I'm new to this sort of thing and I'm hoping it'll help.

I lost my dad 5 weeks ago. He'd been ill for 3 years but we couldn't get a straight diagnosis so they couldn't do anything. After a big battle (skipping over three years of fighting with drs, social workers, hospitals, moving him into sheltered housing, our whole days being taken up by it) We did finally get a diagnosis of Vascular Parkinsonism. A parkinsons type illness caused by many small strokes. We got given a promise of intensive rehabilitation but it didn't happen. He got left in bed for four months in the rehab ward of the geriatric hospital. He lost his ability to walk and any function from the waist down. he developed hospital acquired pneumonia and fluid on the lungs (that a consultant admitted was at least aggravated by being in bed so long if not caused by that). He also developed congestive heart failure. 

The hospital tried to admit him to long term care but he refused point blank. We had found a really good nursing home and he had reconciled himself to going there and was determined to leave the hospital. The home were amazing, cared for him really well. We discovered the hospital had taken away all his pain relief which made his gp furious and once they had put that back in place he was more settled. They spoiled him on his birthday, decorated the room, made a huge fuss of him. 

The home had an outbreak of noro virus after Christmas and they'd shut it to visitors. Dad had a touch of "the runs" but nothing serious. 

Very quickly overnight on the Wed 21st into Thurs 22nd Jan he deteriorated very rapidly. I think he may have had another stroke but we're not sure. We got called to the hospital and sat in his room with his day and night - slept upright in chairs or on a really uncomfortable couch if they could give us one. He died on Sunday 25th January. I wasn't with him because I'd gone for a sleep and didn't get back in time. My sister was with him but I feel so guilty.

at the beginning I just kept going. Organising the funeral and clearing out his flat. My school were amazing (I'm a teacher) and basically said to take whatever time i needed and we'd sort it later. The funeral was a week on the Wednesdayafter he died, on the Thursday we closed up his flat and drove to my sister's in Dundee, on Friday morning I drove 70 miles to Aberdeen and went straight to school. 

I feel like I'm getting worse. I have a chronic pain condition and My meds were all screwed up during the time in hospital because I wasn't taking as much so that I wasn't medicated during the day. 

I can't eat properly. My dietician gave me a low fibre diet to try and control my irritable bowel plus there's heaps I can't eat just now cos it makes me feel or be sick. I can't sleep. My gp gave me sleeping pills to try and shock my body back into a normal sleeping rhythm. I'm sleeping only really when I take them but I'm not taking them all the time because I have a friend who can't get off them so I'd rather be sleepless than that. I take them when I can't physically function anymore.
I had to tell my boss I wasn't coping at school. He was amazing and took all the extra paperwork off my desk and told me not to concentrate on the senior classes, give the junior classes thing they can do without too much input. He's also taken some classes off my timetable on days I teach full days. He was going to do it for a couple of weeks, my headteacher said we'll keep it like that until easter which is 5 weeks away. So they're being ace and my senior kids all know what happened (at my choice, there's no point lying) so they are being very understanding. 

I'm just finding it really difficult. Logic tells me 5 weeks isn't a long time but I'm beating myself up. Doesn't help that one of my friends said "everyone goes through this you've just got to move on" and my own sister said last week "it's been 4 weeks, we need to move on now".I can't move on. noone in my family will talk about the time in the hospital so it just goes round and round in my head and I'm having awful dreams any time I do sleep. My church Iis good but I'm no able to reach out and say actually I'm struggling and I need hep because my head keeps telling me I should be fine by now. Whenever I start to get upset I have to stop myself thinking about it because I'm scared if I cry properly ill never stop. 

I keep having really morbid thoughts like what's happened to his body and how i didn't want to leave him in the cemetery lying in the ground. My sister keeps saying that what made him dad isn't there anymore but i can't get over that the part of him that used to pick me up in a big bear hug, sit me on his knee and sing to me, hold my hand on our trips to the shop is gone and is lying under all that ground. I keep looking up what happens in funeral homes and what they do to get them ready for the funeral, what happens to a body when someone dies. I hate what it does to me but I can't stop.

I feel like I'm going crazy. I'm thinking about him every minute of every day, replaying what happened in the hospital over and over in my head.

When does it get better? I'm 32 and single, I'm so acutely aware on what I'm missing out and what I'm going to miss in the future, no dad to give me away if I get married etc. He was only 68. It's so unfair. I miss him. Am I going mad? Everyone else seems to be coping.

Viv