Having only just found this site, eleven months after my darling died I am finding a lot of feelings coming to the surface - I think it is probably a good thing.
Anyway I am going to get some of them off my chest. The things that happend during Ed's illness that, when I think about them, make my stomach muscles cramp and my heart ache and my anger levels rise.
Here goes ...
Weekend staffing in hospitals - my biggest one. My darling was taken into hospital on a Thursday night. By this time we knew that his cancer had suddenly and massively invaded his liver so it was just a matter of time but up until the Monday of that week he had been managing on Paracetemol alone. But he was now very, very unwell. I had phoned his consultant's secretary and a bed was found. Morphine helped a lot but over the weekend he saw so many different doctors, all who were covering three or four wards, none of them knew his history and all seemed to miss 'the bigger picture' and were concentrating on one particular problem. Right down to one of them breezing in on the Friday night and using the term 'acute renal failure, but don't worry' before swanning out!! This went on all weekend and by Sunday night he was having so many different treatments. Monday morning his consultant came in and within an hour realised that in fact the end was very near and stopped all of the painful and useless treatments, talked to my husband and phoned me to suggest that I came in and that he would find a camp bed to fit in the room. His way of gently telling me it would not be long. In fact my darling died at 2.40 pm that day. I am SO ANGRY about the fact that the consultant recognised the situation within minutes, but all weekend they had been manhandling, treating, drugging and generally stopping my darling from being comfortable.
15 hour delay of flight - Okay, sounds a bit odd. A month before he died we were in Spain at a friend's holiday home when Ed began to feel unwell. I rearranged our flights to come home early. All fine so far. We sat on the runway for five hours before we were taken off the plane and left in the airport for another ten hours - WITHOUT SEEING A SINGLE REP - we were given a piece of paper saying that there was a technical problem. Safety - absolutely no problem with that. What I hate them for is leaving us there with no explanation, no time scale, no one coming to tell us what the situation was. All the time my darling was suffering.
Lack of concern by ex-boss - This one may be unreasonable, but I never said all my thoughts were logical. My darling took early retirement/voluntary redundancy just before they discovered his cancer. (Now I wonder if subconciously he thought something was wrong). His ex-boss is very well know locally and heads up or is patron of the huge charity and research organisation that relates to the type of cancer my darling died from. He did know that Ed was ill and I would have liked him to send just a short note to Ed acknowledging it and wishing him well.
Actimel/Yakult - Ah well. Adverts for these make me cry. When we discovered that his cancer had come back (before we knew it was in his liver) he decided that he should do everything possilbe to try and stay healthy, so started drinking these daily even though he HATED them.
Banks - In the few weeks before he died, unbeknown to me, my amazing, loving, thoughtful, caring, organised, strong husband organised every single piece of paperwork I would need into one file and left me notes on each document telling me what I would have to do, who to phone, what to send etc. Including one rather rude post-it regarding his company pension which said "you will have to contact this toss*r, sorry darling". I mean EVERY single thing had been thought of. He had changed the utilites to my name, arranged approriate documents for life insurance, etc. The bank which our mortgage and joint account was with then proceeded to destroy this amazing legacy by cancelling MY cards, bouncing the cheque to the funeral Directors .... THREE times. When I tried to speak to them about it they said they could only speak to my husband, as the account was now in his name . This one took a long time to resolve, but I will never forgive them for ruining the most incredible but heartbreaking gesture a husband could make.
I am going to sign off for now. Tears are here, but also a gladness of having 'got it out there.' Next time I think I might try for things that happened/ were said through his illness that I cling onto because they were special in a good way.
I miss your style, your wit, your friendship and your love. Always yours, Judi xx
