Sudden death

Hello Mylovely!

We hear you and you have come to the right place as we all `get it` here. It's amazing how some cancers can be `hidden` and some don't even know they have it and don't have symptoms then something like you described can trigger it. That was the case with my husband. He passed 18 months ago from bowel cancer and sepsis after an almost two year fight where they cut out his tumour in January 2022 and told him he was in remission and they had got it all only for it to return 5 months later and finally take him in June 2023. He had no symptoms at all until he started to have `toilet issues` and that he couldn't stop going. This was in the height of covid as well when all GP surgeries were closed. He was told to hand in a sample at the GP reception and few weeks later he was told he was being referred for a colonoscopy where `abnormalities` were found. Then it was a round of tests CTs MRIs etc which confirmed his tumour was there but so many sessions of radiotherapy were going to be done to reduce the tumour in prep for surgery. His surgeon said that the tumour had been dormant for a least 3  years previous before he started to present with any symptoms so he had been carrying it all that time. Just round about the same time he also got a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes so they said it may have been possible that one triggered the other.  Yes you will have those feelings of what if I did this/that would it have made the difference I was the exact same. I was quite impressed though by how quickly they moved to get these scans done when his diagnosis was made. He was talking to his surgeon via a phone consultation one day and few hours later he got a call back from the hospital to say that they had arranged an MRI scan for him two days away. 

He just got really ill when the cancer returned and he went back on chemotherapy but this damaged his kidneys and had to be withdrawn completely and resulted in a double nephrostomy to help drain his kidneys. So he had two drain bags coming from his back a stoma bag and urinary catheter. It was just so heart breaking watching him become what he did from what he was. As I said just keep coming here when you feel you need to. There will always be someone who can relate to what you are going through or feeling. My best wishes to you moving forward. 

Vicky x

Hi vicky I am so sorry that you are also on this journey. Life is so cruel and unfair. It sounds like your husband was a fighter and everything was done to give him longer. I do wonder if the fall triggered my husband kidney cancer though all the doctors say no. 
thank you so much for your reply. I do keep going over the ifs and what’s and if I haven’t changed my husband CT would he be here now. No chance to say goodbye. 
This journey is so difficult but I am keeping busy living day by day. I try not to look into the future. Missing my husband is the hardest thing ever. 
I do hope you have support, take care and big hugs xx

I'm so sorry you feel this way it's so difficult at times .

My wife died in October following a diagnosis of advanced ovarian cancer 4 years previously, we was told fairly early on that the illness was incurable.

I feel that irrespective of the trajectory of our love ones illness/death wether it was expected or sudden. It feels guilt is the one overwhelming emotion that many of us experience..

Could I and should I have done things differently are the questions I ask myself daily.

Intellectually I know the reality is I'll never know yet emotionally I'm constantly conflicted!!! (especially through the long evenings and in the early hours)

What I do know is being able to talk about or express my feelings without someone telling me what I should be feeling helps .I guess it's a gradual process that shall hopefully become less intense over time, perhaps the only thing we can do is to 'stick with it' talk about our feelings without someone 'shutting us down' which I'm sure you know is more easily said than done.

GOM, you have put into words so well how I feel. 
The constant feelings of overwhelming guilt. 
Over big issues like me being alive and my beautiful Valen isn’t, to the little things like moving a piece of furniture around. 

Join that up with the what ifs / how did I not see how ill he was / could I have done something. 
And you get a bundle of a mess of a human who questions their unseeable and unfathomable future.

And you mention the intellectual v emotional conflict. 
How right you are!!! 
I demand that he comes back to me. Duh! He can’t. But I still insist.
I want to be alone with my grief, but can’t bare being on my own with my thoughts. 
I rage at a god I don’t believe in. 

Little problems become almost insurmountable. 
I am indecisive and just going for a walk can take an hour to prepare for. 
My outbursts of anger frighten me. Thankfully they have always been when at home on my own and inanimate objects bare the brunt of my rage. 
When my eyes are open I see he is not here but see him everywhere I look. 
When my eyes are closed I can hear that he isn’t here, but every sound echoes of him.

But I am one of the lucky ones who does have some incredibly understanding and caring family and friends around. 
They may not even begin to comprehend my feelings, but they have been here to hold me.

As Hermione in Harry Potter said (my darling loved the films, even at 56 he would still watch them over again) “Nothing will be same again. Everything’s changed”.

Hugs to my forum family x

Thank you for your reply GOM, means a lot that considering that you are going through pain yourself. I am so sorry to read about your wife, cancer is so cruel. I was told that ovarian cancer is also a silent cancer like kidney cancer. Life is so unfair and cruel. My husband was 53 when he died which was a shock as he was working the day before and to be told he had kidney cancer which he didn’t know was either more of a shock though it was the saddle pulmonary embolism which killed him. I do suffer a lot of guilt and what if I hadn’t changed the ct scan by 3 days would he still be here. I was told that guilt is a big part of grief but still get the ifs and buts. I guess that we have been thrown into this new life which we didn’t want or asked for. I hope that you are having support from friends and family. I went on the Sue Ryder group which is very supportive. Met some lovely people going through the same as us. Big hugs xx

It's really all you can do `mylovely`, Things will get better. The  initial feelings you have though may never leave you I was told that by my husband's surgeon who could not apologise to me enough that she thought they had got all his cancer and for the fact that he recovered so well after his operation. I have moved on slightly now and am only now just beginning I think to accept that he is not coming back. I too try to keep busy and occupied but now and again the `empty feelings` still rear their heads and the dark days/weeks still drop by but they leave eventually and you carry on- or try to. Just know though that we are all here for one another whenever you feel you need to speak to someone or offload where there maybe those you have around you who don't get it because everyone does here. Best Wishes to you moving forward. 

Vicky xx

Hi MyLovely,

life is so so cruel. Please don’t blame yourself, I could say that myself as my husband was fine one minute and died the next.we had been away a month on holiday, he had a laryngectomy the year before and was coping really really well we came back and he died 2 days later. I phoned the day we came back and spoke to his speech therapist about getting his valve changed, she told me to call his McMillan  nurse but my husband said she will just tell me to use his nebuliser more. He had an appointment with his consultant the following week to get a procedure on his throat. He told me not to phone. If I’d called they might have said come in. That morning he died in the bathroom after telling me he was going through to make his breakfast, everything was ready to be cooked when I went through to tell him to make me some, he wasn’t in kitchen and when I went into bathroom he was dead, again if I’d went through maybe a minute earlier I might have been able to help, I did cpr on him but he didnt come back.the more I think about it he was starved of oxygen too long and honestly he would have hated it if he had brain damage. He used to tell me that. I tortured myself for weeks thinking if only…. if only……. It eats away at you but honestly there was probably nothing we could have done, it was so sudden. I was in shock for weeks, was numb and still can’t believe it, I’m 12 weeks in now. Can’t say I feel any better but have stopped blaming myself.i even get angry that he didn’t let me call his McMillan nurse for advice. Please take care of yourself.sending hugs xx

Hi Charlie 

Thank you for your reply, I am so sorry that you lost your husband suddenly. life indeed is so unfair and cruel. I also did CPR on my husband when I got home and found him. Our son had rang me a few times to tell me that his dad had collapsed but I missed the call by 25 minutes. He had rang the ambulance but it took him 4 minutes to get through and didn’t put it down as emergency. My son was 22 and didn’t make a fuss, time I got home he was gone. No ambulance. So much guilt that I wasn’t with my husband, I never noticed that he was ill and I changed his CT scan appointment. They say guilt is part of grief but you do go back to the ifs and whats. 
I do hope that you have support from family and friends though doesn’t take away the pain. One day at a time. Big hugs xx

MyLovely, it’s going to take a long time to forget what we have been through, I still re-live the time it all happened every Saturday morning, I screamed at the 999 caller it wasn’t working but she kept calm and told me to keep doing cpr. I thought I was going to collapse doing it. It felt like hours before they came but it probably wasn’t. It was when they said time of death I knew it was all over.  My world collapsed. I’m trying to stay positive going into this New Year, a lot of changes are going to happen, we don’t have a choice, just hope it gets easier day by day. Sending hugs xx

My beautiful Valen was ripped from me on the morning that he was to start chemo + experimental drugs. 
He went at 4.45am and was due to start at 9 am.

I am utterly convinced that the stress of spending the previous 3 weeks daily on the phone to his insurance and the private hospital chasing letters and authorisation to start treatment caused either a godalmighty heart attack or an embolism.
4 days before he was on the phone to them, though I did most of the talking as the lymphoedema in his neck was by the. So large he could barely talk, and said “your delays are literally killing me”. 
So I blame them for his going. 100%.

At 4.30 he said he was struggling to breath and was gasping for air. 
I tried our usual neck massage, then his inhaler. 
I went to the phone, picked it up, asked if he wanted duty GP (we were in a hotel) or ambulance, he said ambulance. 
I turned picked up the phone, dialled 999 and out the corner of my eye saw his whole body spasm and go rigid. 
I grabbed his ankles and dragged him off his chair and when I got him on the floor I knew he had gone .

It was that quick. 
The ambulance and then HEMS came and tried CPR. 
An amazing HEMS doctor sat wit( me and then asked if I wanted them to continue as they had been working for 20 minutes with no response.
I remembered that he had DNR in place but at the time that went out my head and I let them do CPR. 
I should have to.d them at the start.

They put him back on the bed and covered him with our own blanket, which I have wrapped round me as I type. 
He looked so peaceful. Without the awful breathing. 
And surprisingly the lymphoedema had almost disappeared! 

Sorry, long post. 
But I want to say that I used to relive this moment several times es a day. 
Then once a day. Then only on a Wednesday / Thursday. 
Today I type this and haven’t relived it for nearly 2 weeks. 
So I know it will get less as I go on.

lots of hugs xx