It’s been ten months since my last post, so I feel like there is a lot to try and explain but I don’t want to try to unburden this all at once. It’s too much. I was in a bad way October time last year. Drinking heavily and most days, not looking after myself and not really caring for much. In truth, I was very close to the end in December time. I got to the point in my mental state where I could not take it any longer.
This is why.
The twenty fifth of April 2023 will forever be etched into my memory. I will never be able to erase it. It started off quite simple as Tuesdays normally would. I was at work for 8 (ish) but subconsciously aware that something wasn’t right. My dad had been ill for the best part of four months and had been deteriorating rapidly in the days running up to the twenty fifth. At that stage we didn’t know what was about to happen. He started feeling ill around December time, we had attended a few scans, but nothing seemed too out of the ordinary. The doctors and specialists hadn’t shown any real sign they were too concerned, but yet something was happening. My dad had been diagnosed in 2019 with cancer of the lungs. At stage 4 the prognosis was very bleak, but he had battled so hard and his mental tenacity towards the whole thing was incredibly inspiring. He was determined not to let it get him straight away.
In the new year something began to go wrong with his throat, and he was struggling to swallow properly. There were multiple visits to hospital, endless tests but no real progress to get him back to normal. His decline was happening before our eyes, little did we know. We had originally thought something was lodged in his throat, and he was unable to swallow because of that. Sitting here now I know it was far more serious than that. Despite it being hard for him to eat and go about his usual routines he ploughed on and tried to do as much as possible. The new cricket season had started in April which of course was a huge priority, for us both. It still felt like he was always going to get better, and this was a small series of setbacks that we where working through. The Doctors still hadn’t communicate to us that anything was considerably wrong. Scans had revealed that part of his cancer had returned but not to the point where they were offering unwanted news. Maybe, they had spoken to Dad privately and he had not wanted to express the seriousness of the situation to us. I really don’t know, I never will.
Dad was brought down to Wansbeck hospital on that Tuesday morning around eleven. In the couple of weeks running up to this his condition had got worse. He was so thin. I don’t think I appreciated how slender he had got as I was seeing him regularly but the weight he had lost was staggering. I had seen him on the Sunday and on the Saturday as he had come to watch the first game of the season. A miserable wet and cold day at Alnmouth. Despite that, he still wanted to be there and watch the team play. Maybe to watch me as well. My aunty let us know on the route down to the hospital that he was being taken to palliative care. Immediately, hearing those words I became scared. You hear words like that and think right off this can only be bad. I rushed down to Ashington but got there before him, the ambulance was taking its time to get to him and transfer him to hospital. I had to wait in the café area, which was dreadful. I was on my own at this time, just waiting.
He was eventually moved onto the palliative care ward, and I could see him. The nurses were getting him comfortable when I got upstairs. Both my aunty and uncle were there with him, they had travelled in the ambulance not wanting to leave him on his own. We went to book some visiting times in with the nurses for the coming days as we were told this needed to be done. I thought this to be a little odd, I just wanted to see my dad not worry about the day after or day after that. The doctor who had initially seen him came back and spoke to my dad and us directly. It’s a moment I will never forget, something that I can still hear in my mind now. She said that over the last few months, all the issues he had been having with his throat had been his body beginning to shut down and that he was dying. I don’t think it really hit me at first because he was comfortable, and I knew he was in the right place to get the care he needed. It didn’t feel real, I still thought that he was going to be ok.
Suddenly, the realisation that what had been happening over the previous four months started to spread over me. Like a wave rising so quickly that we had no time to run from it. The doctor said that they would be running tests and that she would come back to see him in a couple of days with the results to provide a clearer diagnosis. It still felt like there was time, enough time for everyone to see him. My brothers were on their way, travelling from Leeds and London. Both would be there in the next few hours. It felt more calm for a moment, he was in the hospital and this was where things would start to turn around. My aunty and uncle both left planning on returning in the morning and I stayed with him. They way in which the Doctor had left things felt like he could potentially have days, weeks, longer. I hadn’t even begun to think about what was happening, I just knew I had to be there and not leave. I am unsure as to how long the next period of time lasted for, it is still very much a blur now.
The situation worsened very quickly. Dad seemed to be in more pain, so much pain. He had been suffering for weeks now without being in hospital so I felt relieved in a way that he could get some proper pain relief and at least be comfortable. I think he had masked how much pain he had been in partly to shield us from it but also to possibly not wish to come to terms with what was happening himself. I sat with him for what felt like hours, but I have no real concept of how long it was. The pain kept worsening and even the amount of pain relief they would give him didn’t help. Nurses are restricted as to how much they can administer to a patient. It wasn’t working and he was becoming more distressed. Nothing was working, they were trying to get him comfortable in his bed. When they would leave him, he would cry out for more, desperate for the slightest help. I remember looking into his eyes and it felt like he wasn’t there anymore. He almost looked past me or through me. He grabbed a hold of my arm saying could I go and get the nurse and that he needed more. I felt helpless, not knowing what to do. There wasn’t anything I could do other than sit with him and try to keep him calm. But nothing would work, he was just in so much pain. He was shouting all the time now, crying out in agony and I could do was sit there, useless and no help to him at all.
Every so often, he would drift back and realise it was me to ask where my brothers were. I think when he was regaining those moments of clarity, he knew he was slipping away. Watching him in that amount of pain will remain with me to the end of my life. I am struggling to write exactly how this all happened, how I feel and felt at the time. I’ve spent the last year blocking it out as much as I can only more recently have I made any attempt to understand what had occurred. I stepped outside the room briefly whilst the nurses and doctors tried again to make him more stable. As I walked back into the building, a nurse from the ward had come to find me and rush me back to his room. At this point my mum and stepdad had arrived. Both mum and I went back into the room and one of the nurses said he was dying. I felt like I already knew this having heard those words earlier but this seemed more like it was happening now.
I sat in the chair next to his bed. He was still alive with two nurses were leaning over him. After what seemed like hours, one turned to me to say he had gone. He was dead. My dad had died. I had watch him die in front of my eyes, not just in that moment but over the last few hours. I watched the life slowly drain out of him, momentarily replaced by something else between arriving at hospital and passing away. That wasn’t him in those last few hours and moments. I am extremely sad that my brothers did not get a chance to say a proper goodbye, but also relieved they didn’t have to see him in those last hours in so much pain and not knowing what was happening. When it happened, I felt a part of me died with him.
Some time passed, of which I have no recollection of and my brother travelling from Leeds had arrived. I knew I had to be the one to tell him. He pulled into the hospital car park, got out his car and asked me if I was ok. as soon as I said no, he knew. I could see the colour drain out of his face, the emotion wash over him. He was so important to us both, and to our older brother as well. The crater sized hole he was inevitably going to leave behind had began to open up. Our lives would never be the same again, and not for the better.
In the next few blogs, I will likely come back to what happened immediately after he died and try to convey how I felt in those early stages. This has been both heart breaking and liberating to write. I miss my dad every day. So much of life reminds me of him. Music, tv, sport, politics and day to day stuff. Our lives just aren’t the same without him.
Thanks for reading this if you have got this far. I don’t feel like sixteen hundred words is enough to really explain all of this but I had to give it a try.
Nick Denton
Sobering Thoughts
There are places I’ll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
Love you Nick 💜
As you say, writing this must have been so hard but I am so proud of you Nick ❤️ always here for you ❤️❤️