I'm new on here, just joined today. I'm hoping that talking and listening to others who's lives have also been shattered will help me cope. My wife Karen passed away on the 18th of this month. She was 53 years old and we were married for twenty years. It was completely unexpected. She experienced chest pain and shortness of breath for a couple of months prior to this, went to the hospital for several tests before they determined that she needed a bypass surgery. These have become so routine that neither of us were particularly worried. She was actually happy about it because they had finally figured out what was wrong with her, and could fix it. Then, everything went wrong. I never got to speak to her, kiss her or tell her goodbye. She ended up on an Ekmo pump, ventilator-the whole works. After two weeks with many ups and downs and complications, I had them take her off life support. My three daughters agreed with this decision which made it easier to live with. She died within minutes. I suspect that they overdosed her on morphine, which I'm grateful for. Since then, my world has been upside down. I have almost no interest in eating, can hardly sleep more than a couple hours at a time and I've been smoking way to much. All our kids are grown and on there own now. I talk to all three and some of my grandkids every day. Two of these are actually my stepdaughters but we thought of all three as "ours". She and I were usually the only ones here at home, now it's just me. The pain isn't constant. It seems to come and go. At times I feel like I can't get away from it, because it's true, I can't. I also don't want to accept that the rest of my life will now be far less fulfilling than I want it to be. That doesn't really matter though, whether I accept it or not, it's real and there's no changing it. I hope that someday, this awful feeling fades. I know it won't ever go away though.
