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Two weeks since my last entry. It feels like an eternity.So much has happened…

I dicovered life in the emergency ward…nothing at all like the TV show. There is little excitement there. It is mostly anguish, worry, exhaustion and sorrow. If there were trauma cases I never saw them. I did see a drunk woman who had called the ambulance because she felt lonely, I saw a very old oriental woman whose family was waiting for her to die, I saw a woman who had slit her wrists…this troubled me to see someone who wanted to die waking up next to people who are struggling so hard to stay alive…I saw so many people pass through…never knowing their fate….too busy was I with our own drama…I met and watched dozens of nurses and related personnel…most of them kind and dedicated…

I got used to the harsh lights of the observation room, to the illusion of privacy provided by pull out curtains, to the stretchers in the hallways, to sleeping in a chair, to the portable X ray machine, I learned all about oxygen masks and oxygen saturation…IV drips, anitbiotics, anti coagulants, potassium and steroids, decongestants and pain killers…I figured out how to slip a straw through a breathing mask…how to clean out a urinal without splashing…

Then we moved to the ICU. Another floor, another world…Warm and clean and quiet compared to the emergency….large soft beds that you could move into every concievable position…with real sheets and blankets…large windows to let the sunshine in…the nurses were gentle attentive and calm. There were no loud noises…only the occasionnal alarm from one of the monitors, but it was reassuring to see how quickly the staff would go check…I was impressed by the fact that the staff listened and took every comment into account. They went out of their way to make their patients as comfortable as possible.

But even with the best of care the cancer won the battle…I had never witnessed a death before and was very apprehensive…I still cannot express what I felt, except sadness…sadness for my children loosing their father, sadness for all the things he did not have time to see or do…but I take some comfort in the fact that he died peacefully surrounded by his friends and family, and in the belief that he did not suffer physical pain.

We then had to go through the rituals which are said to be so helpful to the mourning process…I dreaded the wake and funenal more than death itself it seemed. But…we all got through it…some of it was very emotional, some of it was beautiful…we cried, we laughed, we consoled and were consoled…and now it is over…

We tried bringing back home some of the nice flower arrangements we recieved, but we forgot about the minus 25 degrees outside and all the flowers froze, so I now have a house filled with wilted flowers…it smells like a funeral parlour…At least the crustless sandwiches survived the cold…I will be eating them for weeks…while I will be adressing hundreds of thank you cards …

It is both scary and exciting to think of the road ahead, alone and free…