How long did your loved one have at this stage? End stage lung cancer.
***Edit*** turns out it was 7 hours.
My dad has terminal lung cancer and I’m trying to understand where we realistically are in the timeline from people who’ve been through this. I know nobody can give exact answers, but things have changed so quickly and I feel completely lost.
He was diagnosed terminal last July. Up until last month he was still managing reasonably well considering everything. Then he was admitted to hospital with an infection. He spent 3 weeks in hospital and since coming home he hasn’t gotten back out of bed. His decline since then has been frighteningly fast.
The cancer has spread to his kidneys and peritoneum, and he’s now in severe pain most of the time.
Today I had to help my Mum get him off the commode and put him into an adult nappy because he was too weak and in too much pain to manage himself. He’s always been such a proud man and seeing him like this is killing me.
It’s been over two weeks since he ate anything. The last thing he had was a few spoons of soup. He mostly just sleeps now and is barely lucid at all. When he does talk he’s often confused, talking about things from years ago or things that don’t make sense. Some days he refuses medication completely.
He’s incredibly weak, sleeping most of the day and night, he did have one night a few days ago where he was extremely agitated.
And this is the part I feel awful even admitting, I wish he would stop fighting, he’s in so much pain. Watching him suffer like this feels cruel. I’m terrified that this version of him will become my strongest memory, this frail, confused man in a hospital bed, instead of the person he really was. He was always my hero, the person who protected everyone else, and seeing him reduced to this is breaking me.
I know nobody here can tell me exactly how long we have left, but for those who’ve experienced this stage with lung cancer or hospice care was it days, weeks? Did things suddenly speed up like this near the end?
I think I’m just trying to prepare myself as much as possible for what’s coming.
Thank you for reading.