Agreed: Get legit hospice care.

Source: Have PTSD from caring for my dad during his last days.

He was 48 and after a year of aggressive chemo for liver cancer decided to opt for hospice care at home. I had just finished up all my college pre-requisites to apply to a registered nursing program. When talking with his case manager, hospice coordinators, and my parents about what to expect when it came down to actual end of life care, I explained my reservations regarding just how much providing care for him at the end would impact our family. My father had been a paramedic, and I had already had experience in patient care, but my mother doesn't have a compassionate bone in her body, and I knew she just couldn't wrap her mind around these implications. I was reassured that there would be hospice nurses that would assume care at the point it was needed.

Lies.

For months he did relatively well, and it really was a good experience having him home and comfortable. The end was a culmination of everything I had feared might happen. He went from being his normal self, to agitated one day, confused for another, and then comatose. It was explained that because he was so young and relatively healthy, it was taking longer for his body systems to stop. For a week we watched as he basically starved/dehydrated to death, and without any nurses from hospice because my family was "self-sufficient" and other patients their resources more. I will never recover from having to say goodbye to my father then assuming care of "my patient." Add a narcissistic mother with no knowledge of healthcare, and you've now just decimated a family.

No matter how much I tried to separate myself in the moment, or ask myself what-ifs and feel responsible, it's impossible to not feel that weight.

I never did go back and finish school. I went from someone whom couldn't be swayed when others told me how difficult nursing would be, to someone that has the leave the room if people start talking about cancer or liver failure. The sight of those pink mouth swab sponges is enough to give me a panic attack. The first time I listened to a normal heart rate with my stethoscope afterward, I cried, because I had become so accustomed to his tachycardia and I just couldn't process it. Almost every night, my father comes back to life in my sleep, but I have to tell him that he's really dead, despite coming home to us again.