Sunday, December 31, 2023

Death of a Loved One: Crossroads & Lifelong Scar

So many have come and gone since the deaths of my husband and then my mother as I look at a calendar. 

Husband in January 2011 and mother in January 2014.  

Moving into this "holiday time" with memories of loss of loved ones brings tears and laughter.

Changes, differences, accomplishments and achievements, positive and negative... it's life as it was becoming, life as it was lived before, and eventually years after, both were no longer living and with our family.

My Blog has captured a thimblefull of the waterfall of life experiences and many challenges that seemed to be insurmountable.

We faced each one, my daughter and I, rowing the life-boat through one wave after another that started small and grew to  tsunami size.

I recall last Summer, early one morning, daughter left for a day on a local river. Ever the mother, no matter what her age, I find words to express a little concern and a lot of love -- typical Mom stuff -- as she makes time to enjoy this special opportunity to be with friends. 

Swimming pools were not everywhere when I was young and so I never really learned to swim. I tried and made sure our three had swimming lessons and shared time with friends "on the water" and we took trips to beaches.

I "learned" to be around and sometimes in, but never really "took to" swimming pools, lakes and even the ocean. 

They can be beautiful, they can be treacherous, I love to look, admire and put a foot into, but an avid swimmer I have no interest in being.

Events we experienced along the way, during and afterward; many are still fresh and even influential in our life choices while others seem so far away, so distant and almost surreal.

How long has it been?  Really......? Or, That  Long ?!?  Family funeral on my husband's side and I'm surprised but then realize everyone's life takes different paths and only occassionally do we meet at a crossroads, like a family funeral.

Perspective. Compare it to if you're playing the music or listening -- most people don't pay attention to the individual notes, the notations written by the composer or even the exact nuances provided in the interpretation by the conductor. 

Those who participate in the action of the moment while it's happening, those who are most connected to the event, usually are the most influenced and affected.

Why is the death of a loved one like a lifelong scar?  It hurts when it happens, in the healing process there's concern for how long it will take, if it will ever heal completely and if it will someday be "unnoticeable".

The scar is a reminder. We choose how to see it and it will vary in appearance many ways many times as we move forward continuing our journey.  

Some will change their lives completely and the scar will minimize or even seem to disappear. 

Others will carry it and it will grow more prominent as the days, months and years pass.  

Finding the balance in life with this time and what follows is the key to continuing moving towards carrying, shifting the load and moving positively onward.

The "shock" of discovery, of finding 'hidden agendas" and "planned deception" and realizing it was like a puzzle where pieces were around you but not seen.

You look around and spend time while your loved one is in the hospital with Doctors and staff.

You attend "meetings" where the advice is -- "He needs to gain weight. He needs to eat more." It was a "continuous chant" by his attending staff including several Doctors.

They knew the truth. They created the problem They tried to hide it by creating a notation in the "patient record" stating a male Doctor who was not in attendance made an incision. "HE" was a "SHE" and not a Doctor.

The "scar" appears when your loved one leaves you -- it's there to remind you, invisible though it may be -- a precious life was lost and Hell on Earth was created by a voice on the phone directing a procedure without having the ability to see the physical area and who should never have asked someone who did not have surgical training to "cut into".

It took days and weeks spent in a special hospital area spending time that should have been spent alongside my husband but instead had to be spent in front of a computer picking away, line by line, paragraph after paragraph, hundreds, if not thousands of pages, for a hospital stay of 100 days.

It just did not add up. Why was my husband not getting better? Gain weight! That was the constant "mantra".

Medical Records tend to be challenging to comprehend. A lot of medical jargon and the continuity is lacking. It's not like reading a book or a magazine. It jumps around as each person "attending" each "incident" or "action" happens.

Then there's the "medical language" which requires a medical dictionary or sometimes interpretation.

The most alarming part is when you stumble across an entry where you were present for what happened and you see . . . 

A FALSE, MISLEADING AND DECEPTIVE STATEMENT

You should have sued many have said. 

Why did they falsify information, I was asked.

When crisis after crisis is happening and you're trying to find some way to understand what's going on, discover a link to a procedure which was totally wrong, done by a "woman" and NOT a "man" as was stated in the record.

NOT done by a Doctor, maybe not even a Nurse, or at least not one with any form of knowledge concerning the history or condition of the Patient she was told to "cut into" 

Or ...the knife slipped and instead of "lancing" it became cutting 

...Maybe, because of the status of the medical situation, she was not medically capable or trained specifically at the level needed for the procedure mandated by the Dr on the phone call and "she" was not medically capable enough to do anything other than FOLLOW ORDERS GIVEN BY PHONE 

. . . Question came to mind: how many "procedures" in ER's are directed by a Doctor on a phone call to someone in the ER and what qualifications are mandated by medical procedures for someone besides a Doctor to perform in an ER?

...Dr was not available in the Emergency Room at the time and "she" called one who made a decision without seeing the "patient" or "examining" him.

NOTE:  For those of you who are wondering why we did not sue the Dr or the Hospital -- death, financial challenges just hanging on, no one advising us to take that step, a friend who was a Doctor at the Hospital we thought '"had our back" .

The complications of responsibility of living as a family unit with my Mother who was experiencing more physical, medical and emotional needs and so we moved forward in a different way.

The addition of my husband's older brother being admitted to the same ER a few "doors" away with serious medical concerns and finding out his oldest daughter was taking her father "home" as she said,"to die". 

Aging Mom with medical challenges, brother-in-law in same hospital with complications of a daughter wanting to "get it over with" with her father.

Calling my second son to tell him about his father's advancing condition being told he was walking in his father-in-law's funeral procession.

We hadn't talked for a few days and the news was like a knife cutting through as I looked down at my husband, my son's wife's father-in-law, with rising concern for another life -- old wive's tale about death coming in three's when it comes in twos.

Today, I somewhat regret not pursuing what I feel was a major medical mistake. And, that they carried it farther and put my husband through a "procedure" where they "explored" the area which had to escalate and cause the extended stay, complications, and I added to his traumatic death.

They at least had the decency not to provide us with a bill commensurate with his stay but we had so many other costs and losses.

A Lifelong Scar I carry with me. 

One that will possibly never completely heal.

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