We couldn't actually help.
It's been a long time since I've updated. D and Tadlet and I are rooming with S and L. (S & L are husband and wife. L has cancer. It started as breast cancer and metastasized to her spine. Now it's in her lungs. It's long past the stage where she's going to get better.)
L has been in the hospital for a week and a half, her lungs have been filling with fluid, and the amount of time it takes for them to fill again has been getting shorter. This isn't a surprise, it happens this way. The first time it happened, it only took two weeks before it happened again. Then another week. Then two days. (The two days happened last week.) And they kept giving her transfusions, she had low white blood cells, and they let her out today.
She slipped on the way into the house. S couldn't catch her because he was behind her and she fell forward, the walker wasn't any help. And she hit her head and shoulder on the retaining wall and S had to call the ambulance because she was in so much pain. She hadn't even made it into the house.
The ambulance got here /fast/, and the sounds she made as they maneuvered her back out of the house, in whatever way it happened, were horrible. I keep hearing them. She was in so much pain. (L has a spine and hip fracture that never got better because of the cancer.) D and I hid in the kitchen: we couldn't leave, we felt like we had to witness, but we couldn't help, either. We couldn't watch, either, we would have gotten in the way.
S had this look on his face of such anguish, like he felt like it was his fault. It wasn't. Even if he'd caught her, it would have hurt her. He followed her to the hospital. And D and I fled to our respective areas of the house.
I don't think she's going to make it out of the hospital again.
(I'm aware that there's an awful lot of "I" in this post. It's my perspective and I can't speak for them, just me.)
L has been in the hospital for a week and a half, her lungs have been filling with fluid, and the amount of time it takes for them to fill again has been getting shorter. This isn't a surprise, it happens this way. The first time it happened, it only took two weeks before it happened again. Then another week. Then two days. (The two days happened last week.) And they kept giving her transfusions, she had low white blood cells, and they let her out today.
She slipped on the way into the house. S couldn't catch her because he was behind her and she fell forward, the walker wasn't any help. And she hit her head and shoulder on the retaining wall and S had to call the ambulance because she was in so much pain. She hadn't even made it into the house.
The ambulance got here /fast/, and the sounds she made as they maneuvered her back out of the house, in whatever way it happened, were horrible. I keep hearing them. She was in so much pain. (L has a spine and hip fracture that never got better because of the cancer.) D and I hid in the kitchen: we couldn't leave, we felt like we had to witness, but we couldn't help, either. We couldn't watch, either, we would have gotten in the way.
S had this look on his face of such anguish, like he felt like it was his fault. It wasn't. Even if he'd caught her, it would have hurt her. He followed her to the hospital. And D and I fled to our respective areas of the house.
I don't think she's going to make it out of the hospital again.
(I'm aware that there's an awful lot of "I" in this post. It's my perspective and I can't speak for them, just me.)