John Holmes - living in Derby, UK. Having studied the pages for a few months now I thought it was time I put in our family's experiences of this awful and debilitating condition.
My father, living near Hereford in the west of England and 87 this October, has been fit and healthy for years. He was a farmer, never overweight and always at the peak of health. His only problem in his forties and fifties mainly was occasional bouts of asthma usually brought on by dust. These more or less stopped when he started using filter masks. As most do, he slowed down a bit as he hit his eighties and we began to notice some slight problems with short term memory and the steadiness of his walk. We put it down to his age.
Early in 2001 a small hernia which he had had for a long time started playing up and he was scheduled for surgery in June or July. However, everything flared up in April and the hernia became strangulated so he was rushed in for emergency surgery. The X rays showed a dark patch in his abdomen which they suspected was an AAA so they had to operate under local anaesthetic. All went well and he began his recovery but a scan showed that he had an 11 cm aneurism - normally they operate at 5.5.
Needless to say both he and my mother were really worried by this, and they were given the choice of fairly immediate surgery to attempt to remedy the situation, with a 25% chance of dying on the operating table), or the prospect of a fairly rapid decline culminating in a likely rupture. What a quandary! I talked with my two elder sisters and we all felt that surgery would be best. We couldn't imagine the effect of a sudden rupture and painful and messy death on my mother (83). Speedy paramedic attention would have been difficult as they live well out in the country. Mother agreed and we discussed the issues with my father who decided to go ahead with surgery.
Surgery was scheduled at Hereford County Hospital on 16th July 2001 by Mr Grocott, a surgeon of some repute. All went reasonably well initially, but it became apparent that he had been oxygen starved for a time during the op and had suffered some brain damage due to this. The main results were that he completely lost his short term memory, lost the power to string sentences together properly and became extremely physically disabled including being doubly incontinent.
To cut a long story short he spent the next seven months in Hereford and Ross hospitals, ate little apart from ice cream and custard for four months, lost three and a half stone in weight and became a shadow of his former self. Mum visited him every day except three while he was there and spent hours coaxing him to eat and drink and do exercises to help build up his strength. He, fairly naturally, became depressed and on more than one occasion said he'd be better off dead.
When he returned home in early January 2002 he could just about walk a few yards with a 'zimmer' frame, but needed three sessions a day of outside carer help as he is still incontinent and inclined to be very confused at times. My mother has to work very hard also in caring for him and she sleeps downstairs with him as he cannot be left on his own as he gets up, tries to walk about and is at risk of falling and hurting himself. She is very tired as he wakes a lot in the night, rips off his incontinence pads etc. and tries to get up. The pattern has continued more or less like that since. We had a great celebration of their diamond wedding in September which all enjoyed a lot.
Did we do the right thing? Dad's quality of life is pretty poor. Mum is finding things difficult but is determined to do her best. Updates later perhaps
If you have any suggestions I'd be happy to receive them
Update: 27 Apr 2003
My father died on 20th March following a fall and gradual deterioration. I think that he just gave up.