I guess one way to answer this question is put yourself in your husband's shoes. Not to say whether not it will make a difference, but to say if you were the one who had the surgery, would you have wanted your husband to live and worry about each and every day that something might have gone wrong, and live in regret if something that could have been done to extend life but wasn't, when the choice was not obvious at the time it happened? Could the injury be healed/ prevented through another surgery, and would he survived through it? Would he be able to fully recover from it?

My husband had Marfan Syndrome and with that aortic aneurysms can easily occur. This isn't what killed my husband, but he had two aortic aneurysms in his lifetime and they were both found on CTs. The only reason he had those CTs is because he was known to have the Marfan Syndrome. So my answer, based on personal experience, is there was no way either of you would have known without a chest CT, and as far as I know, those are not really done routinely unless there's a known issue. In December my husband had an aortic aneurysm repaired. He just wasn't the same after that surgery. In 2008 his first aneurysm occurred and he had an artificial valve placed. Then in May of 2015 he got sepsis, which caused endocarditis and a stroke. He was hospitalized and in acute rehab for a total of six months. After a lot of physical therapy, which he finished in August of 2008 he was doing really well. In fact, our oldest son got married in October and he was dancing at the wedding and he gave a speech. Then, a CT in November revealed a small aneurysm, which is what was repaired in December. The surgery itself went well but when they tried to wake him up from the anesthesia he started having seizures. They kept him on the ventilator for nine days while they adjusted medications. Once awake, he was discovered to have gone backward. He could no longer walk so he had to go to acute rehab again. He was there for a month and then he started outpatient rehab. He was so bummed out and he lost a lot of weight. He also lost a lot of motivation. He also wouldn't talk a lot. I was worried about him every day and on April 7th I was woken up by him as he rolled out of bed. The paramedics got his heart started again but he went into arrest again at the hospital but they couldn't revive him again. I keep going over and over things too. It's hard not to say to yourself, "If I only would have done this or that." It's a daily struggle.

I forgot to add that he was fine medically. His BP was low and his heart rate was great. He'd been to the Dr regularly and there was absolutely nothing wrong. They all said he was doing well.

The docs told him he was ok a few weeks ago. Don't put this on yourself. It was his time. I'm not a religious person however people who are have told me.....Your date of death is written in a book when you are born. Nobody's changing that book. It was his time to go. As it was my wifes. Your date and my date are also in said book. We will find our answers than. I hope.

I think most of us went thru the phase of "what ifs".. it may be part of the grieving process. My husband died of a heart attack 8 months ago, although he already had been in and out of the hospital previous to that it still came a shock to us. There was a period when i kept thinking of what i could have done to prevent it but then I thought if it was really his time to go, there's nothing anybody could do to stop it. Stop torturing yourself with these thoughts. You aleady did what you could at the time when he was alive.

My husband had been at the cardiologist, the pulmonologist and the oncologist on Wednesday. It was a day of doctor visits, for sure. Everyone said he was fine. He didn't necessarily feel fine, but every one felt that things were under control. The cancer was stable, the heart was perfect, his breathing was labored and he was drowsy, but the pulmonologist wasn't too concerned. He went into the hospital that Sunday, and was dead on life support and then dead on Friday. These men went to school for years and years and none of them saw it coming. So, if THEY couldn't, then how could I? And how could you? Believe me... I know what you're saying here, because my husband had been at a well known specialist just 2 weeks prior. But ... I think when it's our time, it's just our time. Even if you had been able to see THIS coming and somehow stopped it, something else would happen and he'd still be gone. It's the only way I keep my sanity on the subject -- I hope you can find it helpful.

The hardest part of losing someone is the guilt we have for surviving. Please remember it is not your fault it is so easy to blame yourself but you must realize that it is not the choices we make on their last day but instead the choices we made throughout our lives.

@AngieP, I had not thought of things the way you put it. Your story sound too familiar to mines. Wise words indeed. There truly is nothing we could have done to change the status qou. When your number is up, that's it. Peace to everyone on this board.

My husband passed away 2 months ago today, after a years of many chronic illnesses and declining health. I agree with "Missmyanne" that when it is your time, it's your time. I actually believe that even before we are born, our Creator has placed our name in His "Lamb's Book of Life".

I am so sorry. Lord knows that I know your emotions, the percussion of thoughts and what-if's. I think it was about 6 to 8 months prior to my wife's terminal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer that they found markers for a very rare type of adrenaline cancer. So rare in fact that its occurrence rate was one in a million. They ran all the scans and tests they could at whatever ologist, and they just couldn't figure out what was causing these markers. There was only one more test they could do, something radioactive, and that had to be done in Seattle, about a 3 hour drive. Odds were in our favor that it was nothing. All those tests and nothing showed up. She declined to have the test done. What if they would have detected the pancreatic cancer had we gone? Why didn't we just keep going test after test until the cause for the markers was determined? What if they could have caught the cancer in time to have removed it or killed it? What ifs and regrets. Normal stuff for all of us, but you will come to a point that you will stop replaying the same scenarios in your head because you realize what a wasted effort those thoughts have become, and you'll move on to deeper, more painful parts of your grief. But you'll make it through all of it, and the most awful thing imaginable in your life will profoundly change you. For the good or for the bad is your choice, but that time awaits you way in the future. There is no grand plan for getting through this grief except to say that we all must go through it to get through it. Nothing worse than what we suffer, but it is a bond of commonality that we have. Everyone. All that came before us and all that will come after us. Not a one of us was prepared for the onslaught that appears out of nowhere. So we all just do the best that we can, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year. About the best we can do is fasten our seatbelt and hang on for dear life. But each wave, different forms, different intensities and different sizes, pound us relentlessly. But for the shock and fog in the beginning, not a one of us could have survived it. But over time, the waves of grief lessen in frequency with long periods of windless stagnant and motionless water where we don't feel like we're going anywhere. But we are. We are healing. Our broken hearts are healing. And we just keep breathing. And you will find that major milestones begin to be chalked up, milestones we can only see in our rearview mirror. And then we discover blockages exist as well as triggers. And each one of these will be conquered by you one by one, always in your grief's perfect timing. We control nothing. We just go through it and chalk up another day. You have to hold onto the hope that it does get better with time, and the length of time is different for all of us because each one of us is unique. For some, they never seem to move forward, and that is choice for all of us to make. But you've got to think hard about what your love one would want for you. Truly, they would trade places with us if they could, just as we would have traded places with them. Love works that way. But realize that each of their loves for each of us would want us to move forward and live a happy life. It can never be the same life without them, but eventually we find balance and acceptance, and joy and happiness if we choose it. Someday we'll get to see them again on the other side of eternity, but our purpose for remaining here is yet unknown to us. But purpose there is. If but to help those that come after us, because truth be told, not a one can fathom what this is like unless they too go through it themselves. Just hang in there and do the best you can do. Place no expectations on yourself. This is just about survival, pure and simple. ~~~ Scottie

You could not have done a thing. I recommend the book "A year of magical thinking". I read it around the first anniversary of my husband's death in February. For some reason the book helped me accept nothing could have been done. I am so sorry you are experiencing this. I know it is awful. I would like to think there is a time when we will feel better

I got to looking into my husband's labs after he died, and discovered there had been dropping red blood counts beginning MONTHS before he died, but we were so deeply concerned with watching other factors, he never got any tranfusions in those last months.... Probably should have had at least two possibly three..
And I wonder, if I see this now, how did all his docs miss it at the time? But, hindsight sees lots of things we might have missed while on the road forward when we are going back over it again and again -- and again and again. It's painful to think that maybe we could have had a little more time, but... nothing to be done now, but perhaps to ask God to forgive whatever I 'clear signs' I might have missed by not being persistent enough or vigilant enough at the time.
My allowing depression and guilt wrack me now over things missed, to compound all the troubles I currently have with chewing myself up over things I simply didn't see or know at time is not going to bring him back to me. Maybe later, I will let that funk sink into me, but I hope not.