Guilt

I honestly thought that we would make it to the Cleveland Clinic. I did not think he was going to die until it was too late to do anything about it. How could I have not known? He had been in ICU for 45 days for his radiation therapy scarring to his lungs complicated by pneumonia then complicated by everything else. He had a tracheostomy because of the same scarring to his trachea was making it impossible for him to be taken off of the ventilator. He had a feeding tube because weight loss was going to make it so that he was not a candidate for the transplant. His children and I made the decision to save his life and treat the pneumonia. We decided on the vent, the trachea, the feeding tube. We thought he had a chance. Then he finally comes home from the hospital and two weeks later is dead.

The guilt that I feel is overwhelming. I wish I had brought him back to the hospital on the day that he died. Maybe we could have kept fighting. Maybe he would have been all right.

Or did we do too much. Just prolong his life for purely selfish reasons. Made his last three months of life totally miserable.

Plus his last two weeks at home where not as they should have been. I was tired, he was tired, we both were cranky.

I want a re-do. But I do not know what I would re-do. I just want this over with. But I am not even sure what that means.