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It's Time to go
Author: Susan Hamilton
I stood watching the shallow movements of Clare's chest. Her body had the substance of tissue paper, frail, diaphanous. I glanced at the photograph on the bedside table of a laughing, vibrant young woman, hugging her two daughters. You would never recognise the skeletal woman, barely making an impression on the mattress on which she lay, as the same person in the picture. It was hard to believe it was only taken a matter of months ago. Clare's cancer had been particularly aggressive.
As the doctor entered she slowly turned her head towards him and nodded. "It's time now, enough is enough" her voice barely audible. I looked at the doctor, feeling confused but knowing deep down what was happening. It was time for Clare's morphine and she needed so much now to manage her pain, even in her drug-induced sleep her face was contorted in agony. She'd made her decision and had a sympathetic doctor who was prepared to put his career on the line for what he believed was a patients right.
Her family were not coping well. Her husband believed fervently in the sanctity of life, it was God's will to take his wife's life and he was horrified when she pleaded to be allowed to die with dignity. She wanted to end things sooner rather than later but he believed she would be committed to everlasting purgatory if this happened. God gave life and only he should take it away.
Her girls could not understand why the family dog was not allowed to suffer and the vet ‘put Buster to sleep' to end his pain, but the doctors could not do the same for their Mum. It was tearing them apart to see this person lying in the hospital who was supposed to be their Mum, but as Julie told me, their Mum was the laughing woman in the photo, not the empty husk I was now looking at.
"You don't have to stay nurse, you may not agree with this," the doctor said gently. I found myself rooted to the spot. "I'll stay". Clare held my hand and actually told me to be brave! The doctor started her injection; it just went on longer than usual. So simple, so devastating, so necessary. I just felt her hand go limp and I swear she had a smile on her face, peace at last, a state I had never had the privilege of witnessing before. The doctor looked at me and his eyes spoke a thousand words and I knew the patient's record would read differently to the reality. This way all the family would heave a sigh of relief, knowing the end had finally come. But I wondered how easy I would rest in my bed that night, wrestling with a conscience that still knows there are no easy answers and does not actually believe there ever will be.
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