If you have been involved with a Terminal cancer patient step on in...
So a guy at work learned about 3 months ago that his wife had Breast cancer. She didn't do the right things such as checkups and such but no since in worrying about spilled Milk over the bridge. And she started the Chemo-therapy. He is not educated at all in the reality of Cancer and that's not such a bad thing IMO however that is a double edged sword. So then it went wrong quick.
Into the 3rd treatment she came home and the next night paseed away in bed with him. Now that is a hot mess for him to live with however she did what I have yet to see and that was tell her Husband how far along the cancer was and had spread. Her body just gave up between the treatments and the spread of it....Mom says usually people die around 6 months into hospice-except the men on her side of the family, they live way longer (but the hard stop for all of them is 88-the magic number that is the sound or age barrier)
He's really mad at her. I don't know about that. I have seen how Cancer can drag someone through the mud and hornets nest before death and maybe this is the easier way to end it...
What say you? There is no right or wrong answer but am curious as to what other people would think of their Spouse holding back on the intel...
JW
My uncle just quit all of his treatments and went on hospice. The doctor told him that he admired him, and learned from him. the doctor said that the doctor decided that he would not put his father through all of the treatment my uncle went through to reduce pain from a growth that went into my uncle's spine. My uncle did these treatments (in all of our family's opinion and his) to some excess in order to gain a little more time with his beloved wife. He reached his pain and suffering threshold (now extremely, highly elevated) with the treatment, made peace with his fate (through faith and support) and is trying to enjoy what time he had left. His pain despite pain meds is through the roof of a skyscraper. He got on, and immediately off of opiates. Mom says people usually live about 6 months on hospice.
On a real personal note, my beloved grandfather, a devout christian, after 20 years of multiple cancers ( we used joke about the Simpson's tv show character Mr. Burns, whom it was said that all of his different cancers and ailments were actually somehow keeping him alive-a tv show joke)
eventually killed himself from the suffering of pain, years alone living after his wife's death with pancreatic cancer, and multiple versions of suffering. He had a softball size prostate cancer for at least the last year of his life (difficulty in urination and deficating) along with blood, bone, and 2-3 other cancers simultaneously.
He worked a little with herbicides and pesticides in farming, suffered from extensive Radon (just a simple, low level ground
radiation exposure plowing up fields {prominent in south texas and ohio for some reason-which I read and saw charts from a classified book onboard the submarine that the nuclear reactor trained operators had},
and as a pilot with over 7-8000 hours flying-received allot of radiation exposure from the sun as well.
At first, he tried to take a bunch of pills (can't remember what they were) and was in a coma (at age 88) for two days in hospice.
The family tried to get him to go the hospital when he woke up, but he had spent so much time there as a private investigator (investigating hospital mistakes for the insurance company and lawyers he worked for)
that he not only refused to die in a hospital ($15,000 a day back then)
, he convinced his wife to die in hospice and pretty much most of the rest of us family. When he woke up from the coma, he was adamant that he wanted to just go to a buffet and eat.
The second way he tried to kill himself was to not eat for three weeks. He was in such good shape his whole life, and especially aerobic shape with his metabolism and heart (doctors said he had the heart of a 50 year old man at 88) that he just couldn't die. He was weak, tired, and miserable. My cousin was living with him and taking care of him at the time. Paba didn't have a bowl movement for several weeks during that time either.
At the time his prostate cancer had returned (it will for all of us males if we live long enough so they say)
from 20 years prior, previous treatment was a radioactive enema pill (he called it the silver bullet, told me that was the only way they could kill him-jokingly to me).
At the time surgery to remove prostate cancer was fairly new and had a 50 50 shot of success, or radiation and chemo treatment (I think, am not sure)
but the doctor just told him only surgery or death-which he shamed the doctor for being an obtuse liar. (which further convinced him how untrustworthy doctors were)
-My aunt, a nurse said that in hospice, if you are on morphine like grandma was the nurse specifically tells you not to take a (table spoon?) large dose of the morphine ?on your tongue or it will kill you-kind of a Dr. Kevorkian explanation hinting how to end your own suffering.
In the end Paba used a revolver filled with a blankshot next to his temple and my cousin had to find him like that. I know for certain that he didn't want to devolve into a vegetable and that was slowly happening. Initially he had a 150 plus IQ and photographic memory -I remember him complaining to me about how far he dropped from such competence and telling him, "Welcome to my world and the rest of the population Paba. Now you have to live your life as a mortal man." Just because he had just now started to forget things and misplace things, struggling to recall things-just fairly recently.
The family was REAL WEIRD about his suicide because most of us are. devout christians Our faith condemns suicide to hell. I didn't find out until I had pieced details together from different relatives' stories (as I was 1100 miles away fulfilling deployments).
This man was the standard of excellence that I judged other men by, to include myself. Most of us fall short of him, or my step dad- the older generation simply HAD TO and did work hard(er) and harder than most due to the tough times then (depression or for dad vietnam) when money was tight like it is now. I am not sure, but he told me that most of his life he only slept 4 hours a day and was working otherwise-which was how I perceived things with him. I lived with him for a couple of years total, on and off. He would farm on moonlit nights since he was a child in the depression. His family farmed 1600 acres (great grandfather Theodore Daniel and 6 boys-5 or 6 tractors and Paba drove horses instead. Great-grandfather never defaulted on his bank loan in the depression, he paid it all back, his word was honorable and worth gold.
The point is, it took allot of thought and processing to see Paba fall so far from grace-I learned that there is only so much we can handle, despite how hard any of us are and that family and friends alleviate so much of that suffering towards the final years. There are people here on FABO that after sharing many personal details have truly inspired me not to give up after a divorce, home invasion, (which were not the end of the world{and I didn't think bothered me, except some paranoia at home, alone}, but I didn't realize how much they bothered me until the addition of not having my precious 7 year old child anymore compounded a little anguish.
Now another part of his suicide, was of all things, a tax hole loop that was going to destroy everything he worked for-death taxes. I guess a fight to the death for all that he earned. He left his family a 200+ acre ranch that the Federal Government financed (and offered to WW2 veterans). If I remember correctly he said he paid $75 a month up until the 1970's on the loan for that land. I believe that $75 in 1945/46 was big big money at the time.
In 2010, it was the last year for someone to utilize a living trust, disperse the wealth he had earned to family, and avoid paying the government. Paba lived during the golden age of wealth in America and had saved, invested, worked multiple jobs at once, and his wife (Masters Degree educated/employed as a teacher) worked for over 30 years at the same job while saving on groceries by having a farm. -the farm land has grown past tens of thousands of dollars in value per acre, and several family members have sold their share already to cash in. He did not want to give any of that back to the IRS, and who could blame him. He even said he would not live past 2010 because he could not afford it. I thought he meant his life savings.
I was hoping for more kids because of witnessing all of the children/grandchildren that took care of my grandparents, they did not die alone, or in a home. I hope I die at 88 either having sex (like one ancestor) or driving my Mopar alone, in the middle of no where. Mom said she would fly delivering food to people, "in the mountains" in her bonanza plane. One mistake with wind-sheer and it would be over in seconds, and that was the idea.
