DM has had a 2.8 year battle with stage 4 cancer. Now 80.
My DB and I have been lucky enough to have a carer but our lives have been on hold for nearly 3 years. We are both shattered and exhausted from the continual trips in and out of hospital, getting her meds, calling for help, taking over this and that and for caring for all her other co-morbities and she has a lot.
I went to see her today, as I did yesterday and the day before and the day before and she's obviously very much in pain. She cant have conventional pain relief so they're using a 2nd/3rd line of drug choice and it doesn't seem to be working.
Already after 2.8 years of shit this feels like the final horror tragedy to finish me off. The whole experience so gruelling.
I look at end of life care and how she is a fragment of her former self and I just wish it would end now.
I don't wish for her to go but I am so very sad, exhausted, burnt out and beyond everything I don't know what to think anymore.
Tomorrow I am taking a break from hospice as taking my DS to hospital appointment. But in all of that there will be not time to myself to be alone, to process. To take a breath. I had a nice friend go into counselling mode when I told her what was happening. She told me try and find a moment for a "nice cup of tea". WTF?
I feel guilty for all the time i'm not there and she is alone, trying to cope with the pain. Yet I hate visiting and I hate my time there. It's very upsetting.
No one has brushed her teeth since she got there 7 days ago so I helped her do that today and fed her her lunch.
It's such a sad experience to see your DM in such a weakened and painful state.
I hope they have legalised assisted dying when I reach my end as I would not want to go through this or put my kids through this.
She's been so stoical through it all. I want this to be over. Now. I feel like I can't take even one more day. I will miss her immensely. She was my best friend. But this is torture.