Hindsight...

Hey,

I think that the love you had for him made it even harder to see him suffer. It is our burden as partners to feel completely helpless in front of the other's pain.

When Juliette was diagnosed with an incurable lung cancer, we talked about not doing the chemo, going for a year long trip, ride that wave of life and enjoy it while it lasts. But the pain in her hip (cancer had spread to the bone) wouldn't let her do that either. We wondered about retreats in Bali where people miraculously survive their cancer with the right diet and meditation, but she had none of that (she would have enjoyed the beach at least!).

There will always be endless questions about the choices we made at different steps and could it have been different, but at the end of the day we have to make peace with what happened.

The end of life is not the beautiful thing we see in films and books. And I think our society tends to hide that from us. I sometimes wonder if it would have been better if she'd died unexpectedly before all this. From what I read on this forum, this is not an easier experience to live through.

Take care xxx

I really didn't want Ric to have the palliative chemo. I know it would give him a rubbish quality of life left and he gave up when the symptoms from the chemo was so bad. He never got to do one thing on his bucket list which he may have achieved if he had took his chance and lived what life he did have left. 

But what did I know??? 

Well I did but I wasn't listened to by anyone! 

We soldier on. 

Love and hugs Alison xxx

Hi Pooka and all on this thread,

I think your questions, Pooka, are really good ones and ones to be had after we have seen our spouses or partners struggle so much. I have often thought about it, and continue to think about it, and it is part of the reason for my Doula training and for why I have gone in my professional life where I have gone.

I think that as human beings we want to have a lot of control and that includes control over life and death. Our modern medicine is striving, and succeeding, in finding powerful treatments to fight cancer. Very often, though, both the medical people and we as loved ones can get so busy trying to control this cancer that we forget that there comes a point where there is nothing more that can be done and where it becomes the only objective to make the patient as symptom free and pain free as possible and where comfort should be our highest priority.

We need all the wonderful medical treatments, but we also need to find the moment when it is enough and we should stop fighting.

However, we as relatives shouldn't reproach ourselves for having kept fighting even when we knew there was nothing more that could improve the situation. The medical profession and the medical treatments lead us to believe that we could get this thing under control again, so we kept on fighting. Today, when we are looking back, of course we can see that the last days, weeks or even months were actually really difficult and painful for our loved ones and that they maybe even, like in the case of my Paul, had lost the will to fight when I was still fighting.

We can only hope that, should we ever be in a situation where some loved one, some family member, is very sick we would remember this and hopefully be able to let go. When to love means to let go as well.

I really recommend the book "With the end in mind" by Kathryn Mannix. She is a retired palliative care physician in the UK. What she is trying to do is to change our approach to death and dying. She is a wonderful lady and a great example for me.

Lots of love

Mel

I agree with your comments MelanieL and I shall look out for the book you recommend. 

I watched my husband suffer so much, fighting a battle that he was  never going to win. 

I told him...  that I loved him enough to let him go, he wasn't to fight to stay with me when that very fight caused him so much needless  pain and distress.

Of course I never wanted him to leave me but I wanted him to be pain free more than I wanted him to fight on for a few more days/weeks of utter awfulness

Mym x