Biggest Regret

[ADM925]

My biggest regret is that we didn't go to the ER right away even though the confusion Mom had seemed to go away very quickly and didn't come back for over a week.  That could have been the first sign of the blood clot that caused the cardiac arrest that sent Mom to the ICU for 38 days on a ventilator, and then to a nursing home for another 5 weeks with no visiting.  I blame myself and will never forgive myself for this, for allowing something to happen that might have been prevented.  Something that turned both of our lives into a living hell and took time together away from us.  The miserable ongoing nightmare of being left without my only loved one and sole refuge in the world might have been delayed at least.

Mom had been in the hospital for 3 weeks 4 months earlier for cellulitis, which she beat.  But she hated the hospital and never wanted to go back because someone there hurt her.  And I didn't want her to go back because I wasn't allowed to see her for the 3 weeks.  But if we had erred on the side of caution the clot might have been discovered and treated along with the UTI in that extra time.  And the cardiac arrest, ventilator, feeding tube, and "permanent irreversible brain injury" could have been avoided.   Mom could have been back home as her old self within a few weeks, able to eat and drink normally, instead of after 3 months with impairment plus a tracheostomy and feeding tube.  

People try to tell me it would have happened the same way anyway but they can't say that, they should only say it MIGHT have happened anyway.  And it also might not have happened the same way and could have gone much better instead.  This plus all the other heartbreaks and horrors over 15 1/2 months is what keeps me awake night after night and panicking all day.  

[Q26QRO]

I'm sorry you have to go through all of that I must hurt you deep down.

My biggest regret is being in a foreign country while my mom was sick. I should have never left. My mom had water around her heart the doctors told us it is a serious condition but a easy fix. All they had to do was drain the water; no surgery no medication a very simple procedure. I was due to leave in April. We found out about this 2 weeks before I should leave. My mom hate hospital because of what she saw happened to her own mother that passed away in a hospital one year prior to her condition. We carried her to the most private hospital we could find that has no correlation to the government or their medical staff. U pay the doctors basically it was a well established hospital equipped with all the specialist. They have their own labs every everything you could need for the most invasive surgery. Her thing was simple drain the water that's it no medication or long recovery time needed. She was fine after that. We were good, I said was gone leave she said go she's find. The that I left is the day she had her follow up visit. She went back the doctor said she had water around her heart again. It was strange to them so they offer a surgery. That again is not a hard surgery. Simple thing. I told my mom I'm coming back home she said no stay. She did the surgery. She was healing are so we thought. I keep saying to her I'm coming she tell me no. I'm an obedient daughter, I always do what I'm told even if I said I'm not gonna do it I still end up doing it. If I don't follow my parents advice some how life would show me I should listen to my parents so I learn to listen. I was mom let me come home I don't need to be here no more if you need me. She insisted that that there was nothing wrong. I talk to her day in day out. As the end of August approach I got this strong feeling like I should go home. I keep telling her she keep telling to stay. I finally book a ticket to come home tell her I'm coming home I don't care what she have to say. I book the ticket 1st for September 17 then change it for September the 27 because I order some stuff for her but they won't come in time so that's why I changed the date (I talk to her day in and day out she told me was okay every morning but my feelings said that she was probably gonna need my help so I should go home never did I expected that she would die). I woke the Friday morning to so much missed called that my mom passed away on the way to hospital early 1-2 am on September 17. I blame myself for leaving. I blame myself for staying so long. I blame myself for not listening to my feelings wen they said to go home in August. I blame myself for daring to exist after my mom passed. My mom was my everything it felt like I lost 10 person all at once. I want to die everyday. Everything is meaningless without her. I just stay home all they in her bed. I don't go outside, I don't talk to ppl, I don't want to continue anymore like what is the purpose. I'M BROKEN.

Like why this have to happen now. Like I see ppl don't talk to their mom in years but still have their mom. Ppl say that God bring you down a path for a reason but what reason this could be. Unless it's for me to be sad and depressed for the rest of my life and leave with the feeling of guilt and regret. I barely eat. I just don't know what to do.

 

[ADM925]

14 hours ago, Q26QRO said:

I blame myself for leaving. I blame myself for staying so long. I blame myself for not listening to my feelings wen they said to go home in August. I blame myself for daring to exist after my mom passed. My mom was my everything it felt like I lost 10 person all at once. I want to die everyday. Everything is meaningless without her. I just stay home all they in her bed. I don't go outside, I don't talk to ppl, I don't want to continue anymore like what is the purpose. I'M BROKEN.

What you went through is so bad I can't find any words.  How can any one go on after this, it should not, could not have happened.  No matter what anyone says it is too much to bear.  Some people can't survive apart from each other ever and for those people the separation and the brutal ways they got separated are beyond human endurance.  I relive it constantly, it's worse all the time.  I don't want to be here, I stayed in her bed all day panicking, getting the shock over and over while dreading being forced out tomorrow to where we used to go together and be happy.  I hate it now, can't be with people who have moved on long ago and tell me to move on, to go to counseling which I dread.  Tell me to move on to being without my only loved one who I can't live without, the only one who could stop the agony and cure the shattered heart.  But I'm afraid to hurt myself or die alone in the house, and only Mom could take away this much anguish.

14 hours ago, Q26QRO said:

Ppl say that God bring you down a path for a reason but what reason this could be. Unless it's for me to be sad and depressed for the rest of my life and leave with the feeling of guilt and regret. I barely eat. I just don't know what to do.

They tell me over and over it is God's plan and will get better, but I feel like I'm in Hell itself, so how could my worst nightmare since 5 years old be God's plan?  To me it is the plan of the enemy and there is no escape unless the world would end.  And time makes it worse.  Now i have 10 hours till dragging myself out of the house, almost no food all day, I will probably crawl back to bed and keep getting the shocks while counting the miserable hours.  Going outside to people is supposed to be "the cure" but it is even worse than being inside alone and that is unbearable.  The longer we are separated the more frightening and unreal, like I went into the wrong reality, the wrong universe somehow and there is no way out but my own end.  People don't understand how some of us can't be in this world without our Moms.                      

[Q26QRO]

That's how I feel. It's horrible living without her. I'm now sick because of poor diet I know what I should do to get better but I don't want to do it. Speed up my time here. I don't brush my teeth or comb my hair. Try to have a conversation with someone today. It keep saying things backwards without realizing it. I realized because they have to keep correcting me. My mind is not here. Idk what's happening to me.

This world is evil. I keep getting put in depressing events but this is by far the worst.

I hope you not as bad as me.

I see no future.

 

[ADM925]

2 hours ago, Q26QRO said:

Try to have a conversation with someone today. It keep saying things backwards without realizing it. I realized because they have to keep correcting me. My mind is not here. Idk what's happening to me.

This world is evil. I keep getting put in depressing events but this is by far the worst.

I hope you not as bad as me.

I see no future.

Since New Year on it's even worse and it was already very bad, thinking about all the horrors Mom went through, 3 months of it alone.  Very bad without the only person I love, who gives unconditional love back and understands me, the only one I'm at ease with, my only source of peace.  I'm afraid I'll be reported to a hospital and put under observation or put away and never let out.  Heartbreaking memories from decades ago come back to me especially at night; I need to share them with Mom to deal with them and cannot and it is destroying my mind.  Most of all I need to hear her loving, reassuring voice and hold onto her.  Not having that is the worst nightmare of all because she's always been there and is the only possible cure. 

I constantly relive the horrible day when both our lives ended.  Why did it have to be when I was trying to care for her???  I will never forgive myself or stop seeing it.  It's 2:40 AM but the dread of sleep with those flashbacks plus going out alone into the empty world is keeping me awake.  I have to go there with Mom or not at all.  We went to Sunday Brunch afterwards and had a beautiful time.  Now all is twisted and evil, the stress is too much and I'm terrified of each day and of being alone and sick without her.  Sorry for rambling but it's worse than ever.             

 

[ESM]

22 hours ago, ADM925 said:

The longer we are separated the more frightening and unreal, like I went into the wrong reality, the wrong universe somehow and there is no way out but my own end. 

I feel exactly the same way here. As far as my biggest regret goes, I actually have a couple of them. The biggest one however, involves my mom's last week in the hospital. My mom was scheduled to go into the hospital for her second round of chemo. The first round had gone well, and the doctors told us that the leukemiahad actually regressed. That day the hospital had a room set up for her and she was scheduled to go to the hospital via an ambulette, which is sort of a minivan that's like an ambulance. It never came. The hospital somehow screwed up.

Thus, feeling every day was extremely important, and not wanting her to be late starting her second round of chemo, I advised her to call 911 and go in via an ambulance. However, I didn't realize that if you go to the hospital through an ambulance, by law, you automatically get put in the emergency room, you don't get taken up to the room that you were scheduled to be in and just start your treatments. So my mom in her weakened state ended up in the emergency room for 16 hours for absolutely no reason essentially because of my advice. I really think my mom being in that sprawling area for so long caught some kind of a bug, which led to the infection, which ultimately led to her cardiac arrest.

Now, I'm pretty sure my mom knew that going in Via an ambulance meant that she was going to have to go to an emergency room, but I didn't know that. And I don't know if she would have gone in via 911 if I had never made that suggestion. It continually haunts me.

[ADM925]

9 hours ago, ESM said:

I didn't realize that if you go to the hospital through an ambulance, by law, you automatically get put in the emergency room, you don't get taken up to the room that you were scheduled to be in and just start your treatments. So my mom in her weakened state ended up in the emergency room for 16 hours for absolutely no reason essentially because of my advice.

The hospital certainly screwed up and I probably would have done as you did, being unaware of this regulation until now.  16 hours - were they swamped at the time?  It must have seemed like an eternity; did anyone speak to you during all that time, did they check and see that there wasn't any immediate danger?   Appalling to be kept so long unnecessarily.  

9 hours ago, ESM said:

I really think my mom being in that sprawling area for so long caught some kind of a bug, which led to the infection, which ultimately led to her cardiac arrest.

The horror of this is hard to express.  Not only do we have to suffer the unendurable loss of our moms but also the nightmare feeling that it didn't have to happen, could have been prevented or at least delayed, but was allowed to happen through something we as sons did or failed to do.  When I try to discuss my guilt the response is usually "It was her time".  But I also heard the same thing 14 months earlier with Mom's first hospitalization, and she beat a dangerous condition (a very large Stage 4 pressure ulcer plus 5 smaller ones) and came home. 

Today was very bad, with a lot of visible impatience and "You should be over it by now".  But the heartbreaking recollections, absence, hopelessness, and despair never go away or even let up, awake or asleep.                              

[ESM]

23 hours ago, ADM925 said:

The horror of this is hard to express.  Not only do we have to suffer the unendurable loss of our moms but also the nightmare feeling that it didn't have to happen, could have been prevented or at least delayed, but was allowed to happen through something we as sons did or failed to do. 

Yeah, the whole ordeal was crazy. Not that it makes a difference, but we were actually in the ER for about 14 hours. She got there about 10 AM, and wasn't taken up to a room until about midnight. And all because of the hospital screw up. I actually mispoke when I said that you must go into the emergency room when you come in by ambulance (although that migh be the case), rather I was told it was because we used 911 to come in. So yeah, 14 hours in the emergency room gor nothing.

And on top of that was my mom's last day in the hospital when at around 12 p.m. she was in really bad shape and a team of doctors came down and said she was fighting off an infection They said they were going to send the Infectious Disease team down to see her with new antibiotics which they thought would help and we would know within 24 hours whether she was responding well to them or not. From that point at 12 p.m. to when she passed away that evening at 7:30 p.m. not a single doctor came down to see her. This supposed infectious disease team with her new medications never showed up.

I know I'm not the only one as  I've read your experiences and previous posts concerning some of the horrific things you and your mom went through in terms of her horrible treatment.

Try to be well. I wish you the best.

 

[ADM925]

16 minutes ago, ESM said:

And on top of that was my mom's last day in the hospital when at around 12 p.m. she was in really bad shape and a team of doctors came down and said she was fighting off an infection They said they were going to send the Infectious Disease team down to see her with new antibiotics which they thought would help and we would know within 24 hours whether she was responding well to them or not. From that point at 12 p.m. to when she passed away that evening at 7:30 p.m. not a single doctor came down to see her. This supposed infectious disease team with her new medications never showed up.

This is an appalling gross negligence, they could have saved her life.  My mom had a 104 fever from pneumonia and a blood infection, they told me she was too weak to clear it.  But they gave a new antibiotic and she responded almost immediately.  I watched for 2 hours as the fever went down.  I guess we were lucky that they actually did what they were supposed to do.  Years ago a cousin's father (82 yo) was taken off life support after a botched surgery (the surgeon bisected his aorta); there was no Health Care Proxy so my cousin couldn't stop them. Later he told me 'they write you off at a certain age'.  He tried to sue but no lawyer would touch it because of his dad's age.  I had the HCP so they couldn't take my mom off the ventilator.  They told me "nobody lives forever". yeah no kidding, do you think that somehow makes it easier to lose the center and entirety of your life and world?   They harangued me for 38 days before they were finally rid of both of us.

Sorry for the rant but the prolonged separation is taking its toll like never before.  Sleep is a near-impossibility and the anguish accelerates as time goes on.  I wish the best for you and all of us as well.     

[ESM]

On 3/1/2022 at 4:47 AM, ADM925 said:

. Later he told me 'they write you off at a certain age'.  He tried to sue but no lawyer would touch it because of his dad's age. 

That really was the feeling I got. I remember approaching the nurse every hour or so asking where the doctors are and then fianlly at around 5:00 PM, she just matter of factly said to me "if they're not here by now they're probably not coming."

I actually did get a free consultation with two different malpractice attorneys, and I could tell that as soon as I mentioned my Mom was 86 and had cancer for the third time any interest they might of had in the case just instantly vanished. Neither agreed to take the case.

[Gabriel Klein]

I think my biggest regret was how I handled losing her. When she passed away I just hit the bottle and drowned myself in booze just like my dad did. Monkey see monkey do. And I know that she wouldn't have wanted that for me. But losing her just destroyed me for a very long time and now I feel like I can finally open up and talk about her and how losing her affected me.

[Paul Stiffler]

My biggest regret...   

 

Everything that I had said to my mom. It hurt her, but she still loved me.         link: https://sites.google.com/jefcoed.com/tia-marie-tyson-stiffler/home