In the Midst of Life (10 page)

At St Joseph’s she saw that, as a patient drew near to the terminal
stage of an illness, far from there being ‘nothing more we can do,’ there was a great deal more to be done: bring comfort in relaxed surroundings, look after the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of the patient, give medical care if possible, but if not, meticulous nursing in the last stages of life. However, she saw that the nuns were just as hampered as hospital nurses in giving pain relief for cancer patients, because the medical staff had control of drugs.

During the next six years her vision developed and she realised that the medical profession must change, not just in its attitude to pain relief, but also in the wider context of recognising the needs of a dying patient as an essential part of the physician’s work. What an awesome task for a young girl in her twenties – to change the medical profession! She was ‘only’ a nurse and a social worker. What could she do? A calling from God is always hard and demanding, but it can never be resisted, whatever the cost to the individual.

None of us lives or works in isolation, and Cicely was constantly talking to like-minded people; what emerged was the advice that she should train to be a doctor. She did not have the scientific background required, but intensive study got her up to standard, and, at the age of thirty-two, she was accepted by St Thomas’s Medical School in London. Six years later, in 1952, she qualified. She was nearly forty, and had travelled a long road from student nurse to qualified doctor. But a longer, more difficult road lay ahead.

Cicely Saunders was the first doctor to devote her entire professional career to the care of the dying. Many have since followed, inspired by her example and teaching. Her inspiration is with us still, and widening all the time in the hospice movement that she created, and that became international in scope.

As a newly qualified doctor she was determined that her first task must be research into the control of pain. The medical director and the nuns of St Joseph’s Hospice gave her the facilities to test her theory that pain in cancer could be fully controlled by the regular, four-hourly use of analgesics. The idea was revolutionary at the time and, by the 1960s, she had proved, beyond a shadow of
doubt, that drugs given in this way did not create zombie-like drug addicts, that the dose did not have to be increased to maintain effectiveness, in fact it could sometimes be decreased, and that patients became calm, comfortable and, in every way, happier because the pain had gone.

Sixty years ago, only about four per cent of cancer patients survived; today, around forty-eight per cent can be cured. Pain is nearly always part of the disease, and we take it for granted that pain can be controlled. But it took a nurse-turned-doctor to prove the fact – and point the way for others to follow.

I remember so clearly a woman I nursed at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in 1953. She had a sarcoma, an aggressive type of cancer. The seat of the cancer was probably in her ovaries, but it had spread to her bones and she was in the orthopaedic ward because one of her legs was broken. It was altogether the wrong ward for her, because most orthopaedic patients are relatively young and feel quite well, but this lady was dying. Whilst they hobbled around on their crutches she lay in bed, unable to move. One could see that she was trying to hide the pain, but every so often sweat would break out on her forehead and she would bite the sheets and grip her hands so tight the knuckles became white. Through clenched teeth she would articulate in a strangled voice:

‘Can’t you give me something, Nurse – another injection? I can’t stand much more.’

Ward sister would say something like:

‘Not just yet, dear, it’s too soon after the last dose. Try to hang on till the night nurses come on duty. Then you can have an injection for the night.’

In speechless agony she would nod, her eyes frantic with fear and suffering, then say: ‘I’ll try, Sister, I’ll try. How long must I wait?’

‘Only another couple of hours, dear. I tell you what; I can give you a couple of codeine. That will ease things until you have your injection.’

The ward sister was not being stupid or callous; this was no better and no worse than the norm. It was accepted
practice.

When I was a ward sister in 1963, at the Marie Curie Hospital in Hampstead, this would never occur. We gave analgesics, four hourly, day and night, and every dose was different, tailored to individual needs and the patient’s level of pain. Dr Saunders’ studies had been so successful, and her teaching disseminated so widely, that uncontrolled pain had become a memory.

Dr Saunders did not rest on her laurels, however. Great souls never do; there is always more to be accomplished. She felt that her calling was to create a hospice that would be a working/ teaching model for the medical profession. This imaginative approach would not only ensure pain relief and meticulous nursing, but also maintain a patient’s self-respect and dignity, enhancing the remaining period of that person’s life, however short it might be.

A hospice for the dying was unknown and unacceptable to the decision-makers of the National Health Service in the 1960s and they would not support it, so private money had to be found. Fundraising was a massive task. Millions had to be raised, a building site found and purchased, architects instructed and planning permission obtained. Dr Saunders had many helpers and admirers, people who were also aware of the neglect of the dying, and who were inspired by her visionary outlook and inexhaustible energy. Money was raised, obstacles overcome, and in 1967, nearly thirty years after the young nurse first heard her calling, St Christopher’s Hospice was opened in Sydenham, Kent.

Planning, building, fundraising – that was the easy part. Even research into the control of pain was easy, compared with the next part – the need to change medical and social attitudes to death.

The primary objective of the hospice movement was, and still is, to show to the world that death need not be a time of suffering, but a time in which to achieve fulfilment. This does not mean a grand ending to a brilliant life; it encompasses the quiet, unsung lives of millions of ordinary people who have lived simply, within a small circle, doing their best and achieving great things in small ways. My mother-in-law was such a person. She had done nothing spectacular in her life, but she was a good woman and, in human understanding, she was one of the wisest people I have
known.

She died in her daughter’s arms, quietly and peacefully, as she had lived. This is what I mean by the fulfilment of life.

The hospice movement strives to achieve this, working towards the mental, physical, spiritual and emotional well-being of each patient as he or she approaches the end.

Meticulous, skilled nursing is the most important part of the care of the dying, and the nurse becomes a central figure in the patient’s life. Dr Saunders knew this – had she not been a nurse herself? Most nurses are by nature kind and compassionate, but they need special training, and Cicely Saunders’ series of six articles on the Care of the Dying in the
Nursing Times
(1959–61) were seminal in the development of the profession and it has been found that those who specialise in palliative care usually find it so rewarding that they do not want to return to mainstream medicine.

Death is a family affair – or should be –just as a new birth involves the whole family. But dying at home often needs professional help, and this was another part of Dr Saunders’ vision – to maximise home visiting. St Christopher’s Hospice trained nurses to work in the community and, today, practically every hospice in the country has its own specialised nurses working in people’s homes so that a dying patient does not have to go into a hospital or even a hospice. In addition, we have, in the UK, over three thousand Macmillan Nurses who have had five years of training and who work exclusively with cancer patients and those who wish to die at home. This work is mostly funded by charity donations. The National Health Service provides about twenty per cent of the total cost.

Dr Saunders’ achievement was truly staggering. ‘The Care of the Dying’ is a fairly common phrase now, and most people do not realise that it is a relatively recent branch of medicine, with its own specialist training, research and disciplines. Today. around two hundred and fifty Hospices for the Care of the Dying exist all over the country, and this does not include specialist palliative care units in most general hospitals. It has become an international movement – over one hundred countries now have their own
hospice care, and look to the teaching of Cicely Saunders as to how they should be run.

Dame Cicely Saunders died of cancer in 2005 at the age of eighty-seven, in St Christopher’s Hospice.

It is interesting to compare the lives of Cicely Saunders and Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. They were about the same age - Cicely the elder by eight years - and they died within a year of each other. They both had war experience, when death was all around. With no known contact between each other, they both saw the needs and suffering of dying patients in English and American hospitals in the post-war era. They both identified the cause as the widespread denial of death by the medical professions and society at large. The work undertaken by both of them was groundbreaking. It is one of those fascinating instances where two people with brilliant, insightful minds identify the same problem at the same time and work towards different but complementary solutions. Cicely started the hospice movement in 1967 when St Christopher’s Hospice was opened. Elisabeth published
On Death and Dying
in 1969. The contribution they made to medicine and to society was
immeasurable.

In 1957 I worked in Poplar, East London, with an order of nursing nuns and was required to visit a Mr Hyem, who lived in one of the tenements known as Canada Buildings. They were densely populated and regarded as slums.

I climbed the stone stairs, went along the balcony to his flat, and was taken aback by a small brass plate on the door stating: ‘Dr Conrad Hyem, Doctor of Philosophy and Psychology’. The day book had called him ‘Mr Hyem’, so I assumed the ‘Doctor’ was the wit of some Cockney joker, to amuse himself and his mates. I raised my hand towards the knocker, but at that second the beautiful soaring tones of a violin sounded from within. I stood outside the door, holding my breath, staring unbelievingly at the door. A woman called out:

‘Go on. It’s only the Doc. ’E’s lovely, ’e is. ’E gives us all a toon. Jus’ knock. ’E’ll soon stop.’

I shook my head and put my fingers to my lips, breathing ‘ssshhh’, and leaned closer to the door. The music was beautiful, full-bodied and rich, filled with that plaintive yearning which of all instruments the violin can achieve to perfection.

‘Makes yer wanna cry, ’e do, sometimes,’ the woman sniffed appreciatively. ‘But jest give ’im a knock, ’e won’t mind, ’e’ll soon stop, ’e will.’

Again I shook my head. How could I disturb such a musician, his inner thoughts and emotions? He might never recapture that moment. The final cadence approached, and the last note died away, and I rapped on the knocker.

A tall, silver-haired gentleman opened the door. He was well-built and solid, but not fat. He smiled at me, and the gold fillings in his teeth gleamed in the sunlight. He was wearing well-cut trousers, a plain, high-necked jumper and thick horn-rimmed
glasses, and when he smiled, his eyes crinkled attractively at the corners. His hands were beautiful; white and smooth, with polished nails – certainly not the hands of a dock labourer. Nor was he the Cockney humorist I had imagined. I knew at once that he really must be a doctor – of some sort.

‘You must be the nurse I was told to expect.’

He spoke beautiful English with a soft guttural accent, which I took to be German.

‘A small matter concerning my diabetes?’

He opened the door wider and with a slight bow said, ‘Be pleased to enter.’

If I had been surprised to find a musician and scholarly gentleman in the seedy purlieus of the Canada Buildings, it was as nothing compared with my astonishment on entering his rooms. It might have been the study of an Oxford don. Every wall was lined with books from floor to ceiling, thousands of them, mostly leather-bound, some of them with gold tooling down the spine. In front of the window stood a kneehole desk, probably antique, with a beautiful surface of red leather, tooled in gold. A red, leather writing chair stood before the desk and the room held no other furniture save a rosewood music stand. All the shelves were made of warm mahogany, and the lovely smell of wood and leather filled the room. Dr Hyem noticed my reaction, and his eyes crinkled at the corners.

‘You like my sanctuary, then? This is my retreat. A man can live very comfortably and quietly in such surroundings.’

A ship’s hooter blasted out a long, low note, and a shrill siren sent a warning across the water. Men shouted as the lock gates opened, and a huge, ocean-going cargo boat made its way from the Thames to its quay in the East India Docks. I spoke for the first time.

‘It’s lovely, here in this flat. Perfect, in fact. But I wouldn’t call it quiet!’

‘Perhaps not, but tranquillity has more meaning if the hum of life is all around. From my bedroom window I look out over the docks and see the trading vessels of all the world come and
go. I see the men, thousands of them, labouring daily, and I contemplate the insatiable appetite of trade for manpower. From my desk I look out over the courtyard of Hudson Buildings, and see the smaller, but no less important, world of the women, and I observe and meditate upon the endless tasks of child-rearing and homemaking. All life surrounds me. Here I can work. “We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself.” Do you know who said that, Nurse?’