My father-in-law doesn't want to live anymore

[itstoohard]

My father in law was diagnosed with Stage 4 inoperable Pancreatic Cancer in January.  He has been on an extremely aggresive protocol of chemo since February, and though some progress has been made, the side effects have left him in very bad shape.  His body is filling with fluid that needs to be drained regularly, he can't hold food down, and his muscle mass has deterioriated (due to be weakened and in bed for the last few weeks) to the point where we've been told his chances of getting out of bed are slim.  He just spent about 2 weeks in the hospital, receiving IV fluids and other treatments for the side effects of the chemo.  He was just moved to a rehabilitation center to try to regain some strength, but he is so weak and depressed that he does not want to go on.  He asked for his wife, my husband, and his siblings to visit him last night, and told them he was done, did not want to live anymore, and asked that they help him to euthanize himself.  Everyone told him no, absolutely not...

The past few months have been a roller coaster ride, but these recent weeks have been totally insane.  I feel completely powerless and wish there was more I could do to help my husband and his family.  My mother in law in particular has endured so much turmoil and pain as this has gone on.  I'm terrified at the prospect that we are very likely coming to the end of this horrible battle.  I know my father in law is in a great deal of pain and very depressed, but it is difficult to just let him go, knowing that everything that is going wrong with him right now can be overcome.  He does not eat, barely tries to even, and if he were able to it would make a world of difference.  At this point the rehab facility wants to send him home, but that is not an option because even under home care he could potentially have access to medications and is likely to purposely OD.  He can't go to hospice because as far as the doctors are concerned he is not dying.  His only choice is to start eating, allow his meds to be administered, and work as hard as he can to improve his condition.  But how do you tell someone who is suffering so much and has lost so much of their dignity that their life is worth fighting for?

 

 

[karolynca]

I am so sorry you are going thru this, I know the powerless feeling very well.  I wish there were things I could say that could help you out but each patient battles his final days in a different way.

Give your family in law all the emotional support they need.  Listen to them, be with them and give them a call, showing them that you care is really important in this stage.

Karolyn

[itstoohard]

Karolyn - thank you very much for your kind words.  This may seem unbelievable, but my father-in-law passed away within the hour on the night you posted this.  I have not checked this board in a while, and I was amazed to see that you were thinking of me and my family at our greatest moment of need for emotional support.

His condition was much worse than anyone knew or wanted to believe - I think only he himself knew how little time he had and how difficult the coming days would be, hence his request to be "put out of his misery."  What seemed like an off the wall request from a very depressed man makes more sense to everyone, given the short time he had to live.  His last few days were trying ones, but the final moments seemed peaceful, and although he is greatly missed by everyone who knew him, it is somewhat of a relief to know that he (along with his family) are no longer suffering through the physical and emotional pain of his illness.

Thank you again for your kind reply...

ETA: In the days following his passing, I was able to spend a lot of time with my mother-in-law, taking her shopping for mourning clothes, helping her run errands, cooking for her, and I will say that helping her helped me tremendously, both in my grief but also with the feel of powerlessness...I finally felt like there was something I could do to help, and the impact it had on my own healing was huge.

[karolynca]

I am so sorry to hear about your FIL's passing, I guess somehow the person that is sick actually knows more than us when their time is arriving, in my case it happened the same with my father.

I hope and pray for comfort to all of you, you are doing something very good by helping out in the way you can, sometimes those small things you may think are not important lift such a great burden from the shoulders of the people grieving and will give you an amazing sense of  helping.

Sending many hugs

Karolyn

[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