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As to the topic: my husband died yrs. ago - he had been a transplant recipient but was also signed up for organ donation. I received a lovely letter saying they were able to use corneas and skin tissue
As to the topic: my husband died yrs. ago - he had been a transplant recipient but was also signed up for organ donation. I received a lovely letter saying they were able to use corneas and skin tissue
Same for my husband. Cancer rendered organ donation impossible.
I'm sorry that the counselor overstepped her boundaries. It was not professional of her to suggest how you were feeling.
My sister and her fiance both passed away unexpectedly back in March pretty directly due to their decisions. My sister had fentanyl, opioids and benzodiazepines in her system according to the autopsy report. Her fiance had a similar drug cocktail in his system.
I don't blame my sister for engaging in the action that led to her passing away. I don't like the choice that she made and don't understand it but there is nothing that can be done now.
20 years ago I lost a beloved family member to adenocarcinoma lung cancer at age 70, she hadn't smoked for over 35 years. Her only sibling said something snarky after her death about her smoking and I thought "you a-hole" but never said it aloud.
No, I don't think she contributed to her death but some people want to attach a reason so that maybe they will not be caught in the same death trap. Good luck with that I say with sarcasm. Some people always want someone to blame for everything. Seems like a useless and unintelligent way to deal with death but that's up to them. If anyone blamed someone in front of me today that's the last time I'd ever see or talk to them, after I gave them a put-down for their rudeness.
Note: when my relative was dealing with her cancer we read a medical report that many non-smoking women her age were also getting lung cancer with no risk factors. There is some research that points to sun flares causing egg abnormalities in the fallopian tubes of the mother of the person who got cancer. In other words you might get cancer due to solar flares at the time your mother was born since women are born with all the eggs they will ever have.
It's not a matter of blaming the deceased person (nor having anger) - it's just having information and knowledge.
It is well-known that people who smoke for decades and then quit, can get lung cancer later in life even having quit smoking a couple decades earlier.
My mother smoked for 45 years, quit for about 15 or 20 years, and then died from lung cancer at age 84. Smoking can cause 12 different types of cancer including bladder cancer, pancreatic cancer, and 10 other types.
Smoking can cause cancer almost anywhere in your body, including the:
Blood (acute myeloid leukemia)
Bladder
Liver
Kidney and renal pelvis
Pancreas
Stomach
Colon and rectum
Esophagus
Larynx
Lungs, trachea, and bronchus
Mouth and throat
Cervix
It's not a matter of blaming the deceased person (nor having anger) - it's just having information and knowledge.
It is well-known that people who smoke for decades and then quit, can get lung cancer later in life even having quit smoking a couple decades earlier.
My mother smoked for 45 years, quit for about 15 or 20 years, and then died from lung cancer at age 84. Smoking can cause 12 different types of cancer including bladder cancer, pancreatic cancer, and 10 other types.
Smoking can cause cancer almost anywhere in your body, including the:
Blood (acute myeloid leukemia)
Bladder
Liver
Kidney and renal pelvis
Pancreas
Stomach
Colon and rectum
Esophagus
Larynx
Lungs, trachea, and bronchus
Mouth and throat
Cervix
My father never took care of himself. He had uncontrolled diabetes he never wanted to address, he was overweight most of my childhood. Smoked 3 packs a day since he was 18. He would never let me or my mom know anything that was going on with his health until the last minute. He would not allow my mom to advocate on his behalf. She has excellent insurance through her job (still working at 76 full time) My dad had his own because he owned a business. It wasn't great insurance. She put him on hers even though he swore he did not need it. Well he did need it and thankfully he was on her plan. He fell and had to have 2 knee surgeries. My mom finds out that during the surgery he had to be paddled because he went into cardiac arrest. She saw burn marks on his chest and asked him about it. Anyway I could go on and on. What did kill him was stage 4 Pancreatic cancer in 2004.We seem to think he was sick the prior year but did not tell anyone. When he was diagnosed he lived 2 months. He was a difficult patient, never cared about his health and kept his health a secret from us. I miss him but he did this to himself by not caring about his health. Karma always comes back to bite you in the butt. If he took care of himself he might be alive today who knows. He has missed out on 3 grandkids (My brothers family)and many other milestones we have had.
I have officially failed at Bereavement Counseling. My therapist has kicked me out. And it's about time.************
Did your loved one have bad habits or bad decisions that contributed (even if only in an ancillary way) to their death. How did you handle it?
My bereavement counselor says I am taking my anger at my husband out on her.
I can't speak to bereavement counseling because I attended only once for my "second set of parents." What I will say is that I delivered the eulogy. I was not about to sugar-coat the fact that my mother was often difficult to deal with. I made a point of not making the eulogy a place for recriminations. The protagonist, after all, is dead.
I hope this is a good thread to resurrect; I think you all will understand.
Ebbe's post #3 is helpful for me.
My mom died at 72 in her sleep a month ago today from cardiopulmonary failure. While I don't blame her for her death, I think she contributed in a small way. And mostly, I think I contributed and should have tried harder, made better arguments, gotten my siblings more on board to convince her to move home. She just refused to move closer to her family. I know for a fact that we would have been able to keep an eye on her more.
Generally speaking she stayed on top of her health w exams and follow up treatments as needed. But she was under more stress than usual lately. Had she been closer to home, we'd have noticed if she needed to slow down and go to a doctor. She was very energetic and cheerful, but she did struggle with depression and anxiety. She just kept busy and living her life. I wish I could have helped her.
I just wanted to share that I've been feeling guilty, and it's a very hard feeling to deal with.
Last edited by winterbird; 03-18-2022 at 03:20 PM..
I think of this as part of the bargaining phase of grief. I certainly did it with my husband. If only he hadn’t eaten so much lunch meat, put the phone up to his ear, 50 million other things. I did get over that. You have to.
There is no reason somebody gets a damn brain tumor. It just happens. Less than 14000 people a year get a glioblastoma diagnosis. It will forever be strange that my sister‘s husband died of the same thing. But it’s very human to look for a reason for something. We look for cause and effect. After he died, I looked for several months to see if there was something that we missed. There is nothing.
And I still read about them, and there’s a blog I read by a five-year survivor which gives me hope. Even though my husband is gone I still want that hope that someday another wife is going to have a beloved husband get this horrible diagnosis, face what I faced, and have a real chance of coming out the other side with a husband that she loves very much.
I had a conversation like this with someone on the Atheist and Agnostic section of the R&S forum. When her son was a toddler, he got leukemia. Although she was never a believer, she asked WHY? as her little boy lay in the hospital waiting for treatment. A nurse took the time to speak with her, and she said, "Look, I've seen this time and again. It does no good to look for rhyme or reason or something larger in these things. It's just biology".
Her son survived and is a young adult. But her message meant something to me. The one I love went from a healthy-looking man to a disabled, bedridden invalid in a few months as a result of a rare neurological disorder. He smoked, quitting more than 15 years ago. He had a few drinks every evening. He didn't always eat healthfully. And so forth. But maybe it's also just biology.
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Solly says — Be nice!
