Guilt

[Devastatedgrandd]

My grandfather, 92, has mesothelioma and is in his final days.

Yesterday he was unresponsive, but today he was in terrible pain. This has been his story for the last month.

I’ve begged the hospital for pain relief for him. They say he tells the doctors he’s fine. But he has a deep distrust of doctors. When family is there though, we can hardly touch him, or he screams out. Nurses have given him oramorph and then the fentanyl patch. Still he had terrible pain, worsening over the weeks.

Today the consultant took me seriously and stayed with us to see Grampy, agreeing that he was obviously downplaying the situation to her. She decided to call palliative and move him on to syringe driver.

However, now he is peaceful and calm, being dosed up with oxycodone and midazolam, but he’s no longer able to stay conscious and engaged, and I feel terrible guilt for pushing this next phase, with him seeming closer to dying than ever.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to talk with him again or hear his voice. I don’t know if he’d have wanted to talk more to us. I feel like I’m speeding up his death.

Can anyone relate? Thank you

He is still here and he can hear you and feel your presence right beside him. Tell him everything you need him to know, read him a letter, comfort him and help him to be brave with your words and your touch. I had exactly the same experience with my darling FIL.

Think about if it was you, and you were in agony every day. The outcome was probably going to be the same anyway - eventually - but someone who loved you stepped in and took away all of that pain and allowed you to experience your final chapter at peace and comfortably whilst listening to everything around you. You’d be so grateful.

You did the right thing. Illness and the prospect of loss is so hard and guilt is natural. Sending strength x

Thank you 🙏

I read/watched a piece on the normal process of death. Given by a palliative care specialist. Found it really helpful on what to expect . We don’t discuss these things or share them. I’m sorry you are going through it- don’t feel guilty, managing pain and distress is the priority now.

@Devastatedgrandd I was thinking about you today. I hope you’re as okay as can be and managing to find some quiet moments in your mind and with your grampy.

Thank you @Bellatrixxx

I was with my gramps yesterday evening, just me and him, and I was chatting to him and playing his favourite songs, tapping his hand gently to the music.

I left to go home and shortly after getting in I got the call from the hospital to say he’d passed.

It’s really hard because he was such a huge character and a major part of our lives.

A funny story though, before he was put on the syringe driver, the consultant came to see him. She asked him a few questions, and he wearily gave the same answer each time ‘I want to go home’. After the third time he said to her ‘oh, go away!’. Then he lay back and closed his eyes. A moment later he said ‘are you gone?’. We laughed our heads off, it was such a gramps thing to do.

Im going to miss him terribly; and I wonder whether we’d still have him if he hadn’t had the pain relief. But then he want in such terrible pain, how could I have wanted that.

I think things are just going to be a bit crap for a while. Thank you for thinking of me. X

I'm so sorry. You done what was right. He went pain free and you couldn't ask for better then at. Sending love xx