Furiously Angry

I feel angry. Furiously angry. Like it's welling up in my gut and has no place to go. There words feel too tame. I feel sick with anger. Overcome with anger. Like I want to punch and kick and scream, with anger.

I haven't felt the anger in a long time. It has come in bits and spurts.

At first, I was so angry. So overwhelmingly angry at all the doctors and nurses who left us in the lurch. They didn't prepare us for G's death. We could've done so much more to help him. Could've made him so much more comfortable. It felt cruel and wrong and cold. It felt like we'd been tossed aside by the very people we had entrusted his life to. Did they not care? Did they stop seeing us as people? Him as a father? Was it a punishment for gaining weight? For struggling with depression? Was he a lost cause in their eyes?

But anger hasn't been around in a while. Oh there was so much of it to begin with. That wretched cardiomems. His stupid medications and all their side-effects. My impotence at keeping him alive. His refusal to be a perfect, compliant patient. His coordinator. Always his coordinator and her emails to make me hush up and wait.

Today a bill came in the mail. It was only for around $40. But the date of service is what made me so angry. It stirred up memories that I have not thought of in so long. Memories I'm not even sure I fully have accessed or even want to.

He was in the hospital. He'd gone in on the 28th of July. Summoned in because he wasn't doing well. I wish I could remember if he was taken to the ER. I can't recall. He was in long enough that his brother came to be with P (outside, socially distanced) so that I could go visit G during visitor hours.

On the 4th of August he had a cauterization - but the kind he had to be awake for. He had to exercise during it. Lying on his back, tied down, peddling a bike. He couldn't breathe. He was never able to breathe lying down. He was beyond panicked. In pain. Terrified. It was cruel. And the cruelty was in the doctors being cold towards him, not caring. Them not believing he couldn't breathe. Them not seeing him as a person. And them not being able to understand what they were seeing in any way that would help him.

Maybe they never could've. I do understand that his days were numbered by God. But when I think of all the doctors who contributed. Who should've bene able to help or at least to tell us that they couldn't - I feel so angry. He shouldn't have had to endure that. No one should.