{"id":589,"date":"2016-10-12T16:51:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-12T16:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/katrina.effexhost.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/12\/the-pain-of-dying\/"},"modified":"2025-01-09T03:11:02","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T03:11:02","slug":"the-pain-of-dying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifewithkatie.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/12\/the-pain-of-dying\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pain of Dying"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n
Today was hard. There isn\u2019t another word for it. Okay, there
\nprobably is. Something like heart wrenching and soul crushing, but those are
\nphrases so we\u2019re going to stick with hard. It was hard and I\u2019m not sure that I
\nhandled it in the best possible way, but at the end of the day, I handled it.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I can\u2019t get into a lot of details because those details
\naren\u2019t just my own. I share them with another, but really there are only parts
\nthat matter and it\u2019s those that I want to talk about. So, here we go\u2026another
\nday in the life of me\u2026<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
One of my dearest is in an incredibly hard place in life.
\nSomeone that he loves is dying and not just dying, but the kind of death where
\nthe person\u2019s health deteriorates and they just start to fade away. It was
\nbrought to my attention today and though I don\u2019t even know this person, it put
\nme back into a place where I was remembering what it was like to go through
\nthat.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve ever written publicly about it. I know
\nthat I\u2019ve written about it in the autobiography that I will someday finish. It
\nwas one of the hardest periods of my life.
\nI grew up not feeling as if anyone loved me except for my grandmother.
\nIf anyone loved me, it was her. She was the only person in my family that I
\ncould go to with things. Then, she got sick. It started with what I suspect now
\nwas lymphedema that was allowed to run unchecked. By the time she was taken to
\nthe hospital, she was running a fever of something like 104 and they honestly
\ndidn\u2019t think that they could save her.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I was called to the hospital. I didn\u2019t know if it was going
\nto be the last time I saw her. Luckily for me, it wasn\u2019t. I wasn\u2019t ready. She
\nrecovered slowly and after a week or two, she was moved to a convalescent
\ncenter for rehabilitation. There was a lot going on within the \u201cfamily\u201d during
\nall of this and it was taking its toll on me, but I did what had to be done and
\nI tried to stay strong. No, I did stay strong. I didn\u2019t let myself worry or
\ncollapse like I probably needed to. I didn\u2019t take care of myself. I did what I
\nhad to do so that things could go as smoothly as possible and so that she could
\ncome home.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
She did come home but it was never the same. The illness had
\ntaken its toll on her and it was obvious. Over the summer and fall, I watched
\nher deteriorate. Every time I saw her, she was smaller and seemed less there.
\nIt turns out that somehow the doctors had missed that she had more than
\nlymphedema. She also had colo-rectal cancer. My uncles begged me to do what I
\ncould. I was the only person that she responded to. That might be because they
\ntreated her like a child which frustrated her. I would make her anything that
\nshe wanted, trying to entice her to eat a little something. I brought numerous
\ncoke slushies from Meijer because they almost always sounded good to her. It
\nwas never enough to do her any good, but I tried. I had hope that anything
\nhelped and if nothing else, something would be in her stomach for when I
\ntricked her into taking the heavy duty painkillers that they had placed her on.
\nShe didn\u2019t want to take them so I would tell her that they were just a new form
\nof Tylenol or something like that.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
By Thanksgiving, she was plainly telling me that this would
\nbe her last one. She told me the same thing at Christmas. Not long after that,
\nher rate of deterioration seemed to increase. She had given up. She was done
\nfighting. People say that knowing someone\u2019s death is coming somehow makes it
\neasier. What they don\u2019t talk about is how hard it is to watch someone you love
\nstart to disappear and then turn it someone that you barely recognize. By the
\ntime she ended up in hospice, she wasn\u2019t my grandmother, but a shell of her.
\nShe was in constant pain and the cancer\/medication had affected her mind. She
\nwas convinced of things that had never happened or that just weren\u2019t real.
\nChristmas was the last time I took the boys with me to see her. I didn\u2019t want
\ntheir last memories of her to be what she had turned into.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
She made it until March. I\u2019m not going to lie and I\u2019m not
\ngoing to apologize, but the day I got a call from my uncle\u2026or maybe it was my
\nmother\u2026that hospice had called and that she had only hours left to live, I was
\nrelieved. She had no quality of life left. Less than a week before she went to
\nhospice, she had been left alone overnight (my family was too self-focused to
\nstay with her and she refused a nurse) and had somehow fallen, landed on her
\nwalker, and broken her collarbone. She was in unbelievable pain all the time at
\nthis point and stuck in a morphine haze. I just wanted it to be over. I wanted
\nit to be over for her and I wanted it to be over for me. I\u2019m not ashamed to
\nadmit that. I wanted it to be over for me. The months upon months of watching
\nher disappear had taken a serious toll on myself. I never relaxed. I never shut
\ndown. I lost so called friends because they couldn\u2019t understand that I was
\nliving in survival mode.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The day she died, I collected up some things from her house
\nand I made arrangements to meet up with some of those so-called friends to get
\nme away from all of it. That was a fiasco, but not a story for now. It took me
\na long time to recover from her illness and I wouldn\u2019t wish that upon anyone. I
\nhurt for my friend and for those who are going through this with him. I hurt
\nfor his wife and that she\u2019s going through what my grandmother did. I don\u2019t know
\nall of the details but I don\u2019t need to. I only need to know that it\u2019s
\nhappening. It breaks my heart because I\u2019ve been where he is and I know how hard
\nit is to stay strong. I\u2019m going to do my best to be there for him as much as
\nhe\u2019ll let me. He\u2019s not the type who leans on others, but I\u2019ll be there if he
\nneeds to. If I hadn\u2019t had a couple of people who stuck by me at the worst and
\nwhen I wasn\u2019t close to at my best, I don\u2019t know if I would have survived it.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
If you pray, I ask that you raise this family up. If you
\nbelieve in good thoughts, those are always welcome. In the coming days, knowing
\nthere are those who care will make a difference. I know that it did for me.<\/div>\n

Edit: This was written a week ago, but for reasons..yes, reasons…I waited until today to post it.<\/p>\n

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