In the Midst of Life (18 page)

‘You must tell my son and daughter that. A high success rate – that’s what they need to know. Fools, the pair of them. What do they know about advanced medical treatment? Nothing! Not a
thing.’

She gave a contemptuous grunt, with a curl of the lips, and repeated, ‘They know nothing.’

The Chief and I returned to the office.

‘I think she is going to be a difficult patient to handle,’ he said. ‘There’s something malign eating away inside her – and I don’t mean the cancer. There is something else on her mind.’

I told him that I had known Mrs Cunningham ten years previously, and that she had struck me as a highly intelligent woman – strong minded, independent, and humorous. He made no comment.

Two days later her son James came to see her. Halfway through the visiting hours she called loudly to one of the nurses, ‘Take him away! I won’t have him here. Get him out of here.’

I was busy checking drugs received from the dispensary, and ordering more, but when I heard the angry, raised voice, I went to see what was going on. Poor James, looking embarrassed, was leaving the ward.

‘Don’t come back. And tell that interfering sister of yours I don’t want to see her, either,’ his mother’s voice shouted as he left.

‘What on earth is all this about?’ I said as he passed. ‘Please come to the office with me. Your mother has been angry and aggressive ever since she was admitted.’

We sat down.

‘Now what was said? Why this outburst?’ I enquired.

‘I simply told her that I thought she should not have any more treatment, and that the time had come when she should accept the inevitable, and die with dignity.’

Oh dear, I thought, so was this the origin of the fear and anger? ‘Please go on,’ I said.

‘Well, it’s perfectly obvious that she is dying. The cancer is spreading. She doesn’t need more treatment. She just wants an easy way out. We all do.’

‘Yes, I know. You are quite right,’ I said, encouraging him
to go on.

‘I reminded her that she had signed an advance directive years ago, and had renewed it annually.’

‘That’s interesting. Please tell me more.’

‘She has been an active member of the British Humanist Society – we are all members, the whole family – and voluntary euthanasia is high on their agenda.’

‘Euthanasia is illegal,’ I reminded him.

‘Yes, I know, but an advance directive saying that no more medical treatment should be given after a certain point, is not. It is perfectly within her legal rights to refuse further treatment.’

‘It is. But at what point do we begin withholding medical treatment?’

‘Now, of course. She is not going to get better. Anyone can see that. She’s had a good life, and she’s a good old age. The time has come to lay it down.’

‘But your mother does not see herself as being at the end of life.’

‘I can’t understand it. She was always so clear-sighted, so positive in her convictions. She knows quite well that treatment beyond the point of no return can frequently cause more suffering than the original disease. But now, she won’t accept it, and gets furious with me and humiliates me in public. She had a blazing row with Evelyn on this subject a few weeks ago. Evie told me about it, but I thought it was just another mother and daughter row. They’re always getting at each other, you know. Well, I’m damned sure I’m not coming in to visit her again, only to be shouted at.’

He spoke in an aggrieved tone, and stood up to go.

I told him that his mother was angry because she was afraid, and that she would probably get over it. I expressed the hope that he and Evelyn would both visit, because everyone needs the family to be there at the end of life.

Immediately after visiting hour had finished, Mrs Cunningham called me over.

‘Get the consultant,’ she demanded, ‘I must speak to him. Get him at once.’

I explained that a consultant is not on call at a moment’s notice,
but that I would ask him to come as soon as he was free.

She exploded with rage, and was very insulting to me, and to the medical hierarchy in general. She was creating a scene, and this was having a bad effect on the other women in the ward. I began to think that we might have to put her in a side ward after all.

‘Well, don’t let my son or daughter in. That’s an order,’ she shouted.

The Chief came after supper, and I told him of the afternoon’s events. He sat, tapping his watch, before he spoke.

‘The Euthanasia Society has gained in influence as medical knowledge has been able to prolong life which, it must be said, is not always a good life. I will speak to her, and I would like you to be with me, as a witness, if nothing else. We cannot have this conversation in the middle of the ward, so ask her to come here, please.’

Mrs Cunningham came to the office. I could see as she walked that her son was absolutely right, and that she was a dying woman.

She confronted the Chief even before she sat down.

‘Don’t you listen to my son or my daughter. They’ll tell you not to let me have any more treatment. They hate me. They want to get rid of me, especially Evelyn.’

She blurted it out, hardly pausing for breath.

‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m as strong as I ever was, but they want me out of the way. Don’t you listen to them.’

She jabbed her stick in the air to emphasise her words.

The Chief said that he would always listen first to the wishes of a patient.

‘But what if I can’t express myself? Then they will sneak in and twist your mind. They are very persuasive, and not to be trusted. I don’t trust doctors; they are all as bad as each other. I’ve signed up. They will use it. That’s what you want, the whole damned lot of you. I know what you’re up to. You can’t fool me.’

She was becoming irrational. Evidently this business of an advance directive had been playing on her mind to such an extent that she couldn’t think
straight.

The Chief explained that an advance directive had no legal validity whatsoever, and was certainly not binding on the medical profession; but either she did not hear him, or could not take it in.

‘The best treatment is what I demand. Forget James and Evelyn. They are ignorant, prejudiced, stupid …’ She rambled on, repeating herself, contradicting herself. We listened to her tirade, and the Chief again told her that she would have the best treatment available. Unconvinced, but unable to say more, she returned to her bed.

From then on, Mrs Cunningham’s whole existence became paralysed by fear. Her fear of death amounted almost to madness, and an overwhelming feeling of helplessness rushed in upon her. She was lost; she panicked; she prayed to a God she did not believe in; she lost control; she screamed for advanced medical treatment, and railed that treatment was being withheld because James and Evelyn had influenced the doctors. Craven fear had roused her whole mental machinery to a state of agitation that had taken away all fatigue, all possibility of sleep, all sense of self-respect. It was a distress impossible to soothe. Drugs could have helped her, but if we went near her with a syringe she screamed uncontrollably that it was all part of the plan to do her in. She was beside herself with terror, and this reduced her to a jabbering wreck, devoid of all self-control and dignity.

We had to move her to a side ward, because of the effect she was having on other patients. She shouted that she knew why we had put her there; it was because of hospital secrecy. She knew what we were up to; all doctors were rogues and nurses were hand in glove with them. She demanded to see her lawyer, the police, her Member of Parliament. Her mind was obsessed, and nothing could divert it.

The laboratory report on the blood tests returned. Widespread metastases of the cancer were evident. The radium treatment should be started, but the Chief hesitated, because with the malignancy circulating through her entire body via the venous and lymphatic systems, it would probably be ineffective and would be
distressing to her for no benefit gained. But she became hysterical and screamed that we were
deliberately
withholding the treatment she had been promised, and which it was her right to receive. So the Chief ordered a low dose, by way of a placebo. But when she was wheeled on a trolley to the treatment rooms, her fear became uncontrollable. In those days the radium treatment was carried out in a huge machine, into which the patient was wheeled, and the machine closed. She got halfway in, and then panicked. She shouted that we were putting her into a coffin to dispatch her while she was still alive. She thrashed about, and beat the sides, screaming for release. All the radiographers could do was return her to the ward.

Poor lady. She was so weak, and she was dying, but fear possessed her and filled her failing body with an agitation that allowed her no rest, day or night. She was suspicious of everyone, and the room seemed reduced in size by her wakeful, watchful eyes. It was pitiful to see, and impossible to calm. She would take no drugs, not even sleeping pills, and then she accused us of withholding essential treatment.

Illness is a revelation; one sees things one has never seen before. We saw, in Mrs Cunningham, a manic fear of death, which was not fear of cancer, because she did not believe she had it. Her fear was that death would be forced upon her because that was what she had always said she wanted. Day by day, hour by hour, she anticipated it, and the waiting nearly drove her mad. In fact, I think it
did
drive her mad.

Illness can also bring a flowering of love between people. That is one of the reasons why nursing is such a wonderful profession – we see these things. But for poor Mrs Cunningham, love was denied her at the end. She was convinced that her son and daughter were going to implement the advance directive that she had signed and re-signed. The idea was nonsense, of course, everyone knew that, but you cannot reason with obsession.

Evelyn came to the hospital several times, but her mother would not see her, and told the staff to ‘drive her away’. True to his word, James did not come again, but I have memories of Evelyn’s sad
face as I took her final gifts of flowers and a bed jacket, and told her that she could not be admitted. The reconciliation between mother and daughter, which would have eased Mrs Cunningham’s last days and consoled Evelyn in her bereavement, was denied them both.

Mrs Cunningham’s mind and body could not withstand so much tension. The frenzied activity wore her out. She could no longer shout and scream, but she sobbed out of a sense of injury and injustice. She called upon God and wailed for mercy. Her terrified state of mind pursued her into her sleep and dreams, for the night nurse reported that she often woke in the night with a dreadful start and wept convulsively.

Mercifully, it did not last too long. Gradually, her mind became clouded, as it usually does as death approaches. Movement, speech, perhaps even thought, required more effort than she could command. Her breathing, circulation, and metabolism slowed down. Death overtook her, and calmed her, and, at the end, she learned that there was nothing to
fear.

‘Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.’

—
Vaclav Havel, playwright and

President of the Czech Republic,
1993—2003

The greater one’s experience of death, the more cautious one becomes in making a pronouncement. The ways in which people face death are as different as the ways in which we all live.

Perhaps I should qualify this statement. The last ten to thirty hours before death are very much the same; a semi-awareness of space and time and people takes over, leading into a different level of existence, accompanied by peace and tranquillity. If left undisturbed, death is not an agony. It is the earlier period, the weeks or months, or even years of illness or ageing that are so different.

Mr Anderson was consultant to a firm of international financiers. He was a very successful man, confident, self-contained, a person who needed very little amusement or even warmth – his work was enough, and filled most of his time and his thoughts. For relaxation he liked to go long-distance trekking in mountain ranges, sleeping in wooden huts and scrambling over rocks and riverbeds. It was a total change from his business life, and kept him fit. His private life was less successful. He had married a pretty girl whom he thought he loved, mainly because it seemed the right thing to do, but he had no idea how to handle women, and his wife soon left him for another man. He was not particularly upset, and enjoyed the freedom of a bachelor’s life.

He had never had a day’s illness, and prided himself on keeping fit through his walking, a sensible diet, no smoking and moderate alcohol intake. He had no time for some of his business colleagues who ate and drank too much, smoked like chimneys, went everywhere by car or taxi and then complained about feeling out of shape. ‘What do they expect?’ he said to himself.

When he developed stomach pains and felt sick, he was slightly
offended – it shouldn’t be happening, he thought, so for a week he cut out rich meats and fats from his diet and ate only salads. Things seemed to improve, and he was satisfied that he had nipped the problem in the bud. But a week or two later the nausea returned, along with heartburn. He had heard of something called a hiatus hernia, but lots of people get hernias of one sort or another, so he was not particularly worried. He felt well in other ways, work was busy and he was planning his first trek in the foothills of the Himalayas. Life was too full and too interesting to bother about a little heartburn.