I’ve been meaning to post about this since last week, but haven’t been able to string the words together. I hope this is as coherent as it seems to me.
On 10th April 2010, my mother was diagnosed with bowel cancer. I remember this vividly as I got the call just as I sat down for a quick lunch break in the middle of the day job’s Huge Unavoidable Annual Event. We’ve had a few scares along the way, but for a while it looked like chemo was working. In July of this year, they stopped Mum’s treatment; there was nothing more that could be done. In August it looked like she wasn’t going to get over whatever combination of infections she’d picked up thanks to her nigh-on non-existent immune system, but she pulled through enough to see us all on her 65th birthday.
Last week I got a call to say that Mum was back in hospital and it didn’t look like she would pull through. I got the coach back to Brighton on Wednesday, and thankfully got to the hospital while Mum was still alert enough to say goodbye to us all. And at midday on Friday, 11th November, she died.
It’s the two days in between I have a problem with.
The law is an ass
If I had a terminally ill dog, and left it drugged to the eyeballs for two days until it finally died, I’d quite rightly be up on a charge of cruelty to animals. Putting our pets down to avoid further suffering is taken as read, it’s just what you do. But if I or anyone else extends this to our loved ones, who have been absolutely crystal clear that once they’ve said goodbye, they just want to go to sleep and not wake up? Anyone involved is up on a murder charge. This is insane.
Last Wednesday evening and Thursday can basically be summed up as a cycle of unconsciousness, delirium, and panic and terror when Mum came to enough to ask for help. I’m not convinced she knew what kind of help she needed, or where she was, or what was happening. She was frightened, in pain and just wanted someone to help her. The only respite from this – for her and for those of us staying with her – was when it was time for the potent cocktail of painkillers, sedatives etc that would put her out for the night.
When I got there on Friday morning it was clear that she wasn’t waking up this time. I was sitting with her when her breathing turned from laboured to shallow to nothing, which I’m glad of; compared to the previous two days, it was peaceful, and I could tell my brothers and sister that myself.
Rewind to Wednesday. Mum had always been a supporter of choosing your time to go in such circumstances, and had said as much to me when I got to the hospital. She would never have wanted what happened afterwards – if she’d had her way, she’d have been out like a light, peacefully, 5 minutes after we’d left the hospital. In a truly civilised society, none of us – not Mum, not the rest of us there with her, not the cancer ward staff – should have had to go through what I think we all agreed was the most appalling godsdamn thing we had ever experienced.
I’ve always been a supporter of assisted dying. As of last Friday, count me an activist.
Where’s the profit?
Here’s the other thing. While watching Mum die slowly, clearly in pain and afraid (at least when she was even vaguely conscious), I have nothing but praise for the staff at the Royal Sussex County Hospital cancer ward. Every single person there was fantastic, every one of them clearly cares deeply for the people they’re responsible for, and every one of them was supportive beyond the call of duty to visiting family members. The prospect of a market-driven health service, courtesy of the current Government’s public sector cuts, frankly fills me with utter horror.
Let’s face it. There’s no profit in end-of-life care. I don’t know what a private sector cancer ward for those of us who can’t afford private health care would look like, but I can be damn sure what it doesn’t look like. It doesn’t have some of the hardest-working, lowest-paid nursing care staff checking in on their patients 12 hours after I went home for food and sleep, just because they’re finally going off shift. It won’t be run by people who’ve regularly checked in on every single patient on their ward, talked to them and made sure they have everything they need, and done the same thing for every single person visiting them. Not with the dedication to care I saw last week.
Save the NHS, basically.
The funeral’s next Friday.