Man, you need to tell someone, shit is obviously eating you up.
I would, but my friends have turned into massive cunts and my family doesn't give a shit.
You want to hear the story, sure. The lolz start here, I suppose.
As some of you who participated in Steam chat a while back may recall, I've been living in with my Aunt (Robyn) and 87 year old Grandmother for a number of years now, caring for them. Only in the past 2 years did I become their legal carer.
Robyn suffered from Bronchiectasis (among other things) for many years, which if you haven't heard of Bronchiectasis, most haven't, picture Emphysema as it's harmless little sister. Recently, she had less than 20% lung capacity and had to fight for every breath. Each day I would wheel her out of her bedroom after she awoke as she didn't have the energy to walk and then bring out her BiPAP machine and face mask to help her breathe. She'd be on that machine for about 18 hours a day and regular nasal prongs for the remaining 6 to try and keep her CO2 levels down.
She'd often need to have her bags packed for a trip to the hospital as lung infections levels rose frequently. The main one she had was Pseudomonas, which for most people is not something to worry about as we can easily fight it off. It's different for her and the fact that it builds resistances to many antibiotics rather quickly makes it a losing battle in the long run.
Eventually she became too much for me to care for and had to be placed into a nursing home. Once there, she spent more time in the hospital than ever before; mostly I think is because she hated the nursing home and the staff at the hospital knew her well, and they became friends over the years.
I received a phone call at 1am and it was the hospital. Robyn was asking for our (myself and my Gran's) presense, we were told that she was worried that when she went to sleep that night, she wouldn't wake up. We rushed to Westmead and went to see her in the ward. There she was, bloodshot eyes from the Warfarin, leg wrapped up due to a fall she had when struggling to stand one morning and needing a skin graft from the damage she took on top of the broken bone. She was struggling to breathe, even with her BiPAP face mask on, which isn't the norm.
She had her hearing aid in, though still struggled to hear us (she had lost most of her hearing to side effects of medications she needed) and could barely turn her head to look at either of us.
Her brother (Brian) had been contacted and was travelling from Nowra, and it would be some time before he arrived. She said "no morphine until Brian gets here". We were told by her nurse that the morphine would make her breathing less laboured, but also make her drowsy. Alarm bells went off when she kept repeating this phrase. It seemed she had discussions with her specialist and was under the impression that she could use the morphine to leave whenever she wished. She didn't want this to happen before her Brother arrived.
Brian didn't arrive until about 4am. She said what she wanted to say to him and called out for the morphine. The doctor on said that this could not happen. He administered a dose of morphone to ease her breathing troubles, but no more. He said to get what she wanted, she'd have to wait until the specialist team returned at 9am to see her. I stayed with her until 7am, at which point I could barely stand anymore, so I went home (just down the road) to sleep. Brian would call me when the specialist team came.
It seemed like I had barely put my head on the pillow when the phone call came at just after 9am. We were told to get there quickly.
We discovered that no morphine was to be administered, this of course something that Westmead hospital doesn't do for obvious reasons. Instead, they had an injection they were to give her that would eliminate any distress associated with struggling for breath. This was to come shortly before removing her CPAP face mask and replacing them with nasal prongs.
After they did this, Robyn seemed much more at ease but was still frustrated that she didn't get the morphine she was promised. For a time afterwards, she would exclaim "Can I go now?" or "Let me go!" which was hard to hear. My Aunt who had fought so hard for so long had eventually thrown in the towel.
She said she wanted "PSK"; none of us knew what this meant. We asked Robyn, she didn't elaborate so we asked the nurses and they were puzzled also. We gave her a glass of water and that seemed to do the trick, then she said "I'll have some "K" now", more water was given to her and she was satisfied. After years of seeing the results of what oxygen deprivation does to someone through her, it was easy to see where this was heading and it was going there fast. Nurses said that this process may take a day or two, but I had my doubts.
Soon after, she fell asleep or lost conciousness, I don't know which. Not long after that, you could see her head tilting back with each breath as she struggled. This continued for some minutes until someone said that her lips were becoming discoloured, approaching black. That's when I saw her take her last breath at 1pm that afternoon.
My Aunt was like a mother to me. She was always there for me when no one else was. She took me under her wing and protected me when I was a child receiving multiple furious beatings from my mother, her sister. Many of those days I would wear a full tracksuit to school in the middle of summer to hide the welts and bruises. She helped me through that.
She took me in when I was kicked out of home after my Mother wanted to segregate us from the rest of the family. This felt like a death sentence for me and so I rebelled, hence I was kicked out of home. She helped pay for my schooling, clothing and entertainment. None of this was cheap as I was in Year 9 at this point (15 years old). These, among with the many things a parent does for their children, that are numerous.
I am eternally grateful for all that she had done for me, and to see her suffer so terribly for years as a result is very hard.
To turn things around to how it has affected me, it's been hard looking after someone who needs so much care also. There is not much time for yourself and no one is willing to step in and help out, leaving you all alone. Just visiting a friend, going to the footy or doing anything for yourself that most people would consider normal and a part of life is a battle in itself.
Copping it from family members makes it even harder. When you hear "you need to get out and do some things for yourself and unwind" and "you can't leave the house, they depend on you" in the same sentence, the frustrations continue. To compound the issue, any attempts to get help in around the house to give me a breather have been rejected, with distressing my Gran as the reason. It doesn't matter that HomeCare had been coming for years to bathe my Aunt, people who my Gran has never taken issue with.
If I attempt to get assistance anyway, Brian has enduring power of attourney and has vowed to have me removed from the premises. Unfortunately I'm not in a financial situation to survive such a thing.
With my Aunt now gone, I am now alone with my Gran, trying hard to make sure she's okay. It's hard for her too, she's lost a daughter. The hard part is she didn't see it coming as she is suffering from a cognitive disorder that the family won't allow me to have diagnosed. The subtle hints and obvious overtures to the end result at the hospital that I and anyone else there understood, went right over her head. Everyone saw it coming for many, many hours, but my Gran's still getting over the shock of the surprise that happened to her, let alone dealing with the event itself.
I'm now in a toss up in whether to stay and look after my Gran or return to work. There's a 3 year gap on my resume at the moment, 1 year for a Jury Duty service and 2 years after that for being a carer. No employer is looking at my resume favourably as I haven't been working. It's hard to have the motivation to keep going when I'm qualified for something, but don't get a chance because of the last 3 years. Employment agencies have been of no help in the past.
If I stay on as a carer, the problem only gets worse for my bank account, superannuation and late chance at a career. If I do go back to work and anything happens to my Gran, my terrible family will blame it on me for being irresponsible and I'll never hear the end of it.
That's kinda why I may be quick to react or misinterpret something. I've just lost a very dear family member and I'm between a rock and a hard place at the moment and I'm very stressed. I'm sure it's all very funny.