Mum's 2 Weeks To Live That Nobody Knew About.

DorsetLad

Hello, I have only just come across this thread. I agree with what the other posters have said, but I have a few things to add which I hope will help the OP’s “Dad” come to terms with what has happened.

Heart failure is becoming more difficult to diagnose than in the past, when heart failure usually was the result of having a severe heart attack or a leaky heart valve. That form of heart failure usually showed an enlarged heart on an X-ray. Nowadays, more than 50% of people newly diagnosed with heart failure have a different form called “heart failure with preserved ejection fraction” (HFpEF), in which the heart is not enlarged but is stiffer and does not fill with blood properly between beats. The exact cause is unknown, but it is thought to be due to a complex interaction of a lot of factors that can include high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, obesity, diabetes, etc.. These days, if an older, overweight woman gets heart failure it is often the HFpEF sort, so I am going to assume that this is what your “Mum” had (though of course it could have been another sort of heart failure). If it was this type of heart failure, I doubt the GP could have diagnosed it, since mild-to-moderate HFpEF can only be diagnosed with advanced hospital tests. Even then, HFpEF is very difficult to diagnose and even learned societies like the American Heart Association and the European Society of Cardiology have not yet agreed about the best way to diagnose it. There is no clear, single test. As Pointless2 has said, being overweight and having seizures for decades are not symptoms of heart failure.

Your Mum would have had “end-stage” heart failure for only a short time, not for years. By this stage, patients are really ill (usually breathless even when resting) and it would have been obvious to everyone, including family and friends. Before that she would had had a milder heart failure that may not have shown any obvious symptoms (or had symptoms that could equally well have been due to other conditions she had).

As others have suggested, it is quite possible that your Mum was told she had heart failure but decided not to tell anyone else. In this situation, my own mother would definitely have kept this quiet from our family (“I didn’t want anyone to worry”). If my wife goes to the hospital for anything serious, I go with her to support her and make sure I know exactly what the doctors say. Did your Dad go with Mum to the hospital? If he didn’t, what reason did your Mum give for needing to go for all these hospital tests?

Your Dad “feels the GP ….. could have prevented his wife's untimely death”. Although some people can live with heart failure for many years, unfortunately HFpEF cannot be cured by drug treatment. In your Mum’s case (and again I am assuming she had HFpEF), no doctor could have prevented your mother’s death, I’m very sorry to say.

It is natural that your Dad feels that someone must be to blame, but from what you have said there is no evidence that anyone is at fault. Although it will be hard, and will take him a long time to come to terms with losing his wife, he should now try to focus on the good times they had together and to live his life in the way that his late wife would have wanted him to.

whitewing

It is also possible that your dad was told but could not cope with the enormity of what he was being told and blocked it out.

Maybe your dad is angry at your mum for leaving him, and can't cope with that feeling. It may do him good to meet with someone else who has lost the love of their life and hear how they began to come to terms with it.

Robin9

It's also possible that MIL herself knew but wanted to shield the rest of the family.

securityguy

Robin9 wrote: »

It's also possible that MIL herself knew but wanted to shield the rest of the family.

Twenty or more years ago, it was routine for spouses to either be told at the same time as the patient or even, in some cases, be given terminal diagnoses that the patient was not given. A friend of mine managed to cause a commotion while doing their house jobs when a patient arrived with an infection and he discussed their options in the context of the cancer they didn't know they had. These days, other than in extreme cases involving incapacity, patient autonomy is all: spouses are not able to demand that the diagnosis be withheld (which was usually for the benefit of the spouse, not the patient, anyway) nor if a patient decides not to tell people can that decision be overridden (absent things like invoked health and welfare powers of attorney, which aren't relevant in this case).