Is peaceful death a lie?

Your Anger is understandable, we all hope and wish if our loved one have to leave us it will be painless, but I think the bottom line is how much pain relief that is available and working, my own wife passing , whilst short was not what I and she would have wished for until the finally few days when the or morphine dosage reached levels where she slept and passed in peace.   

Here unfortunately is the point where I may upset you, I do not wish to honestly, but we go through stages of grief, anger being one of the first , with everything and everyone , it’s overwhelming and understandable, we all go through it, we lash out , mostly our friends understand. 

just vent as you have done here, people here understand have done the same thing, as I have and still do on occasion even after years have past.

just be kind to yourself and I know these platitudes don’t help much, but I am sorry for your loss , unfortunately its one of the things we have to bare to have loved someone.   Take care 

Hello vm123

Your story sounds so much like mine. My husband fought bowel cancer for 2 and half years also. He too got his tumour removed and more or less told that was it that they had got it all and he was clear  well in remission at least. Fast forward five months at a follow up appointment with his surgeon where she took bloods and 3 weeks later he got a letter saying his CEA markers had risen and they had requested a CT scan which unfortunately confirmed the cancer had returned. I asked at his post op oncology appointment if he should not have post op chemo or radiotherapy as a precaution to possible get rid of anything that may have got left behind and was told by the oncologist no that it was not necessary and if not necessary they don't do it. So they are the experts and you are going to take what they say as gospel. But there you go it came back. He was put back on chemotherapy but it made him very ill and he ended up with kidney damage and then it had to be withdrawn completely because of that. In the end he took 4 bouts of sepsis and I think it was the final one along with his advancing cancer that took him in June last year (2023) so I am just over the year `milestone` from losing him. 

I can't say if his passing was peaceful or not he just slipped away in the hospital with me at his side and I never even knew he had gone. He was lapsing in and out of conciousness and a bit fidgety  constantly moving his legs a lot and pulling a his bedsheets and just that horrible breathing they do at the end everything had gone though his swallow reflexes speech everything think he could still see but only very slightly. I was just so angry at the time thinking getting that post op chemo may have saved him from whatever was still there because there still was obviously something there that just never got picked up or was too small to see on a monitor. I am sorry about your wife's passing and wish you well in moving forward. Take Care. 

Vicky 

I’m so sorry to hear what happened for you and your wife. My partner also died of oesophageal cancer in June, after a year and a half since diagnosis. He was unable to have the op in the end so it was a case of just every treatment not working.  In his instance, and I appreciate this might not be helpful for you, it was peaceful. His pain was well managed and he took his last breath with us all with him and not seeming in pain. We’d been making models together and chatting in the hospice only the night before so it was a quick decline in his health really. What I am experiencing now tho, in terms of grief, is that knowing that isn’t helping. It just feels like words and not that it means anything. I’m devastated about what cancer took from him and his body, I’ve been so angry about so many different aspects, I’m completely disorientated without him being here and part of me thinks it can’t be true what happened and this goes on over and over. I guess I’m trying to say that I appreciate we were ‘lucky’ perhaps in how it ended for him, but it doesnt seem to have taken anything away from the pain of it so far. All I would say , to you and myself really, is that we have to just keep hanging on somehow, and ride the waves of all the emotions, and just hope that some time in the future this pain becomes easier to deal with. Sending you all my best wishes. 

I don’t know if this will help or not. But it is what I live with/lived through. My husband died on the 17th June from bowel cancer with mets to lungs/ lymph/peritoneum. His pain was managed magnificently with Fentanyl patches,(changed every 48 hours), morphine pills (Actiskenan) and paracetamol.
Although we knew it was terminal, and that he would die. I strangely, did not really understand that he would die when he did. So it was, bizarrely, still a shock.

However... he was not in pain, he did not struggle, there was no ‘death rattle’. It was quiet, peaceful and as ‘good’ as it could have been. 

The aftermath of his death is another thing entirely, But, in answer to your question, yes a peaceful death is possible. I am so sad that it was not your experience. xx

DaisyD22

Jay (my husband) was also on the Fentanyl patches at the end and they gave him paracetamol also just for pain. He had a pain driver inserted also which got changed every few hours. He did have the `death rattle` that horrible breathing and I was very aware of it sitting next to him and then I realised it had stopped and it was as if he had just fallen asleep. But knew he was gone when I got no response from nudging his shoulders or lifting his hand and it just dropped back down again. I would like to think he went peacefully and I'm sure he did. 

Vicky x

I'm so sorry for your loss.  My husband passed in hospital and we had to fight to get him enough sedation, as he was very agitated, in pain.  I even had to wrestle with him to keep him in the bed.  It took my daughter to stand in front of the nurses station and tell them in no uncertain terms that "I should not have to fight with my dying husband and she was fed up with him being in here with people who don't give a damn (polite version)" funnily enough after that he suddenly got the sedation he needed and it was peaceful after.  I'm sure you will start to remember the good times.

Were you with your wife when she died?

My own wife died about nine months ago - like yours, of oesophageal cancer. My wife had also gone through chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and the Ivor Lewis operation, and we thought she had been totally cured. But she was diagnosed with secondaries about two and a half years after her operation, and she died about a year after that. I am devastated by the experience, and am struggling with the entire thing.

My wife's symptoms towards the end were horrible - and I am haunted by what she went through. We dealt with it all at home, and the pain-relief was, fortunately, pretty effective. But the symptoms - extreme bloating, discomfort, inability to eat, constant throwing up, difficulty in breathing - were just horrible.

What I think haunts me most is that, on the final night, and struggling to breathe, my wife was visibly frightened. I'll never know exactly what she was thinking - but perhaps she realized what was about to come. I tried to comfort her - but I don't know if it helped.

To whom did the consultant write the letter saying that your wife's death was peaceful?

Hi, sorry about your wife. I know that feeling, my partner suffered from severe pains 1,5 year. It was very hard seeing my partner in pain and I couldn’t help. I have flashbacks my partner suffer in pain. I have dreams and I cry every single time. It’s heartbreaking.

Take care

Good morning,

I’m so sorry to hear about the loss of your wife. My Sarah also had what appeared to me, a distressing end. The last hour of her life haunts me, I don’t know what she was aware of etc etc. 

The paramedics gave her as much morphine as they could, so I try and tell myself that she wasn’t in pain. Her treatment in the years before diagnosis was shocking, fobbed off from GP’s and consultants who constantly gave her antacid medication for “heartburn”. 2 years of medical negligence then diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer. I’m angry at the work right now, and it’s difficult to deal with, for that I partly understand your emotions and your anger.

I don’t suppose what I’m saying helps you in anyway, I just want you to know you’re not alone with the feelings you have, and that I wish I could help take away some of your pain. 

I’m 4 month into my grieving and I’ve just started with counselling, life is so hard and uncertain, and I’m terrified of the future. Anyway, I’m grateful to have known such love, the heartbreak is unbearable at times, and unfortunately a by product of loving someone so deeply. 

Take care ️️‍

My opinion is the doctors can do nothing with cancer and just fire everything at it in the hope that something will work.

My wife told the oncologist many times just to shoot her.They are useless, in my opinion.

I’m sorry for what you went through. My wife also suffered terribly at the end and the trauma doesn’t go away easily.

I'm just glad she is no longer in pain, and can now rest. But I just go through the motions in the hope that I am every day closer to reuniting with her.