Hello all,
I've not posted a lot on the site so some of you may not know me.
My partner had SCLC and we were aware that his treatment would only be to extend his life for as long as possible and keep him comfortable.
It was a real rough road we travelled, but he was so brave and took it all in his stride. There were a few stays in hospital due to several things, one being that his sodium levels had hit the floor causing him to have 2 seizures both of which rendered him unconscious and unresponsive. The doctors managed, with a fight, to get his levels back up and stable.
He was discharged home and we had nurses and carers coming in to help us. When he first got back home, we all felt that he was doing a lot better, he looked better too, but this good spell was to be very short lived. He started loosing lots of weight again, he had trouble with his appetite, he had days when he would be very confused.
His oncologist decided to have another CT scan so that he could see what was happening. Sadly the results were not at all good, the cancer was actively growing very aggressively, at this point his oncologist decided that he was not well enough to have any more cancer treatment, we didn't ask about time spans, we both felt it better to not know.
Terry's wish was to die at home and that is what we were all aiming for.
I nursed him up until just over 8 hours before he passed. One of our nurses came to visit and I mentioned that I had noticed a rapid deterioration in him over the weekend, it was the August Bank holiday.
He was hardly drinking, refused any solid food full stop and seemed very different and confused.
She called for an ambulance after checking his obs which were not good, he was blue lighted to hospital. The doctors in A&E worked so hard on him to try to get his condition stabilised, but sadly, to no avail. They decided it would be best to stop all medical intervention at that point.
That was my first point of absolute devastation, thankfully my Daughter was there with me. Terry passed peacefully away just a couple of hours later, he was in no pain or distress, he literally just drifted away. Second point of absolute devastation took over me, the nurses and doctors were so kind and caring with me and my Daughter. We stayed and sat with him for a couple of hours, still chatting to him, holding his hands and stroking his face and head.
The hardest, most dreadfully hardest, moment of that day was when we had to leave him there in the hospital, I still don't know how I managed that, I wanted to just scoop him up in my arms and bring him home with me. I'm stuck with the vision on him laying on that hospital bed alone.
It's certainly not the ending that we had wanted or planned for and I'm just so sorry that he missed his final wish by a matter of a few hours, but these things happen no matter how many plans we might put in place.
I'm now grief struck and finding it very hard, I'm just taking each day as it comes and I'm allowing myself to grieve in the way that I want too.
Sorry about my long post, it's made me feel a little better to actually type this all out though and see it in print.
Thank you for taking the time to read it. 
