Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What's the hardest thing you've ever done?

If we’re fortunate enough to live a long life we’ll face a lot of “hard things”. The more we are open to love and compassion the more hard things we’ll have to face.

Finding my little brother dead was hard but breaking the news to mom and dad was a million times harder. Burying my wife’s lifelong best friend that was beaten to death by her boyfriend was a tough thing. Trying to help my mother in law deal with my father in law who had late stage Alzheimer’s was tough but nothing matched the pain of hearing him beg, plead and cry …promising to be “good” if we would let him go home the day we checked him into the finest memory care facility in the state. I still tear up when I remember the terrible fear and pain in his cries that he felt in those lucid moments. All I could do in that moment was to hug him and cry. We visited every weekend from 200 miles away until Covid ended that. He couldn’t return home because he kept wandering away from home and thought people were after him….his years of working for the “company” (CIA) seemed to be intertwined with his hallucinations.

I had to deal with some “hard things” working for the fire department. The prolonged torture and physical abuse that culminated in the murder of 2 year old Kayla still haunts me 30 years later. Little 4 year old Josh was riding with dad on his tractor when he slipped off and had his head crushed by the tractor tire was hard but seeing that dad so broken was immensely harder. All the child CPR’s (a lot of them “SIDS) were so eerily similar with the parents openly begging their child back to life and trying to bargain with God as we stuck tubes down their little throats and needles in their chubby arms while bagging and compressing knowing that we weren’t going to reverse the destiny that showed as a flatline on our monitor.

I can really identify with the line Kevin Costner said in Yellowstone…”it seems that life is just one long string of losing the things you love”.

It sure beats the alternative though because if this thread was “what’s the best things you’ve experienced” I wouldn’t have enough space for the wonderful life that I’ve been blessed with and I’ll continue to endure the hard things because there’s just too many good things to miss out on.

Many of you have had some real tough spots in life. Puts in perspective for me how blessed I am, how little I have had to endure. I have wrecked a car, a motorcycle, and a tractor trailer, fallen off roofs, been shot at, nearly drowned in a flooded creek, and walked away every time. My kids are living, my wife still loves me, and both my parents are alive and well. Nobody in even my extended family has died from anything but old age in recent memory. I know every day that God has been so good to me, but this thread makes it even more clear. May those of you still suffering the aftermath of your disasters find peace and comfort in a measure exceeding the pain you have endured.

going thru my second heart attach, doc all around talking [[ doing nothing in my mind]], me hurting more every minute wanting them to take me up stairs to operating room, and get me fixed.

taking my wife to hospice at 1130 in the morning and her passing by 11pm that night,, just to quick .
we had 5 months after her Coloscomy, but that one day which was a blessing for her was hard for me

norm

Pulled the trigger on an 82nd Airborne troop that was going wild with friendly fire that was hitting base housing on the Albrook AFS side of the canal in Panama, the hardest part was when I found out he was from my graduating class in high school.


Every swinging dick unit just had to have a piece of the action there, it weren’t good.

I’m quite a bit more by several orders of magnitude with intubations but I know what you mean. For me it wasn’t the intubation itself that I thought about it was the anectine in the conscious patient that gave me the shivers. I can still see their eyes and the fear when the anectine took affect and the clock was running to get good tube placement and oxygen back into their lungs. It wasn’t much time from the succinylcholine to good intubation but I swear to God that every time I felt like it was my first time knowing what was at stake if I didn’t perform flawlessly, thank God I don’t have to wonder about my performance on any of the thousands and thousands of calls I went on.

I have permanent damage and Dysphagia from multiple bations, some over 12 hrs. I’m still alive so its just part of life !

MANY THANKS TO THOSE THAT DO THIS KINDA THING !

Having to make the decision to let my mother and my brother go. Mom had a DNR, but I had to make the call for my brother. I hope they will forgive me when we meet again.

Previously I'd of said my 18 month battle to get my then 3 year old son back after the ex absconded with him out of state.

Now I'd say the last year of my life is the toughest thing I've gone through. Mom came down sick last August, with what we later learned was lung cancer. She lived in my house an hour away from where the W and I were staying. Two to three trips a week out to take her to Dr's appointments to get it all figured out. I took the lead on everything, coordinated everything, talked to Dr's, set appointments, picked her up for appointments, etc. She had gotten very weak, could no longer walk without assistance of me or a walker.

Was in the process of trying to find a house with a guest cottage to move us all into when things went really sideways.

I'd been talking to her almost daily during the entire ordeal. Never went more than 48 hours without calling. Made two trips out to her place when she didn't answer the phone for hours on end, fearing the worse, only to find her okay.

Then one day I called, had to pick her up for an appointment. No answer, but I was already on the way. Got to the house and immediately knew something was wrong. I hear her weakly call to me from bathroom. I ask if she is okay. No was the answer. I go in to find her laying on the floor, looking like she'd been ran over by a car. Sores, bleeding arms and points of contact where she was laying on the floor. Couldn't believe it. She had been losing weight, but now she looked like a concentration camp victim.

I called for medics, and they took her to the hospital. During all this they asked how long she'd been there like that. She said 3 or 4 days. I told them not possible, I'd spoken to her two days before.

I had not. Later checking my phone in the hospital parking lot at 3am it finally dawned on me. I'd missed a call. I got busy working on a home made lever device for her inhaler so she could operate it, and didn't wrap up until later the night, and I thought I'd called. Just spaced it. Didn't call the next day as I thought I'd talked to her the night before, and I'd be seeing her the following day.

The blow to me of that realization was excruciating. Best I could figure she'd been down there 3 days. I remember crying and telling the wife "this will ruin me."

She passed 10 days later. I blame myself. I missed making the call.

Started drinking way too much, way too often. Had been eating like chit for the entire time mom was sick and after she passed....eating fast food on the run, or delivery at home. Put on 30 lbs in about 9 months.

Thought I'd close up the house for a few months, then go through her things, clear it out, and sell the house. Then the wife got an offer to transfer to AZ (my home state). We decided to do it. The following months of clearing out the house, going through mom's things, packing up our house, selling my house, buying a new house, etc., etc. just wrecked my back and my mental state.

Mom passed in late February. We are in AZ now, and I am taking 4 or 5 months off to get settled and recover before I look for work. Started drinking less, started cooking for us again, and am so far down 15 lbs of the 30 I gained. Back is still wrecked, but getting better I hope.

A lot to look forward to. Have a beautiful home in AZ, I'll be venturing out shortly for some shooting and some fishing in the white mountains, and am "healing up." The last year easiest the most brutal thing I've ever gone through, but I know if mom (and dad) are able to look down on me and see what I've done and that I'm back home, they'd be smiling ear to ear.

Yeah, I had to do that too. She laughed though, when I came up with the idea of using duct tape to remove the stubble. I have great empathy for caregivers. GD

Wow, after loosing several fingers last year from the very beginning my outlook was it's a scratch there'd thousands of people that would gladly trade places with my and what I am going through. That being said when the bandages came off for the final time I walked to my car and cried for a hour straight before being able to drive home still on tears. With a bandage on I could pretend it was just a hand injury, when it came off there was no hiding it. The kid took it harder than I did. The day before he found out his biological father died of a herroin overdose. Then he witnessed the only father he's ever known almost die. It haunts me to this day asking him to go down and help find my fingers. That being said I lost my father and mother within 6 months of each other and in between that my brother backed over my dog who was getting up there in years and fell asleep under the car. I was thinking well at least I don't have to put her down. I was wrong when I drove to the house she was lying down wagging her tail like nothing was wrong except her back was broken. Hardest thing was putting the 22 to her head.

8SNAKE- Thanks for this thread, really.
It took a little while to get the tears out of my eyes while I was thinks about the hardest things I have done and been through. I will not share these but many are them same as already been discussed. I will share that I am thankful and blessed as strange as it sounds. To the men and ladies on here , remember to give your love and kindness freely and you will continue to go through the hard times and sadness. But to have never felt all the love and happiness in the first place, that would be a horrible existence...Joe

It's hard for me to pick a "worst" and even my worst ones pale in comparison to some of the ones I've read here.

In no particular order -

-My parents sudden divorce.
-Watching for hours as my Mom struggled to breathe through her last few mortal hours.
-Holding the hand of the strongest man I know as we sat through the funeral of his wife, my step-Mother.

Probably the worst was being crushed by the news that the baby my wife had carried for 3 months was no longer viable. We were so excited about being parents for the first time.

Going by the accounts presented here...................I've not really done anything hard.

Dad was sick for quite awhile, knew he was going and I was in another state when he finally went.

Mom was in a care facility for dementia for 8 years or more. Again, I was in another state when she passed.

Knowing the sight in one eye will never be anywhere near as good as before is tough, but I've still got the one good one and DMV gave me back the 5 year license as the eyesight has stabilized at a point good enough I no longer have to get tested every two years. Difficult to deal with as I used to have great eyesight.

surgeries for me and my wife..................we're old.............not unexpected.

Jobs or hobbies that just required putting one's head down and keep on keeping on? Just the way I was raised, difficult but not "hard"?

dealing with pets etc dying or needing end of life shots? No fun at all, but one must go on, even with a couple of special ones.

Not sure how I'm going to deal with it should my wife of many years go before I do.

Most days are good, some just OK, some not so much fun.

Probably haven't had the "hardest" thing I've ever done yet.

PS, pushing my way out of an overturned car in the creek, walking downstream and climbing out over boulders and blackberry vines barefooted, going to the hospital and getting scanned and checked, having to call the wife and all that really wasn't all that hard. Just another day in Genoland.

This for me in spades.... if I had any idea how difficult it would be I would have folded....
But each battle, each set back, I just put my head down and moved forward.....

Despair is a horrible emotion!

For the time being life is better than it has ever been for me and I am trying to shake the feeling "until the next shoe drops"
Dealing with disappointment and set backs gets easier with age... you figure out what's important and what isn't.

Yes, we've BT&DT too, Scott.

Just getting ready for tomorrow, it’s like a real life version of ground hog day

I once golfed 36 holes in the SAME DAY.

No joke.

Dude, seriously,…that is a lot of phugin beer

My dad had a dnr he was in bad shape double bypass rectal cancer and liver kept on smoking said “to late now” he was a 2x divorcee lived alone I helped him on a project on a Friday and got a phone call from MIL Sunday morning about 1am she over heard on her scanner they was towing a vehicle with his plates from sheetz I figured oh [bleep] went there they said a drunk man passed out in the parking lot at 10 pm Saturday it was him going to get a pack of Marlboros 🙄 and he had the big one and his pace maker fired the rescue squad is 300 yds away and it took 10 minutes to get there they got his heart back going but he was brain dead it took 6 days for the hospital to figure that out and 3 days of listening to him moan and die per his wishes I did in all that witness just before he went him listening to somebody🤷‍♂️he had a shocked expression on his face and what ever conversation was had he was pleased with the result because he smiled and died

I call bullshit.... most pass out by the 18th hole!