Personal message

Hi. My name is Rob and I lost Louise, my wife, best friend and soul mate of nearly 20 years to Cervical Cancer 3 months ago.

She was diagnosed around July 2022 and started radiation and chemo early 2023.

She was in remission around mid 2023 and started with symptoms again. After many visits to the hospital, it was said it was damage caused by the treatment and would clear. After it got much worse they eventually did a CT scan and found the cancer had returned and spread to her liver and kidneys. More tests were done and we knew it was not looking good, but they were going to try another set of chemo, but she was in too week a state and needed to try build her strength up.

On the 16th of November we went to the hospital for final tests and her blood count was extremely low. She had already collapsed twice that day. They ordered a blood transfusion immediately. Within less than an hour she had extreme pain and her organs started shutting down. They took her off the transfusion and moved her to a private room in a ward where I waited with her to die. She passed away at 4 oclock that afternoon.

Now to put this in perspective, we live on the west coast and the Groote Schuur hospital is 130km away from us. We were doing between 2 and 4 trips a month since her diagnosis. Due to the cancer, it also made traveling very uncomfortable for her.

We are not wealthy and everything we had went into funding all of this. She was unable to work and I was the sole bread winner with a relatively small salary. We had car troubles due to all the driving and many, many medical expenses through all of this. We did have some support from family and a few generous people that would assist with items such as nappies etc, but we struggled. 

The constant care she needed took a lot of my time and sleep and it was a very tough journey through the last few months especially.

I took a little time off work to arrange funeral and try grieve and returned early December.

I was finding it very hard to focus on my work and asked for a change in position, but there was nothing available and I kept trying my best.

My own health was deteriorating and I was having panic attacks and suffered 2 minor strokes through this period. After discussions with counsellors and family, I made the decision the leave as it was a very stressful environment and I could not focus on my work and the grief was consuming me.

I have been applying for work to do online, but have not had any good response yet, but have been applying for something less stressful.

My personal funds have run dry and I now need to start reverting to selling personal items to put food on the table and pay rent. We had no insurance policy for funeral or death and I am still having to pay off money borrowed to cover some of the expenses and I still have to make arrangements to pay off the hospital expenses.

If anyone is willing to help at all, I would be very grateful as the stress of everything I have been going through is eating me alive.

Thank you for your time in reading my story and understanding the struggle I am facing.

 

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