Look, you have my personal opinion based on experience.
My Dad lasted six days after surgery at Johns Hopkins. It was hard. I knew his surgery (to remove his throat from cancer) was hard...but we didn’t expect the disaster that happened. However, it was....well.....it happened...he’d coded several times because he finally went for good....
...I’m saying that was (personally) easier...
Than getting the call from my grandmother....(I had missed a couple calls still sleeping)...and then it occurred to me...I was getting THREE CALLS...wake up! And my grandmother said...”Your mom is dead. You need to go to ...(the name of the assisted living she was at)..” And I called them and said it was me and the said , “You need to come down here”.....and I said, “Is she gone?”
They said yes. They didn’t want to tell me, but I made them.
So I went down...and the nurses there were great at holding on to me as I went in her room...I told them I’d worked in the ER and I was ready...
....but....you know, when your mom is on the floor soiled and inelegant....with a purple face....it’s NOT something that you are easily going to put out of your mind......
I wish, that she had died in a hospital bed.
I wish I didn’t have to think that (the phone was on the floor) oh...did she try to call me? What was she thinking?
There’s more to the story....but at least...when my brother dumped her here peniless ten years after my dad died.....
I have her wedding ring. He called me and said he wants it.....he got EVERYTHING else.....
I spent my limited money on Mom...he spend Mom’s money on him....
....it’s hard. but still...
I WISH she had died in a hospital....because I have nightmares about how I last saw her.
Now...I know...she walked into God’s arms quickly and painlessly....but
it’s hard.
It was a little different for me. My mother was 88 and the pig valve she had been given 10 years earlier was failing. The surgery, neck to belly, ribs spread apart, was too severe for them to do it again. She begged me not to let her die in a hospital. I took her home and cared for her for 4 months. Then something must have given way because her pulse went up to 120 and stayed there. The visiting nurse said she could die that day or in three weeks. After the second week she slipped into a light coma, and two days later died quietly in bed.
With my husband near the end he was having trouble swallowing. I could no longer give his his vitamins and supplements, which I think had kept him mobile and active until just the last few months. One morning he was fuzzy and not interested in eating. He had wilted onto the floor three days before and we had put him back to bed. I called his out of state son to come asap. He arrived 2 days later. When my husband was not interested in food or very alert, we spoke with the doctors who had seen him 3 months earlier and had examined his advanced directives. They said feed him if he wants, don’t if he doesn’t, etc. He slipped into a coma and passed peacefully a few days later. Every situation is different, but more people could care for loved ones in the end if they had some help in knowing how to do it, and how to deal with their own feelings.