Haven’t had that complete “breakdown” yet

[Genrou]

It was mid-January of 2019 and I had just gotten back from a trip to NoLa. My brother texts me that dad had been admitted to the hospital for stomach pain. Dad has always been healthy as a horse, so when I heard he was at the hospital, I didn’t think too much of it at all. This man has never been hospitalized one day in his entire 67 years of existence. During my whole life, wherever I moved to, during college, after I got married, dad would be the first to help me move heavy furniture and he wouldn’t allow me to dare lift a finger. Whenever it was winter, he would be the first to get up and shovel the snow so we could all sleep in, and each of us would be able to get to where we needed without delay because the driveway would already be cleared. So It was a Friday, and my brother texts me that I should come visit dad on Saturday at the hospital, even though he was getting out soon. I didn’t think much of it, but decided I should take the drive now. I tell my boss I am taking the day off because my father was not well.
 
When I got to the hospital, I run into my uncle in the hallway who was just leaving. He shakes his head and tells me to go see my dad. I was very confused and didn’t know why he looked so dejected. I find the room and I see my mom, my brother, on each side of dad, who looked healthy as a horse laying on a hospital bed. He looked ridiculous laying on a hospital bed because he was the strongest man I had ever known. Things definitely looked way worse than they appeared. Dad will be getting out soon. He shouldn’t even have been there in the first place. What a joke!
 
My mother looks from my brother to my father and then to me, and my father looks at me, and they all tell me to have a seat. I laugh and ask why? I’m thinking why is everyone being so melodramatic?? They say to me, “you have to sit down before we tell you what we are about to tell you.” I chuckle again in my head and ran with it. My father looks at me ever so lovingly, as he always has, every single day of my life, whether he looked stern or gentle; and now it was the gentle look I got that would melt the largest iceberg in the world. My dad spoke to me in third person, as he sometimes tends to do, especially when he’s being extra kind. “Daddy just found out he has... cancer.” The world starts to spin. What did I just hear? I grab onto the arm rests of the chair they told me to sit in. Only other people had cancer. Even my own grandfather, who was my dad’s dad, was diagnosed when he was in his 70’s. My dad was in his 60’s. I didn’t understand what he was telling me. And, cancer can be curable right? Even if he does have it? I ask my brother “what kind of cancer? when did you find out?” They tell me they found out a few days before. My uncle knew, and others knew. Basically I was the last person to find out. My mother and father told me they didn’t want to tell me over the phone, for fear I would be too shocked by the news that I would get into a car accident on my way down. My brother who always terrorized me since I was young, became so gentle, and told me dad has “pancreatic cancer.” I had no idea what that meant. Our grandfather, upon finding out he had colon cancer, had another ten years. “How long does dad have?” “With treatment, one year.” “Wait what? How is that possible?” I was still trying to wrap my head around dad possibly having cancer and it must be a mistake. My father never smoked or drank a day in his life. “Five percent of pancreatic cancer patients have a five year survival rate.” “Dad will be that 5%, if he doesn’t completely beat this thing. Dad always beat the odds!”
 
 
Sent from my iPhone using Grieving.com

[Jacx]

Same, December 28, 2019. Got a call from Dad asking what I’m up to. Tell him I’m doing errands, going to bake up a storm before NYE.
He asks if I can come over and chat, I hesitate thinking “it’d be a nice visit with some lemon bars”...
I say as much and ask him what’s going on.
“I have something to tell you”
“Ok, tell me”
“Not over the phone, can you come by?”

I still hear his voice, I see his face turned down and away, and then he says it in a tone of surprise almost. Like he’s still in disbelief.

I stayed for an hour or so after, we talked briefly about what his plan was. He would fight, but he asked that we don’t dwell on it. He’d keep me posted but he didn’t want all our time spent talking about the awful thing that grew and spread to kill him 8 months later.

He survived for 8 months exactly. I had hope he’d kick it, even after COVID meant he couldn’t get the exploratory surgery that could help us plan for treatment. I hoped when he moved from chemo to chemoradiation, believing the burns really didn’t hurt as bad as they looked.

Even when he stopped making sense, when he begged me for a ride to his childhood home.
When he was just quiet, somewhere deep in a dilaudid haze.
When I sobbed next to him in the living room as he lay in his hospital bed, begging him please don’t leave, I still need you.

I hoped until I held his hand and told him it was OK if he had to go, and so he went.

[BEQUET93]

I've done quite a bit of crying, but still no complete mental collapse, even though there are moments I feel close to going "crazy."

It was September 16th, when I learned mom had pancreatic cancer. For the preceding year, she had been talking about feeling anxious and the anxiety was worsening. She would ask me if anxiety could make one's stomach hurt, which it can. She asked if anxiety can cause dry mouth, which it can. She would ask me if anxiety can make your back hurt. Mom preferred to sleep on the couch, which isn't very comfortable, so I told her that sleeping in her bed might help that. She said the pain wasn't that bad, so I truly believed that her stomach pain was caused by anxiety and her back pain came from sleeping on the couch. She always had trouble with anxiety, especially health anxiety and a fear of death. For that reason, she avoided doctors, but, on that day, I told her she needed to go, because I noticed that the whites of her eyes had turned yellow and she had kept a heating pad against her back for so long that she had a hot water bottle rash.

She was referred to the hospital, because of jaundice and swelling of her feet. That's when we learned she had pancreatic cancer. They tried to place a stent to drain the bile, but the tumor was so large the surgeon couldn't see the surrounding anatomy and her heart nearly stopped on the operating table. As she had a DNR, they stopped the procedure. Two days later, they were able to place a pancreatic drain and, two days after that, she was discharged from the hospital. When my grandma left the hospital in 2007, hospice care was recommended, so, as hospice wasn't recommended when mom left the hospital, I thought we might have some time. Two days after coming home from the hospital, she made her first and only trip to the oncologist. He was the one who advised hospice care. When he said it, mom said it was like she could feel the life going out of her body.

The first two weeks were bizarre. She had her hospital bed in the living room and a bedside toilet, but she still ate and visited with my siblings and their children. She called those nights "slumber parties." I knew she was dying and she had moments of sadness, but it seemed like she was mostly so happy that I could believe she might make it six months, or even more. I even googled whether someone had ever made such an improvement as to be able to discontinue hospice care. One Sunday night, I was getting her ready for bed and she asked, "What do the black dots in the wallpaper mean?"  I knew that there wouldn't be six months. One morning, at 6am, I was getting ready to give her the lorazepam and oxycodone. She thought the meds were poison and that my intention was to kill her. "Please, don't hurt me! I'm your mother!" One day, tearfully said to me, "I'm so hungry!", but she couldn't get anything down. She went from being afraid of death to begging me to "just let me die and get it over with."

All cancer is a scourge. I have lost both my parents to cancer and my grandma to kidney cancer. What she suffered from pancreatic cancer was the worst I have seen. I feel guilty for thinking that her initial problem was only anxiety. I feel guilty for not pushing her to go a doctor for regular checkups. I feel guilty for being able to eat, when she couldn't. She was my friend and a good mother. I know she died, but it still feels so unreal. I miss her.

[Wallflowerette]

I honestly don't know if everyone has a breakdown. We don't have to be cookie cutter with grief or follow a set pattern. I don't think lack of a breakdown means you loved them less or that you are broken. You should be allowed to mourn and honor them in your own way and this might be a sign you are good with allowing your feelings in at a trickle of a pace or you may have let your grief out in other ways. On the flip side, it may not have hit you yet; your subconscious or conscious may not have fully accepted what is going on. Time may change that or help from others/professionals. 

As for myself, the only thing I could consider to be a breakdown is the crying where it's difficult to breath at times. Both times were releases of all the emotions and loss I was experiencing. The first was when I was told to come visit him because he was dying and the second time when I saw him pass. You don't have to breakdown to the point of defining the breakdown as complete or to the point where it takes over your life with no control coming from you. 

I hope you have a support system, whether it be friends or family, and that you get to a point where you feel like you are mourning in a healthy/acceptable manner. I really wish the same for myself and for all the others who are going through a battle of emotions on this site.

[Monty]

I lost my Dad on 31st October. I have had my fair share of crying uncontrollably but my sister has not. We are all different in our grief but my sister is worried that it has not hit her properly yet. That she is stuck in denial. She even asked me the other day if I still felt like Dad is in the hospital. I think our minds cannot comprehend all of our emotions at once or how it has affected us all at once. Therefore we process things at our own speed and pace. 

Even years after losing a loved one we experience aftershocks when something triggers our grief. It could be a smell, a sound, a song, someone who looks like your loved one walking down the street.
 

It is normal to feel and process things in your own way.