Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<RT, I'm so sorry to read your brother isn't doing well. I had hoped he would get through this when you first told us. If this is the path he must travel, I pray his final days will be comfortable. {{{RT}}}>> Thank you so much. It has been a very strange... almost surreal journey. My brother was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on December 22nd. Since that time he underwent surgery which the surgeon initially felt was successful until finding that biopsies showed cancer had spread to his kidneys and liver. At that point they thought he probably had 2-4 months left. Shortly after that CT Scans showed that the cancer was spreading much more rapidly than they thought it would, and revised their estimates to 2-4 weeks. So we have gone from having no idea anything was wrong with my brother to knowing his death is imminent in about a six week time frame. For a while the reality of that really hadn’t sunk in. When I saw him he looked very sick, but not necessarily like he was dieing. This past weekend he clearly looked like he was dieing. He looked very jaundiced (yellowed skin etc.) from the cancer in his liver. His skin has started to just hang from his bones. He has not eaten in several weeks. The hospice people explained to us how the body shuts down prior to death and complete loss of appetite is 100% normal and to be expected. His wife says he appears to have one foot on earth and one foot in heaven. This seems very strange to me because he never seemed to me an extremely religious person before. I don't know if imminent death makes everyone a believer or if as you approach death certain things are revealed concerning the next life. I do know that he has spoken very positively about looking forward to meeting various people who have preceded him in death. He seems to have no doubt that he will not be alone, but will be with many he loves who have gone before him. I don't really know where that comes from. As I said, he was never extremely religious before. Although I've thought an afterlife may exist, I've never thought that it would be anything humans could comprehend and that the idea of meeting up with those who preceded you in death was pretty much a fairy tale. Now I'm not so sure. I had a rather unnerving experience the night I stayed at his home to take care of him so his wife could get some rest. I was snoozing away deep in a dream when all of a sudden, within the dream, I felt a strong tingle throughout my body (back in the 70’s we would have called it a “body rushâ€). My brother was holding on to me and asking me to help him. This woke me up and I went in to his bedroom. He just kind of looked at me and said “Good… I didn’t know if you’d feel me callingâ€. Not HEAR me calling... FEEL me calling. He wanted additional morphine; it had been about 6 hours since his last dose and usually he received it once every four hours. I asked him how he had been sleeping and he said well… almost too well. I asked what he meant and he said that he felt very close to passing, and that he didn’t want people to think that he had intentionally OD’ed on morphine so he had resisted asking for his normal dose. He also wanted me to assure him that the morphine was not in his room where he could get at it (which it was not – it was stored in the kitchen). Again, he wanted to be sure that no one would think he had done anything to hasten his own death. As we wrapped up our very short conversation (he really isn’t capable of more than a couple of minutes here and there) he said something that really left me speechless. He said that he was sorry that I’d had to stay over and take care of him. That he knew that my wife and daughter had planned to go shopping with me today and now they couldn’t. That was true, but I had never mentioned ONE THING about it to either him or his wife. I assured him that there was nothing I wanted to do more than help him, and that any shopping trips could come later. I have to tell you though. Things that happened that evening have made me re-assess what an afterlife may be like. My brother seemed to possess knowledge, even in his extremely ill state, of things that he really should have no way of knowing. It really did seem, as his wife said, that he seemed to have one foot on earth and one foot in heaven.
Originally Posted By Liberty Belle I agree, RT - thanks for sharing your story. I'm sorry to hear your brother is unwell, but it sounds as if his outlook is pretty positive.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip << agree, RT - thanks for sharing your story. I'm sorry to hear your brother is unwell, but it sounds as if his outlook is pretty positive.>> Yes, it is. I'm very proud of him. He is facing the ultimate adversity with dignity and class. I'm not sure I would have ever thought it was in him, but his capacity to deal with what is happening to him has amazed us all. There is a huge strength there that was probably always there, but none of us had recognized. I hope that when my time comes, I have enough strength to be like him.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom Hello everyone. Just wanted people to know that I found my way to this topic. I think its a great thread.
