What was the toughest thing you have ever had to do?

Question

Was it telling somebody something or maybe something physical like Seal Team training? How did you cope?

Answer 1

I think the toughest thing I have had to do was go to my husband's funeral.

Answer 2

making the decision to "pull the plug".

These days with all the equipment that will breathe for you, filter your kidneys for you, tube feed you, even artificial hearts, they seem to be able to keep corpses alive. People who die are often revived just enough to lay on a machine oblivious to the world around them. Enough brain damage and the person becomes a vegetable. Sometimes the doctors do brain scans to see if the person is brain dead. Then, sometimes, the doctors come and tell the family that they should think about pulling the plugs on all the machines and just letting the person go in peace.

This is a very very very hard decision for families to make. I only had to endure this experience once and it was pretty gut wrenching. You wonder, what if he got better? Did I do the right thing? Did I prolong his suffering? Should I have done it sooner? Should I have done it at all? Everytime I hear of someone coming out of a coma after a long time, I wonder, did I do the right thing?

It is really REALLY hard to be put in a place where you have to make a decision like that.

Answer 3

Tell my mom that i was pregnant and realize that I am gonna be a young mother to a boy! realize that my whole life is changed. My body is not gonna be a size 1 anymore. Everything changes when you have a baby. I live with my bf, but telling my mom was still hard...I don't even know why! she didn't really seem to care! I guess the tough thing is just taking it all in. I'm a parent at 18..he's due exactly 1 week after I turn 19, but I consider being a mom now. I have to wake up every 2 hours. I have to change diapers, my body is changing so much. Everything! lol

Answer 4

I had to tell my father that he only had a couple of weeks to live.

He was healthy all his life, then started feeling poorly, but the dr kept telling him he was fine. Then he started coughing up blood so we took him to the hospital, where they diagnosed him incorrectly and started doing surgeries according to their diagnosis. They diagnosed him with lung cancer when he actually had colon cancer.

Because of all the surgeries, he was really out of it on pain meds and didn't know what was going on. The last thing his chicken doctor said to him was that they were going to implant a device to make it easier for him to get chemo (which would have been for the lung cancer, that kind of chemo doesnt work for colon cancer) and that he would be fine in no time.

After hanging around his bedside in ICU for about a week, my mother and sister went home for a while, leaving me with him. That is when he finally awakened totally lucid. He wanted to know what was going on. He had tried asking his dr a couple of times, but the dr would not answer him and dad kept fading back out. But now he was awake and demanding an answer.

I had to tell him it was late stage 4 colon cancer and that they had already given him a colonoscopy and numerous other surgeries and that they gave him a week or two.

He became very agitated and started going on about lingering. The really sad part was when he asked me to call the family together so he could tell them his final words, By the time I got everyone gathered, he was fading in and out on the pain meds again, and tried so hard to find lasting words of advice for everyone, but he just couldn't do it. He looked so frustrated and sad and confused.

That was 10 years ago last month, and I still bawl like a baby when I think about it.

Answer 5

The hardest thing I ever did was quit a two pack a day smoking addiction. It was a very rough two years and then it gradually got better.
How do the hard drug users EVER get clean?
People kept asking me if I still felt like smoking and I answered...only when I am awake.
Many years later the urge still hits me.

Answer 6

Telling my situation to people online and then having to tell my personal friends and family. It was completely humiliating,but very necessary for people online's safety and for my friends and family's safety. I just realized that,regardless of my humiliation and pain,people needed to know,in order to be careful,themselves. My personal friends and family all had to change their email addresses because of the situation. Because their email addresses were known by a hacker,I didn't want them to be hacked as well.After that,I had to let go and let God and put the situation in the proper hands. It was extremely hard.

Answer 7

Digesting "War and Peace" for a Literature Diploma in Education.
(Later Comment...)
May I add my respects for the amount of personal losses which some Answerers have endured - and are openly communicating it here? Well done to them and God Bless your loved ones!

Answer 8

For me, it was kissing my 8 year old daughter good-bye as she was taken into the operating room for brain surgery a year and a half ago. I didn't know if I would ever be able to look into those beautiful eyes again and tell her how much I loved her.

Fortunately, everything turned out fine.....and I am able look into those beautiful eyes everyday and tell her how much I love her. Thank you God.

Answer 9

I moved 12 hours away from home, a new job traveling the world, and new city that I knew nothing about. It was very stressful but I'm glad I did it!

Answer 10

going to boot camp (years ago) and leaving family and friends for the first time.

Ah geez those were some hard weeks ... lots of letter writing and a lot of crying. It was hard to just up and leave for so many weeks and not having the contact you had before with your loved ones. it sucked!