Hello everyone. This is Andy here. As promised, I am going to attempt to finish off Nat's blog as best I can. The first thing I should say is that Nat was hopeless with bookmarks, and it's taken me ages to even find the page...
I have found the following short draft, which I'm guessing was written on 22nd October. It was the twins birthday on the 20th, and Nat had booked herself in to the hospice on the 16th for a few days to try and get her pain management under control.
"Happy Sunday morning to you all.
Today I am writing to you from the hospice. I came in for pain management initially, turns out I was poorlier than I thought.
The last blog saw us visiting the kids on their holiday with granddad. A lot has happened since then mostly not good, a few hospital visits and another nasty infection.
I have been cancelling meeting up with friends a lot - cancer invading our life again
I have not spent any where near as much time with my family as I would had liked.
I have also had to accept that I am starting to slip down the slope that I have spent the last two and a half years clinging on very tightly to.
Mr H is back at uni and the kids are back at school. I took this quiet time to record me reading story books to them. Some old favourites some new favourites.
We also went to see a funeral director, that was an awful thing to have to do I can tell you."
Nat had mostly been at home through September, with visits to our Oncologist who had suggested that there may be one last course of chemotherapy which might prolong Nat's stay a bit longer, mixed in with infection and hospital stays. The main issue with this chemo drug was that it also pretty much destroys your immune system and as Nat barely had one to begin with I wasn't convinced this was the best idea.
Although the hospital were excellent as far as treating the infections was concerned, what tended to happen was that her pain management was buggered up as a consequence, and it always took a couple of weeks after a stay to gain some sort of equilibrium. I'm pretty convinced that when left to her own devices Nat would exceed recommended doses just to be out of pain as this was the main thing of which she was terrified. I think she felt by this stage she had nothing to lose.
The twins had a birthday party arranged for the Sunday, but with Nat laid up in the hospice, and the chance that we may have to dash off at the drop of a hat, I took the decision to cancel it. We had a little party for them between ourselves and I'm fairly sure they didn't register the lack of a bigger celebration, although next year might be different. It was now half term, and we were supposed to be going down to Filey on the Thursday to stay in a caravan at Primrose Valley. It would be Nat's 40th on Saturday, and we both knew that this would be her last one, although I joked that she had already said that twice. The hospice were extraordinarily helpful in making sure we got away for those few days; arranging local support (Nat had a syringe driver for pain relief), providing a "goodie bag" of drugs for every eventuality. Her mobility had deteriorated severely at this point, and we made use of the wheelchair we had been provided with, although the twins insisted on calling it her wheelbarrow. I think she secretly enjoyed being wheeled about for a couple of days. We met up with her Dad and Step-mum and had an afternoon tea in Filey on her birthday. She loved it, being in a caravan, by the sea, with her kids, and a proper afternoon tea with all the trimmings.
I dropped her back at the hospice on Sunday evening, and things went even further downhill from there. On the Friday lunchtime the doctors called me in for a meeting; the cancer had grown and spread to her bowel, the infection was now resistant to virtually any antibiotic (there was one left to try, I think) and it was confirmed that we were now into end of life care. Nat was always delirious and delusional when the infection caught hold, but this was another level again. As it turned out however, this wasn't another bout of sepsis, but a combination of the painkillers (methadone now) and the cancer taking over.
Friends would come over regularly to visit, talk to her, pray with her, bring treats or take away washing. Her Dad spent three weeks at the hospice,only going home at weekends, her Mum came up for a few days and friends started arriving from further afield as we knew this was it. I kept the kids' visits going as long as I could, but there was a point where this became unsuitable for the twins, although Thomas and Izzy were able to visit in her last couple of days. She became very aggressive and delusional in her last week, convinced that the doctors were trying to kill her, that we all wanted her dead and that people were only visiting because they knew she was going to die and she wasn't ready for that. The painkillers and sedatives finally took over. I noticed something different about her and realised that for so long I had only seen her in pain and now she looked like the old Nat. I had the last Sunday with her to myself and I talked to her about all the things we had done together, but if she could hear me she wasn't letting on. Then on the Monday, just after some friends had been and talked to her, while her Dad and I were chatting next to her, she just stopped. No drama, no distress, she just stopped.
There are so many people to thank. I would like to pay tribute to the staff at the Marie Curie hospice in Newcastle who's care, attention and kindness not just to Nat but to the whole family was so amazing and made our lives over the last 8 months or so of Nat's life so much more bearable. To Team Verrico without whom we would be in a significantly worse place than we are. Their practical help was one of the major factors in Nat having those crucial few extra months. And to the army on social media who organised, coordinated, fund raised and were just there for us when we needed them. I hope to thank each and everyone of you personally but it might take some time.
I don't know how to sign this off; it feels wrong to just end it here because that would be admitting that she's gone, but she has and I have to get used to that. The harsh reality is that I lost my wife to cancer in May 2015. I've been grieving ever since and I don't know if I'll ever be able to stop.
Andy x
