Anyone Awake??

[Smowball]

Went to visit a friend yesterday in a hospice and still really upset. She is older  than me but still young - she is 59. I only saw her a week ago, and the decline in just 7 days shocked me to my core. She was basically skeletal. I'm still struggling to cope with it. It was only a year ago that me, her and our two other friends were out on the town having a real fun night. Why is life so so cruel? (She is riddled with cancer). 

[ynnafymmi]

Yes,cancer can be a cruel illness Smow.However it is still survivable.A few friends i know have had cancer and are still living.Where there is life there is still hope.

[Smowball]

Morning hun, I know - but truly think she is past that. She isn't eating, barely drinking...... it was just horrific to see her like this.

[barry1010]

I don't know why life is so cruel, Smow.

Hopefully her pain is well managed and she is peaceful.  

 

 

[Smowball]

She was in terrible pain when I was with her yesterday - she had to call the nurse and request more liquid morphine (to be drank by syringe). I had to leave the room a couple of times on the excuse of needing the loo etc as I was so distressed. 

[david small]

I feel for you Smowball, and your poor friend. Life is a gift to each of us, and all too soon rescinded. It’s frightening to see ones family or friends reduced to such helpless and depleted condition. Cruelty and unfairness, tragedy and despair haunt us. Conversely we, and she have experienced happiness and laughter, love and Joyful mom.  Her time here is drawing to it’s inevitable close, her work is complete and she will move on. As will, in time you and I. Enjoying life, some do, some don’t, is all we can do. So as this theatre plays out, comfort your friend, and take heart, this is not the end, but yet another chapter in this strange, wonderful, brief, shadowy, unfathomable, journey we all take. Cruel, yes, very. But we have little choice, but to endure. God Bless.

 

[david small]

For mom read moments. Auto correct strikes again...

[10ClarionSt]

Cancer is a strange beast, in a way. As it is slowly killing its' host in most instances, it is also ensuring its' own demise. 

[Barsel]

Smow, I'm so sorry to hear about your friend, I have a rough idea how you feel as this happened to a neighbour of mine many years ago. We were very good friends as well as neighbours and I went to visit her when she went into the cancer hospital and like your friend she was coming to the end of her life and all she could say to me was, 'I want to die, I just want to die'. I was heartbroken but decided not to visit again not just because of how it made me feel but because I felt that seeing me just reminded her of how things used to be. Shortly afterwards, her husband told me she was only allowed very close relatives and then she died. Life throws up terrible things sometimes, but I just want to say that if you feel you cannot go to see her again, please don't feel guilty, as you know that when someone dies when we think of them, we often only see them as how they looked the last time we saw them. Thinking of you xx

[Gill1941]

It is an awful illness and there seems to be more of it nowadays.

I have a friend dying of pancreatic cancer. Probably just weeks to go and he is only 60.

My son has just been diagnosed with bowel cancer. Operation in a few weeks. Fortunately, it has not spread and they have caught it early but I am very upset.

He is all I have and he is only 60.

[Smowball]

Oh Gill, am sending you the biggest hug that I have. 60 is no age at all, and as you say hopefully that have caught it in the very very early stages. xx

[Gill1941]

Thanks, smow.

He is very positive about it. He has more faith in the NHS than I have.

[retrocop]

Two weeks ago I spent the weekend in the Clent Hills with my wife and two B.I.L.s.. We went to visit the spot where we scattered the youngest sibling, Alison's ashes, 40 years ago.She was a beautiful young lady who had just started her career as a B.A. Stewardess at the very young age of  24years. She died whilst I was holding her hand in a barrier nursing room at Charing Cross Hospital, Hammersmith. Leukaemia took her. Vinchristin failed her. Now she was too young to die. Our two young boys loved her to bits and also her new work colleagues. A wooden bench with a brass plaque on which her name was inscribed is outside the chapel in Heathrow airport to this day .It was paid for by B.A. staff.

RIP Ally

[Thisoldbird]

Horrid disease. For all the money collected over the years the scientists don't seem to get to the bottom of it. 

 

My son died from prostate cancer with bone mets 2020..age 64.

My husband 18 months today, full of the rotten disease..

I hope your friend is kept as free from pain as possible.  Remember the good times. X

[Smowball]

Thanku everyone xx

[jno]

Gill, the NHS is fine for treating cancer, it's the waiting lists for other ailments that are getting out of control. If your son's been detected early he's got as good a chance as anywhere in the world.

[Lie-in King]

Smow, I'm sorry to read about your friend.  I hope she's able to be made relatively comfortable & I send you both my very best wishes xx

[fraser]

sorry to hear this, that's why iam living life to the full and enjoying life, who knows how long we have left,iam 59 in to weeks time, i just go out and enjoy what i got and don't worry myself over anything.

[Patsy33]

Thinking of all those going through this awful disease, and those of you who have lost loved ones too. x

[ladybirder]

Retrocop, my 31 years old son died while I held his hand in Charing Cross Hospital, Hammersmith, in December 1994.  The staff were so kind.