She can be like a storm, today she is a strong and raging storm. The strength is inner fortitude, the rage is anger. The characteristics unleashed today as a perfect storm have brewed a lifetime.
She’s angry and raining down tears. She want’s to die, she’s had enough. She has been in hospital for 7 weeks. The operation was this week, she feels worse than before, the patient has lost patience…
Dark clouds circle and our non-linear conversations span hours.
It was a success, says the doctor.
She says “I can’t bear it any more.”
“Tell me one thing that’s good about me…”
I tell her ten.
“Get a nurse ask them to give me something, please help me end it.”
The nurse can’t do that, it’s illegal.
“It can’t be illegal, please tell the nurse.”
A nurse comes, not on her shift she explains. That isn’t why she studied nursing she claims.
“You wouldn’t do this to your dog. You wouldn’t keep Shortie alive, you wouldn’t do this to Shortie…”
I wouldn’t, and I plan to make sound decisions for Shortie’s end of life when I need to. My Vet, her doctor, will support my choice.
“I have nothing to live for”
I tell her I love her.
“If you love me, do this one thing for me. Go upstairs and tell the doctors I can’t bear this anymore.”
No.
“Please ask the doctor, I don’t want to live like this. I can’t.You have to do this for me.”
Three doctors came by and try to placate her. They named her state ‘delirium’. One doctor told her she is much better. “No I’m not” she wept. He told her that’s because she can’t remember how sick she was before. The doctor’s left.
She was not calmed.
Hours pass and her anger doesn’t subside. She is distressed, she hasn’t planned her funeral, she’s not prepared. We plan it together. No flowers, no music (really, not a note of a threnody – I couldn’t convince her), no church, a simple casket. Cremation.
I promise.
She’s ill and apparently gripped by delirium. For days, she rages, argues, begs, entreats. I would say she was beside herself, only it was more like she was inside herself.
She is despairing, her frustration with her illness and the medical system manifests as helplessness and is expressed as anger.
Gradually the storm subsides and she stops speaking of dying. I buy her cakes, tiny petit fours, sweet things to enjoy. Normalcy reinstated, we talk of cabbages and kings. Looking through the window, we marvel at the sunshine occasionally breaking through the clouds.
The doctor had said she was delirious, was it the subject matter? Do we need to be delirious to speak of dying, to not want to live beyond an existence that can be enjoyed?
Voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal in Australia, no-one can be helped to die. Life itself is a fatal condition, and untreatable. I want to be permitted and trusted to make an informed choice. To say ‘when’ for me and for those few who who trust me with Medical Power of Attorney. I already make those decisions for some I love best.
I do want the choice to be within my power, to die quietly with medical assistance, when it is my time.