Dad has been in hospice care for a couple of months - he had bladder cancer, for which he had surgery and got a urostomy. The cancer returned though. It’s in the same area, and it’s pressing on the nerves in the pelvis region somewhere - causing tremendous pain in the groin and the right leg.
It was deemed inoperable. Chemo therapy was ruled out, due to his poor functioning kidneys, and he elected not to have radiation therapy. The tumor is very close to the large intestine, and he was informed that radiation therapy was risky, and would only shrink the tumor a bit in the best of cases.
The pain grew worse as the cancer spread. He got a drug pump, delivering morphine round the clock. He would get pain attacks and then he would get extra shots from the pump. He would be asleep most of the time. When he was awake, he would be disoriented and sometimes delirious because of the amount of morphine he needed.
A week ago or so this didn’t work anymore. The doses got higher, the pain attacks got worse, he would scream and cry from the pain. He got up to 800 ml of morphine per day.
Finally someone thought of trying to give him epidural anesthesia, using the drug pump to keep him numbed. It worked beautifully!
Finally rid of the pain, he was awake a bit for a few days - talking to us, and he even ate a little.
But in the last few days he has taken a turn for the worse. He is unconscious. He has almost stopped producing urine, and what little comes out is mixed with feces.
My sister and brother and I are taking turns sitting with him now. No one can say for sure, of course, but it is probably a matter of at most a couple of days.
Dad’s 81 now, btw. He was perfectly healthy before the cancer, and his mind has been razor sharp all the way. He was extremely frustrated when the meds eventually impaired his speech and ability to find the right words.
Those are the dry facts - I don’t know - I feel so numb and tired right now. I just felt like writing something down about all this. Even if he is dying I have this sense of relief since they finally managed to find a way to tackle the pain. Those days before that - when he cried and screamed and shouted because the pain was so intense - it was horrible. Seeing dad in so much agony. Just horrible. Now I just hope that he will remain painless until the end.
I’m sorry if I’m rambling, and for the clumsy writing.