Drowning in Grief & Anxiety

Hi, Guys.

I’m just trying out a new place to vent.. I don’t really like to talk to people I know very much because, to be truthful, it feels like no one understands or even cares to. I have been through more than most people, even double my age, in my 24 years of life.

When I was 17 years old,  my sisters and I (we are triplets) lost our Mom to a Single-Person car accident in 2015. It was really icy that morning on her way to work. I actually sent one of my siblings to school that morning and went on a search for my Mom. Her ride to work was only 15 minutes away and we live in a small town. My boyfriend and I actually found her vehicle while the police were there and I was told my Mom didn’t survive… This was literally the start of it all.

What is really weird is that my Mom used to always tell us she knew she was going to die in a car accident. She actually told me a nightmare she had where my aunt and her were in a rollover and they had rolled into a lake where they would ultimately drown. I believe in this nightmare, my mom didn’t survive. Come 2015, when my mother had passed, she had actually rolled her vehicle on the edge of a nearby pond around a tight curve. She did not drown, but she was pronounced dead at the seen from blunt force trauma to the head and a broken sternum.

In 2016, I lost my Grandmother, her Mom, to old age and dementia. This hit me kind of hard being that it was my Mom’s Mom. I lost my Father’s Mom in 2009 from cardiac arrest. So she was my last living Grandma.

In 2017 I got pregnant with my 1st child and at 20 weeks my Son was diagnosed with Anencephaly, a birth defect where, essentially, he was missing half of his brain/skull. I carried my son to 35 weeks and he was born sleeping. I don’t talk about him much because it hurts so much to think about how he looked and how small he was. He was truly so beautiful, but it was also very traumatizing to me.

My Dad is my BEST FRIEND. He was there for me through everything, and my sister’s of course, but I was always a Daddy’s girl. We talked on the phone EVERY SINGLE DAY, probably 8-9 times at minimum. Our parents got divorced when we were 14 years old and lived with my Dad ever since. My sisters lived with my Mom in an apartment, and I convinced my Dad to move into the apartment right across the hall. Then our Mom died, and my Dad and his girlfriend got their own place after awhile of dating so my boyfriend and I had moved onto our own place as well. We had our Rainbow baby and My dad LOVED every minute of being his Grandpa. He truly brought a lot of happiness to a family who very much needed it.

Towards the end of March of 2020, My Dad, a relatively healthy man, got really sick. He worked on the road, and NEVER EVER missed work, so once he told me he missed 3 days of work, I knew he was definitely very sick. Some of the things he would say just didn’t make sense and you could tell he was delirious. I convinced him to let us drive the 3 hours away to pick him up from his hotel room and take him to the ER. Once we got there, he was in SO much pain he could hardly even walk, which was unlike him at all. It took him 20 minutes just to get down 3 flights of stairs in to the truck. This man could outwork ANY 25 year old EASY, at 60 years old.

I pick him up and one red flag was that he was complaining about being cold, which was odd because it was super hot out and he wanted the heat on, which I did and he was comfortable that way. I was literally MELTING. (This man could go outside in the middle of winter in his boxers, so most definitely something going on here)

I get him to the ER and they do a urine test and his urine was so red that it looked like fruit punch. THESE FUCKING DOCTORS WANTED TO SAY IT WAS A SERIOUS UTI. NO WAY. He also had a low grade fever and very serious back pain. They sent us home with a follow up sheet on using a heating pad.

2 days later, we go to a different emergency room as there are no improvements and come to find out, he has a SERIOUS bacterial infection, which led for him to be admitted to the hospital for 8 days. Here they found that the bacterial infection was in his spine and in his heart. Which obviously led to a little bit of chest pain as well.

They saw that there was infection in the Aorta, but just simply put him on 24 hours straight IV medication and sent him home for his 23 year old daughter to take care of. I was in charge of changing his IV bags and flushing his pic line. THEY LITERALLY TOLD ME NOT TO WORRY AT ALL AND THAT HE WILL BE FINE.

My Dad had a doctors appointment where he expressed a LOT to them that he was having a hard time catching his breath at all and his leg was swollen double in size. This doctor literally told my Dad to breathe into a paper bag. I didn’t even know his leg was swollen until later that night. They told him to WAIT and if his breathing got worse to go to the hospital, well it didn’t get better so my sister took him and he was admitted with Congestive Heart Failure.

Which again, they told me my Dad would be okay and they were going to actually move him out of the ICU soon. I went to see my Dad and he seemed like he was doing better. He was breathing a little better and even was sitting up and eating. I took him a phone charger and didn’t stay long, because I was gonna come back the next day and hang out, and left.

The next day, my dad was bagged 3 times. And they wanted to say they think he had sleep apnea problems. Which he didn’t enough to need a CPAP machine. My dad told me he died, and I told him he was okay. I told him he’s fine he’s here. I never went to go see him that day. My sister had gone and so did his girlfriend (who I absolutely hate with a burning passion, but that’s beside the point) So I didn’t think I would get there during visitor times, which now I absolutely regret.

He begged me to come see him all day and kept asking where I was, I just told him I’d be there tomorrow and that he needed his rest. They called me and told me his pulse was really low and they needed to put in a temporary pace maker until they could get him into a heart ultrasound the next day, or surgery whatever, and they said he needed to be put under for it. They said there would be a risk but I asked them If they think it was the best choice to save his life and they said yes. So I talked to my Dad, and he was really scared, and I told him that everything would be absolutely fine and that I would see him in the next couple days, since he would be in a medically induced coma. I told him I love him and he told me he loved me too.

They called me back 20 minutes later to tell me that my dad coded right after they administered the sedative and they were 10 minutes into the process of resuscitation. It took us 35 minutes to get to the hospital because we lived further away, and when I got there it had already been an hour of them trying to bring him back and I had to tell them to stop saving my Dad. There was a machine hooked up to his chest trying to start his heart, like a chest compressions machine… he was so cold and I remember just looking into his eyes and screaming DAD PLEASE COME BACK, PLEASE COME BACK DAD. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE…. I could hear the phlegm in his throat from the tube they had to put in… He had tears in his eyes.. but I knew he was already gone.

And just like that… we lost our Dad… and we became orphans at 23. I lost my Best Friend in the entire world. I was 23 weeks pregnant when I lost my Dad and now I have a 7 month old baby boy who looks just like him and his middle name is after his Papa.

Unfortunately, it’s not even the end of losses for me. On top of all of that, At the end of 2020 I lost my Grandfather.. He was 94. I was glad he wasn’t suffering anymore, but it was still tough being he was our LAST living grandparent at all. Now this year, 2021, We also lost our Uncle Phil to complications of emphysema and COPD.

In just a time span of 6 years, my life has changed so dramatically that I have absolutely no idea who I am as a person anymore. I am swimming in the deep end of nothing but grief. My chest physically hurts every day and I have so much anxiety that I can hardly function. I don’t know how to deal with all of this pain. I hurt so, so much and I don’t. know. what. to. do. How do I deal with this pain? I am so numb, I can hardly cry. When I talk about these experiences it literally feels like I’m making everything up and my life is just one giant crazy lifetime movie. I have been doing a lot of disassociating and bottling things up.

April 22nd this year will be the 1 year anniversary of my Dad’s death and I have been on edge all month. I deleted my Facebook because I don’t want to see any posts I made asking for advice on what to do about my Dad when he was sick.. how his doctors treated him, and even looking back at that month and beyond in general. I’m scared to face it and accept it. I don’t want to accept it. I can’t accept that he’s truly gone. What do I do? 🙁 I just miss him so much.

I’m in so much denial my brain is confused and I just want to feel like a normal person again. I’m sick of trying to act tough all the time and hide from it and keep it pushed deep down where I never ever talk about it. I feel like I’m going to explode. I just feel so traumatized. 🙁 Everything I do brings back awful memories of someone. Anytime someone talks about their parents, I just envision mine the last way I saw them. 🙁

I’m sorry, it just feels like I’ve been holding in so much and it’s nice to get my feelings out whether anyone reads this or not.