Did I suffer?

 When someone dies, usually the question that comes up or discussed is "did they suffer". Everyone wants to know I won't suffer...but the truth is that I suffered a lot.

For many months, I was told death from kidney disease is painless. It is somewhat true, relatively speaking. It's not the kind of suffering you get with burn victims or some cancers. But there was definitely plenty of suffering.

I'll list the symptoms at the end, for anyone who wants specifics, but the bottom line is that the final month of my life, October 2022, was exceptionally miserable, and by November 1st I felt I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted to give my partners time to digest this decision, so I set the death to Nov 9th. This also gave me time to throw one more cuddle party. However, I regretted that decision that very night, due to the harshness of my symptoms, and decided to move it up to right after the party (nov 6). Making all these decisions were the hardest thing I ever made, because I knew that it would hurt my partners a great deal, and not just one but NINE people. On the other hand, those same nine people were also stuck watching me suffer all these weeks, so it was a blessing for them too. Just a few days ago, as I was experiencing a particularly bad episode of neuropathic pain, it was soul-crushing, thinking I’m going to need to suffer through another week of this, but then I decided to move it up, and that gave me a lot of comfort, knowing I only have 4 days of this left. As I write this, it has been 2 days since I made the change, and those two days feel like two years. Time is passing soooo slowly with so much pain. I can’t wait for it to be over.

As for my symptoms, for those who like to be technical and specific: I’m having debilitating pain known as “neuropathic pain”, which feels like pricks and needles on my skin, around my wrists, ankles, hands and feet. It tingles and burns and feels like these body parts are run-over by a car. Makes me want to peel off my own flesh. These episodes last about 15-20 minutes, and I have them about every hour, day and night. I get frequent waves of cold and hot, during which I need to frequently change cloths, blankets and move-around to escape the heat. My heart rate and blood pressure spike up and down, which can feel like I’m running at full-speed or like I’m so tired I can barely stand-up. I am dizzy all the time and often get into bouts of dry-heaving that last 10-15 minutes and cause my heart to feel like it’s going to explode. Even when all symptoms alleviate, I’m still weak and tried to do much more than stay awake. I can’t stand for more than 2-3 minutes before my entire body starts to hurt and I can’t even take a proper shower (last time I tried, I couldn’t finish it and just fell into bed, soaking wet). And even when I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open, I can’t sleep because of the chest pains, which are frequent, or because of the neuropathic pain, which is like clock-work. I haven’t slept properly in weeks. And to top it all off, my brain is “farting” – I forget words, answer questions in Hebrew unintentionally and I’m worried I might become too uncompromised by this to actually go-through with the euthanasia.