Hi,
Just wondering i anyone can help me answer this question.
I lost my Mum a few weeks ago. Not directy to the kidney cancer she had but ultimately to kidney and liver failure after a stent was put in to her gallbladder. The drugs they gave to sedate her couldn't be flushed out as she'd had a week of radiotherapy to kill the other kidney 48hrs before said procedure and this ruined her kidneys (a few weeks before confirmed to be working far better than they expected them to be). I do wonder if the order was wrong here personally and the stent should have been done before the radiotherapy. But then a lot was messed up here. It took 8 months after diagnosis before they even sent her to an oncologist and discussed any kind of treatment. The messing around was incredible. But anyway, that's another issue..
I have never witnessed a human death before but as far as I can tell it appeared to be as peaceful as such a thing could be overall. It took several days, very rarely she showed signs of pain but in general she didn't and when asked (when she was concious which was intermittent and drug induced) she said she wasn't in pain.
What I'm trying to make sense of is what happened at the final moment. I was holding her hand at the time. As she took her final breath I knew what had happened as she suddenly gripped my hand. Not excessively tight but pretty tight. The grip remained until I eventually pulled my hand out, some time after she had passed.
What I'm trying to make sense of is why that happened? I have not been able to find anything about why at.. that moment.. someone grips. The only reference I can find it to instances of violent/painful deaths, but I don't believe my Mum was in pain. Why did this happen? Is it normal? If not what causes it?
Please don't try to spare me hurt, I want to know. If it indicates that she was in pain at that moment I want to know about it.
Thank you
Hi Purplebutterfly7 welcome to the forum and I am sorry to hear about how distressed that you are. You seem to be torturing yourself looking for answers when sometimes there are just aren't any.
Whats to say that your mum knew that you were holding her hand and she was telling you by squeezing your hand that it was her time to go, but that she would always be with you and the squeeze was a goodbye.
It doesn't sound from what you have said that your mum was in any pain, a fact she acknowledged herself. This sounds like grief for the loss and trying to find answers, but as I have said sometimes there are none and we just have to hang on to the happy memories and live our lives as our loved ones would have wanted us to. x
gail
Im so sorry to hear you have lost your mum.
But fully understand your concerns. I have felt the same. I lost my son last october to bowel cancer. He was only 39. I wasnt with him when he finaly passed. Complicated story. From diagnosis to passing was only 4 weeks. I only managed to see him in the hospice one week before. I wrecked my brain how he was when he passed at the end. No answers. I hope that he passed without knowing and wasnt in pain. Like your mum. This week was the diagnoses, still have the text. Im feeling preety grim at the moment. As my heart is broken, and its all the iffs and butts and guilty feelings.
