Hello everyone,
I keep writing, deleting and re writing this. My dad was first diagnosed with throat and lung cancer back in 2014, they managed to remove the cancer at the cost of having a laryngectomy.
I lost my dad to throat cancer back in April. He was given 6 weeks to live last december.
I'm finding it harder and harder to live with myself as the last few month's of his suffering, he was in absolute agony, not even his morphine driver could suffice. We managed to get him a bed at trinity hospice, and I cannot thank them enough for care that he received. But his peg got infected and was transferred back to hospital where he died a week later. He didn't want to die at hospital as they were pretty shit at managing his pain. The last thing he wrote on his white board was "I'm in pain and I want to die". I still have his whiteboard and it hasn't been rubbed out.
I still remember his frail body crunched over, pulling at his face because of the amount of pain he was in. I still remember the face of desperation every time my mum drawn up his next dose of morphine. I still remember the hacking cough and the amount of mucous he produced.
Me and my mum tried our best to look after him at home. But my parent's flat is full of black mould, and unfortunately they didn't have hot water or central heating during the time we had him home.
My parent's are skint, they only had a shared esa claim. My poor dad then became incontinent. My mum couldn't afford incontinence products to make him comfortable. He had way too much pride, he just wanted to lay in fucking newspaper. No gas, no central heating and just laying in newspaper. They didn't even have to ask me, I used my credit card to buy him all of the incontinent care products he needed.
He was so frail, a towering 6 foot 2 and weighing only 46kg when he died. He couldn't talk, eat, speak or swallow for a good 6 months before he died. He never complained.
I'm only a 22 year old, single mother to a 5 year old. My mum didn't have the capacity to arrange his funeral or the death certificates. I did it all myself without any support.
I'm probably just listing things right now, but I feel so empty and alone. I'm struggling to show up to my shifts at work. And I've been dreamimg about my dad EVERY night for the past 2 weeks.
I hope this makes sense as it was very hard for me to type out.