Caregiving & Terminal Illness

[psalm131]

I am wondering if anyone has a knowledge or experience with a loved one sensing their death?  My father in law has stage 4 Gastric CA with metastasis to his lymph nodes and liver.  Due to other health issues, he is not a candidate for any treatment.  The doctors have not given him a estimation of life expectancy per his request.  Even though his general health has not worsened as far as we can tell, he is peacefully but deliberately planning toward death.  In the last week he has made several difficult decisions, is making final burial arrangements, drawing family close, etc.  He expresses that he hopes to live until March.  Does anyone have any experience or know if there is a "sensing" of death that is normal with those who have come to terms with a terminal illness?  Thank you and God bless~

[karolynca]

I don't have experience I just wanted to offer you some hugs...sorry you have to deal with this situation...some people say they can sense when their time is about to come.

[Kelly]

Dear Members,

We are excited to mention that we are moving to a more new and improved message boards on MONDAY MORNING AUGUST 9th! The boards will be done for a few hours while we are making the conversation. Remember we posted information about this move a month ago. For some of you this might seem a bit sudden,  but when we were reviewing the site we determined the current message board you are using is out of date and the company that designed it is no longer in existence. The good news is this new message board will have new features that have been requested in the past like more fields we can add to your profiles and a chat room up to 20 people at one time. If we find the chat room is bursting at the seams we will add additional room for extra people. All your old posts, private messages and such will be migrated to the new message board. You might have to put up your profile picture again but not sure. The new company will be doing the migration for us. Here is a short list of some of the new features on the board:

- Custom Profile Fields

- Users can customize their profile pages by selecting a background color or background image, with tiling options.

- Facebook and Twitter Integration

- users can respond to multiple posts at once with "mini-quote"

- Pinned discussion threads - like welcome to our board etc.

- Announcements made across some boards or the entire message board

- Search: Users can easily find all content generated by a particular member, by clicking the 'Find Content' button that appears on the main profile page, or in the Mini Profile Popup which can be accessed throughout the board. The results page allows content to be filtered by application, as well whether the member created it or merely participated in it.

- Privacy: allows users to sign in anonymously, hiding them from the online users list. Users also have the option to disable personal conversations and user-to-user emails, as well as ignore other users if necessary.

The next exciting piece of news about the new message board is it will have a new domain name of www.grieving.com for search engine optimization purposes. It will still be apart of Beyond Indigo and can be found through www.beyondindigo.com. We will be redirecting your current URL's to this new domain name but we might miss a few. If that is the case simply go back to www.grieving.com or www.beyondindigo.com to find your message board thread. We will try to make the transition as seamless as possible.

The bottom line is the new board will give us room to grow our community and more options to interact better with each other.

If you have any questions please direct them to feedback@beyondindigo.com.

Kelly Baltzell, MA

CEO/President

Beyond Indigo Family

[SRamsamy]

My mom died of a short bout of lung cancer that metastasis to the bones. She refused to know anytime lines, which made it difficult to deal with because everyone else saw it coming and my mother refused to accept it. So the fact that you are seeing your father accept that he is dying is something that my be a blessing. Saying that, the last month of my moms life were all over the place. There were many times we thought she was going to go but woke up. My sister in law who is a nurse, gave me a book (I was the primary caregiver) called Final Gifts. She read it in nursing school and it sort of shows signs that it's someone's time to go. The biggest sign I read about and then saw, was that the person suddenly feels the need to go somewhere. My mother's mom had passed five years earlier, and in the last week, she kept asking why my grandma hadn't called yet. As soon as she said it, she knew what was wrong with what she said. In the last day before she died, she kept trying to get up and push past me to run somewhere. Another big sign, is delirium. People tend to go into a delirium for a few days before the end and then slip into a coma before dying. This was my experience, and the book Final Gifts, helped. I hope this gives you some insight. I'm sorry for what you're going through, it is truly difficult to watch someone you love pass on.

Summer

I am wondering if anyone has a knowledge or experience with a loved one sensing their death? My father in law has stage 4 Gastric CA with metastasis to his lymph nodes and liver. Due to other health issues, he is not a candidate for any treatment. The doctors have not given him a estimation of life expectancy per his request. Even though his general health has not worsened as far as we can tell, he is peacefully but deliberately planning toward death. In the last week he has made several difficult decisions, is making final burial arrangements, drawing family close, etc. He expresses that he hopes to live until March. Does anyone have any experience or know if there is a "sensing" of death that is normal with those who have come to terms with a terminal illness? Thank you and God bless~

[unpretty]

Of course it is difficult..

but what is important is to show love to your loved one by simply not giving up on him/her. When my mom was diagnosed with cancer, we depleted our assets for her medications and treatments. I realized we need to prepare for long term care and be conscious with our health since illnesses give a lot of burden to the entire fam.

My mom died of a short bout of lung cancer that metastasis to the bones. She refused to know anytime lines, which made it difficult to deal with because everyone else saw it coming and my mother refused to accept it. So the fact that you are seeing your father accept that he is dying is something that my be a blessing. Saying that, the last month of my moms life were all over the place. There were many times we thought she was going to go but woke up. My sister in law who is a nurse, gave me a book (I was the primary caregiver) called Final Gifts. She read it in nursing school and it sort of shows signs that it's someone's time to go. The biggest sign I read about and then saw, was that the person suddenly feels the need to go somewhere. My mother's mom had passed five years earlier, and in the last week, she kept asking why my grandma hadn't called yet. As soon as she said it, she knew what was wrong with what she said. In the last day before she died, she kept trying to get up and push past me to run somewhere. Another big sign, is delirium. People tend to go into a delirium for a few days before the end and then slip into a coma before dying. This was my experience, and the book Final Gifts, helped. I hope this gives you some insight. I'm sorry for what you're going through, it is truly difficult to watch someone you love pass on.

Summer

[Itfeelslikeimdying2]

I think we absolutely can determine when we die if we set our mind to it we can do nearly anything.

When my Spouse was diagnosed life came to a screeching halt it was all about trying to live trying for the best quality possible for as long as possible.

Now were doing his hospice he had a painful day could barely stand to get up for the bathroom, after I got him tucked in he told me he was going to die soon, he has been hopeful through all of this and tonight he told me that he would die soon.

I'm still crying over it, it just doesn't ever get easier does it?