monkeybutt

There is one key difference between Wikipedia and a traditional encyclopeda. Wikipedia entries don’t have to be brief. Fluffing an article up with nonsense may not pass such review as there actually is, but as long as you’re providing material information there really is nothing hindering anyone from adding more info, or making the language a little less harsh. Or rewriting the whole thing for that matter!

Yesterday we held Kris

It’s been two weeks precisely since Kris passed away, and almost one week since I returned to Sweden with her ashes.

Things are starting to come together fairly well here. The wheels have been set in motion with German, Swedish and American authorities, and so far it looks like the procedures will run parallell rather than one having to wait for another. The plans are starting to come together for a funeral service here in Kalmar also. It will be simple enough, but probably not quite as small as I had thought.

I’ve booked the small chappel where Kris was planning for us to renew our vows (I’m not quite sure if she really knew it is actually a funeral chappel…) for the 31st of January, and I’m starting to look at what I want the service to be like. One of my absolute favourite pictures of Kris is actually the one she has as her profile picture in the “faces” section, taken a few years ago during a visit to Glasgow, and I’ll try to have it enlarged enough to put next to the urn at the service, if it comes out clear enough. And I’m trying to pick a Jimmy Buffet song or two to play. (Before we moved in with eachother she dumped me about once a month, and one time she said good bye with a personal selection of Buffet songs where she had written little comments about what certain songs meant to her and why they reminded her of us. I think there is one or two in there that might do nicely.)

Still no papers from the US embassy so I don’t know if getting a travelling permit for her ashes will be difficult or not.

I’ve started going through her stuff bit by bit, and it’s more difficult and emotional than I had thought. A bit like an archaeological expedithion to our relationship. And I haven’t even started on any of the difficult stuff yet…

I was up at my office the other day and everyone was all hugs and tears which felt really good because I’ve allways shared so much of what was going on with Kris with my colleagues. Especially one whos mother passed away from CC a year ago – what are the odds of that? – we had a good cry together now.

The more I think about Kris and me the more it strikes me how short our time togehter was, but how intense it was! We moved in with eachother four and a half years ago, and although we had been dating for more than three years that’s when our life together really started. Four and a half years. But it feels like a whole lifetime.

I’ve never been a user of this forum myself as I felt it would be better for Kris to have an outlet for her emotions where I wouldn’t be looking over her shoulder, and she wouldn’t need to consider how I would feel about what she wrote. I got my own user name here so that I could post news when she was in hospital without seeming like the abusive spouse spying on her and figuring out her passwords… Looking through her posts now, I actually found a thread from three years ago where she discusses this, and her mixed emotions about wanting me to have your support, but also wanting to keep this forum private. I remember we talked about it also.

Anyway, I don’t think she would mind me reading her posts now, and I found something quite touching… Joyce posted in this thread that Kris would never rest in peace, because she would rock everyone’s world in heaven!

Well, years ago she wrote almost exactly the same thing herself (I think she skipped a “not”):

Perhaps God got bored…?

I should tell you something

Her decline was quite sudden. The las two days she got noticeably worse, but it all really happened in about 24 hours. The day before we were supposed to leave we had a last patient-doctor conference, and discussed the fact that she had had no bleeding in her stomach for three days, which the doctor thought might be a sign that the treatment had reduced the tumour activity, and that it might begin to shrink some during the next couple of weeks. Very hopeful news, and they were the last she got.

She was a little confused that day, and more tired than usual and halucinated (but the morphine had made her do that before). She needed help to get across the room to the bathroom, and wanted to go to the bathroom more than usual. (She had not eaten for three months.) She slept while I did the packing, but she was very much with it when we discussed the fact that we had been over charged for two units of trombozyte blood.

Then followed the not so pretty part. – In the night she again needed help getting to the bathroom, and got very, very confused. She forgot why she was in the bathroom, for a brief moment she didn’t recognise me and asked me “why are you trying to kill me”. She must have sensed at this point that something was very, very wrong. I rang for a nurse, and we tried to soothe her while they got an oxygen tube for her. She refused to leave the tiny bathroom, insisted that we go in the other direction, and when she couldn’t get out there said thet she was “going home to South Carolina, where there is only one wall”.

After we got her out it seemed to get a little better, perhaps the oxygen started working. We got her back into bed, but she kept wanting the bathroom so a potty chair was brought and me and the nurses (when they got there in time to help me, she would’t wait for them) helped her up and down, and stroked her while she sat on it. But she wasn’t quite so out of it anymore for she asked that people sould stop touching her, and tried to get rid of the nurses but kept wanting me there. What came out when she used the potty chair was just blood.

In the morning she had a moment of clarity, and when I asked if she wanted to go down for her last hyperthermia treatment she asked how long it was till we would leave the clinic, and when I told her she still had some four hours she said she wanted to rest. At this point I really thought the bad part was over.

I was still trying to get us ready to leave, dilusional – I was still hoping that she was just confused because of low oxygen – and there was one point when I was out of the room when she got up and fell, so that the doctor found her sitting on the floor. After that someone was with her constantly. She was sleeping most of the time, and was a little hard to contact, but she didn’t seem confused any more. She could only say a word or two, but we talked about if we would be able to leave that day as planned, and other things. But mostly she slept. She noticed though, when the doctor wanted to talk to me outside the room (when he finally told me it was the beginning of the end) and asked me about it. I lied to her as best I could…

After that she basically slept, her breathing very laboured. I left her with a nurse so I could call her parents and sister, and my mom, and then got back to sit with her, holding her hand as she slept. Perhaps an hour or so later she skipped a breath. She soon did it again and I when shook her she took only a few more. I had rung the bell, and the nurses and the doctor arrived just as she finally stopped breathing. There was no real drama, no machines or frantic resuscitation attempts. She just passed away.

In her confused moments she was sometimes very scared, and she talked about death. But that passed, and I don’t think she understood why she was in such a bad way. She died just as she had lived – with hope.

So we’ve arrived at “Fachklinik Dr Herzog”! It seems a bit strange, but we’re starting to find our way around it

The train ride and flight went well. Kris threw up three times on the train, but very discreetly, like the Southern Belle she is. Other than that it wwas tiering but uneventful, dispite bad weather.

The hospital is a strange mix of a country side hotel (not unlike Fawlty Towers) and hospital. All beige and terracotta colours and tacky decoration, and is as badly organized as Frankfurt Airport… Everyone is very helpfull, but no one gives you any information, and there is much confusion. The hospital seems to have been built in the 60s, but with so narrow passages and so many different levels, stairs, ramps etc that it must have been something else originally. The village is tiny, but private medicine is evidently its main industry, with three private hospitals and a number of smaller doctors offices.

But we’ve had blood drawn, had an ultra sound and some infusions, and the first local hyperthermia treatment – without any chemo until blood work is back (also some magnetic therapy, which we are less enthused about, as it seems complete mumbo jumbo). And we’ve seen Prof. Doktor Med. Herzog who turns out to be a tall, lean, serious but kindly man with silver hair worn long hippie style, who seemed rather amused that we had brought our own wheight in medicins (as we had been missinformed that we would be billed separately for medicine, which turns out not to be the case).

Kris is doing pretty well, but she is quite week and she was sick a lot today. We are worried about the amount of blood in the vomit and drain. If her blood values go down it could scuttle the chemo plans…

Hang in there Rick. I agree with Marion. Hope your visit with the oncologist shines some light on it.

Kris