leg pain so would stay in an armchair downstairs. Because of this, we thought, his legs became swollen and his mobility decreased. He had several falls in the house & my mother had to get neighbours to help him up. (I live nearly 200 miles away and didn't hear all of this till much later).
Dad got an infection (from where, nobody knew) and after a lLOT of delays with local gp's and their useless appointment/home visit system, he was at last admitted to hospital. By which time he was delirious and shouting and swearing, which was alarming & upsetting for my mother. (Actually, at his best he was not a sweet-tempered person & neither is she so it wasn't exactly out of character...Mean, but true).
After a scan, it was decided that palliative care was the only option and dad was transferred to a Macmillan centre adjoining the hospital. At this point I was summoned.
J, 2 of my kids and I visited: it was obvious that we were visiting a dying man, not just a sick one. It was quite a shock. I had seen him in August with #1 daughter just before she went off to start uni and tho thinner and not very agile, he was mobile & cheerful & mentally alert. Now, he was an old man in a chair with terribly swollen legs and feet, jaundiced, and with his teeth out his speech was hard to understand. He was somebody else, a stranger.
We took the kids home and I came back up north to the hospice and stayed with mum til after the funeral. Those days had a dreamlike quality (not a happy dream): so tiring and such a starin on the nerves as he got weaker & weaker every day. He 'progressed' from sitting in a chair, to reclining in a chair, to sitting on top of his bed to lying in his bed never to get up again. He never walked again once in the hospice. The food tasted horrible, apparently (tho it was the foul taste in his mouth to blame. So he wouldn't eat. Everything he drank tasted bad too: many things were brought and tried to tempt him but nothing worked.
He had a cup of water, then a cup with a straw, then somebody had to hold the cup & straw for him, then he had hallucinations and was 'drinking' when there was nothing there. He saw things, felt things, swore, shouted, complained, tore at his pyjamas, tried to get out of bed, constantly complained that he was trapped and wanted to go home...said he felt he was in a nightmare & didn't know where he was... It was obviously very distressing for him and terribly frustrating. And not pleasant to witness.
Dad's last days once the morphine driver was working, were more peaceful but only because he was heavily medicated. He wasn't resigned to dying: he resisted it all the way. It was obvious that he wasn't ready or willing. He wasn't at peace and didn't want anything to do with the hospital chaplain.
My memories of his time in the hospice are of his bitterness and despair and distress. My mother and he very never demonstrative physically, either to each other or to me. (A bit more so with my children when they were little). But very very demonstrative with their succession of dogs. Bizarre or maybe not.
Anyway, he died at 3.40a.m. on November 8th 2011. I've written elsewhere on this site about that: it was a vile experience which I wish I hadn't had, but guess it was a necessary one....
And now, in April 2012, my lovely husband, J, is tending his 97 year old dad who has guess what, oh yes, prostate cancer. For the last fortnight (our school Easter holidays, by coincidence) he has been deteriorating on a daily basis. He has been in hospital to have a permanent catheter fitted but is adamant that he remainsat home. He has 4 carers per day and J or his sister or brother have been with him almost non-stop, including overnight. Today J is organising for another care agaency to send someone to call in during the night. I have lost count of the agencies involved. Mental health person was there yesterday: dad-in-law is depressed (no wonder) but nothing will be prescribed til after the much awaited scan next Tuesday. The scan that was meant to happen last week. The one where we find out if he is actually dying or if he has a blocked bile duct which they might be able to sort out.
So that's my Jolly Holiday blog.
My problem, if I can call it that, is that I am on the phone to my mother daily, trying to be supportive & positive & cheerful, while worrying about J who is wearing himself to a shadow for his beloved old dad. Dad-in-law IS a lovely old man, unfailingly kind & gentle & quite unlike either of my parents. J adores him & will be distraught when he finally dies. It's the not knowing: every time the phone rings we jump out of our skin fearing the worst. The dr says today she thinks dad-in-law has pancreatic cancer: that's a new one. What will it be tomorrow? It's not the label that matters, it's the treatment. At the moment, nothing at all.
What will be, will be.
I count my blessings (wonderful kids, husband, stepkids, stepgrandkids, home, HEALTH) and wonder why I still feel so depressed even on my good ole reliable Citalopram. I try not to be selfish and want more of J's company than he can spare. I try not to fret about going through the menopause or my daughter leaving home or my hours at work about to be cut or the fact that I wish I were retired and spent my days making baby quilts and scrapbooking... Or that there isn't anybody to confide in who hasn't got far worse to cope with. I feel so lonely and sorry for myself but I can't say it out loud because it seems so feeble!
So I've written it all down here instead.
Think I'll have a nice cold beer.........................................
