Trauma

Fueling the anger stage of grief

Today I ordered an urn for Andy’s ashes. I don’t know if any of you have ever searched for urns online before, but there are some atrocious choices. The boys and I settled on a simple wood box with his name engraved on it. We still don’t know what we’re going to do with the ashes so I figured I should get something to use in the meantime instead of the cardboard box I am supposed to pick up sometime next week.

Despite ordering an urn, I don’t think this has sunk in yet. I’ve only cried once. (Okay, now that I’m proofreading - I’ve cried twice - because I cried a lot writing this.) I can’t seem to access my grief but I assume it will hit hard at some point.

I realized yesterday that I am suffering from trauma, and so are the boys – trauma from the shock of his diagnosis of metastatic cancer on November 3; trauma from the premature discharge from the hospital on November 13, after the oncologist cancelled the appointment for that day and when we learned it was because she could not see him unless he was outpatient; trauma from struggling to keep him at home for 3 nights as he increasingly deteriorated, and despite being barely able to stand on his own, managed to fall out of the bed every single night; trauma from seeing him brought out of the house to an ambulance once he deteriorated so much we couldn’t care for him at home; trauma because we knew he needed to be back in the hospital but we could not get any answers about his possible treatment or prognosis until we met with the oncologist who would only see him as an outpatient; trauma from struggling to get him into bed at a hotel last Sunday night and struggling to get him out of bed and into a wheelchair the next morning for the all-important oncologist appointment; trauma from finally seeing the oncologist only to be told he was too weak to withstand treatment and had shorts weeks to days left, (though at the time of the appointment the oncologist cancelled, Andy was able to talk clearly and stand and use a walker); and finally, the trauma of his sudden death.

The cruelty of the hospital system has made this enormous loss even worse. I am furious over how he was treated.

To be fair he did see an oncologist during the first week he was in the hospital - a breast cancer oncologist. I wasn’t there but Jillinda recorded the conversation which I listened to again, and that oncologist answered any questions about treatment options by saying that Andy could discuss that with the lead oncologist at his appointment on November 13.

I pushed multiple doctors to give me a prognosis, all making guesses but saying that the oncologist was the one to talk to, but all indicating that while there may be treatment to prolong life, he was not long for this world.

A doctor friend of Andy’s told him the cancer was treatable, and he clung to that and told everyone it was “beatable and treatable.”

We were never able to acknowledge that he might die and talk about what he would wanted, aside from what was in his medical directive. I keep wondering that if we had known his prognosis, we could have talked more about his other wishes, and shared anything he wanted us to know - especially anything he wanted to tell Jackson and Charlie.

Maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to acknowledge that he was dying, but we will never know. By the time he got to hospice he wasn’t talking much. The last good conversation he had was with Tom Kenny on Tuesday. I wasn’t in the room at the time, but our friend Jake was there and told me that Andy perked up and had a mostly normal conversation.

He barely spoke again after that. The hospice workers kept telling us that hearing is the last sense to go, and I hope that is true and not just something people say to soothe those of us left behind. I hope he heard us and knew we were with him at the end.