from Old England
OK so my wife's grandad died last week aged 92. He was one of the coolest guys you could ever want to meet, and was a regular (and very good) dancer well into his 80s.
That's not all of it though. It's not so much that he's dead - he was diagnosed with cancer ages ago which was slowly spreading around various parts of his body - it's the way the hospital treated him. He was given no food or water for several days; then they managed to not realise for 3 days that his feeding tube was not properly connected (how?*); then he contracted pneumonia and ended up getting septic shock (which again it took them ages to work out); so they finally fed him some antibiotics which seemed to work.
Then he went downhill and the doctor and my mother-in-law had some massive run-ins with each other. Again, no food, no water. We just got the impression that she wanted him off the ward ASAP and she was repeatedly trying to bully him into having only "palliative care" (see previous sentences).
He died last Wednesday morning. I had just started a new job the Monday morning so I ended up having to take 3 days off work to care for my wife, who was (obviously) emotionally shaken and stirred. We had already arranged for me to go to Germany this week (I came back today) but the training did not go as well as planned partly due to my not being in the back end of last week. So that's been a mess and that's just rounded off what's been a really bad month.
And now... well, there's some family stuff going on that I won't bore you all with. I'm still trying to get my head round it because I got it jumped on me as soon as I got back from Germany....
If you're still reading this, thank you for your patience.
Martyn out.
That's not all of it though. It's not so much that he's dead - he was diagnosed with cancer ages ago which was slowly spreading around various parts of his body - it's the way the hospital treated him. He was given no food or water for several days; then they managed to not realise for 3 days that his feeding tube was not properly connected (how?*); then he contracted pneumonia and ended up getting septic shock (which again it took them ages to work out); so they finally fed him some antibiotics which seemed to work.
Then he went downhill and the doctor and my mother-in-law had some massive run-ins with each other. Again, no food, no water. We just got the impression that she wanted him off the ward ASAP and she was repeatedly trying to bully him into having only "palliative care" (see previous sentences).
He died last Wednesday morning. I had just started a new job the Monday morning so I ended up having to take 3 days off work to care for my wife, who was (obviously) emotionally shaken and stirred. We had already arranged for me to go to Germany this week (I came back today) but the training did not go as well as planned partly due to my not being in the back end of last week. So that's been a mess and that's just rounded off what's been a really bad month.
And now... well, there's some family stuff going on that I won't bore you all with. I'm still trying to get my head round it because I got it jumped on me as soon as I got back from Germany....
If you're still reading this, thank you for your patience.
Martyn out.
from TLV
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