King Charles only found out about his mother's deteriorating health a few hours before the public when he took an urgent phone call 'then everyone went silent', royal editor claims

I imagine her death certificate is a document of public record like anyone else’s so we should find out more in due course.

Is it really taboo to announce the cause of death?

My mother lived abroad, and again and again, I got a phone call that I should come, and I rushed to the airport, jumped on a plane, and a rented car and arrived to be with her. Took her in my arms and stroked her head 'I am here mummy' - and she picked up for a few months. But in the end, she waited to be alone to die. I realise now that everytime I went, with all my love and the very best of intentions, I stopped her from doing what she wanted to do, 'go'. No regrets. But it took a while for me to understand this later. Bless her, she was 94, blind, unable to walk, adn she just hated every minute- after an amazing life.

I remember the Duke of Edinburgh often had bruises in his later years and said he often woke up with a new one - as you do with thin skin.

Quokka

I wonder if it was all that sudden?

If you look at the video or photo of her greeting Liz Truss there is bruising on the hand she extends…the kind I got from having a catheter inserted. It would be like her to insist on being up and able to do this final duty even if she was already in failing health.

Just wondering?

When I saw that photo on the Tuesday I said to DH ‘we’re never going to see her again’. But I wasn’t expecting it to happen so quickly. It was only looking at all of the pictures of the Queen that flooded the media after her death that it sunk in just how much weight she had lost.

The bruising as not necessarily cause by a cannula . Very old and fragile skin can look like that. DH’s hands looked like that in his last few day without a cannula.

Quokka

I wonder if it was all that sudden?

If you look at the video or photo of her greeting Liz Truss there is bruising on the hand she extends…the kind I got from having a catheter inserted. It would be like her to insist on being up and able to do this final duty even if she was already in failing health.

Just wondering?

My stepmother had similar bruising on her hand from canulas and infusions, but she was still alert until an hour or so before her death. She had also lost weight, as the Queen seems to have done. We all knew that death was imminent, but it could have been weeks or months. Her actual death, when it happened, was sudden. Nobody could have predicted that when she sat down to watch a TV programme one evening, she would never get up.

Yes I did mean cannula!

Germanshepherdsmum

I think you mean cannula Q, not catheter - which goes somewhere else. The bruising on the hand has been spotted in earlier photos.

?

I think you mean cannula Q, not catheter - which goes somewhere else. The bruising on the hand has been spotted in earlier photos.

Does it matter?

I wonder if it was all that sudden?

If you look at the video or photo of her greeting Liz Truss there is bruising on the hand she extends…the kind I got from having a catheter inserted. It would be like her to insist on being up and able to do this final duty even if she was already in failing health.

Just wondering?

It's been rumoured the Queen had bone cancer. If that's true, death could have been very quick. My stepmother had bone cancer. She was quite frail, but quite lively and certainly in full control of her mind. One evening, she felt faint and became unconscious. My father called an ambulance, which arrived promptly, but she died on the way to hospital. Apparently, the cancer caused calcium in the bloodstream, which affected her brain and caused unconsciousness and death. It was quite sudden and I doubt if she even knew what was happening.

If the Queen’s illness was sudden, which it seemed to be, given the Tuesday’s photos, of course family would only hear about it hours before the public.

Blondiescot Thank you.
For one of my parents we moved in for 4 months, as they were bed ridden (just realised what a strange phrase that is).
Spent every day in the room with them. Swapped night sittings between us.
Went to answer the door to the nurse, only to find the inevitable when we returned .

Of course it can happen quite quickly. A Swedish friend, living at the time in Devon, had only just arrived to stay with us in London for a few days when she heard that her father in Stockholm (in his 90s and frail but hadn’t actually been ill) was on his way out.
As she said, thank goodness she’d brought her passport, just in case. Amid a lot of tears a flight for just a couple of hours later was very speedily booked and she made it just 20 minutes before he died.
She thought he’d been hanging on until she got there - he’d been told she was on her way.

Didnt he have a home on one of the estates?
Come to think of it, do his daughters have homes here?
Now Frogmore is otherwise occupied for the foreseeable.
One of his daughters left for Geneva I think.

Blondiescot

Callistemon21

Namsnanny

Sometimes it happens like that.
You can wait by the bedside but the minute you leave..

Yes, have experienced this with three of our parents.

I was the same. Sat by my mother's bedside for several days and nights, then had to go back to work - I was in the office 20 minutes when the phone rang to tell me she had died.

Blondiescot
It seemed to happen, having been sent away by medical staff, that the phone rang as soon as we got through the door.

I'm sorry you had the same experience too.

She was 96 it's a time you don't get much notice. I do wonder had she signed a DNR?

No, but he wont be on the list for walk about duty I shouldnt think.

I knew full well that my mother was in intensive care, but as the hospital was a three hour train journey away, and I had a full-time teaching job, I could not be there all the time.

At the end, she died while I was in the train on the way to her.

Same thing happened with my father. He was still in his right ´mind and had asked the nurse "not to worry my daughters." She phoned us all the same, but said she felt coming the following day instead of at two in the morning would be time enought. It wasn't. Not her fault or ours.

So don't read too much into this. I am sure both Balmoral and Dumfries House are on the phone.

What I have been wondering is, where on earth is Andrew, Duke of York. I have seen no mention of him, have you?

Callistemon21

Namsnanny

Sometimes it happens like that.
You can wait by the bedside but the minute you leave..

Yes, have experienced this with three of our parents.

I was the same. Sat by my mother's bedside for several days and nights, then had to go back to work - I was in the office 20 minutes when the phone rang to tell me she had died.

I assumed that due to the speed of her decline the queen must have had a stroke or a heart attack.

Namsnanny

Sometimes it happens like that.
You can wait by the bedside but the minute you leave..

Yes, have experienced this with three of our parents.

It may also be that the Queen gave strict instructions 'not to bother him'. There are many cases of that amongst the elderly from all walks of life.