9.10.07
This is going to be a month of waiting.
Towards the end of last month N was taken by ambulance to Bristol for two doses of radiology.
Isn't it sad that we don't have a radiology unit down here yet? I know one is being built but this has brought home to me the inadequacy of our local hospital facilities. I hope that time will bring suitable improvements - if only to say patients that horrible trip to Bristol.

On N's first visit, she and her husband were picked up at around 8.45 am. By the time she'd been treated and then suffered a three hour return trip (there'd been an accident on the M5) it was 5.45 pm before they got home. What a way to treat a cancer sufferer. Nine hours of purgatory for twenty minutes of treatment. I'll say no more except that they were both totally exhausted.

But now her treatment is at an end. Nothing more can be done for her. At least N is at home but she seems to have lost the will to do anything much.
She now spends virtually all her time in bed. Her bed is in the lounge and she can watch TV just by sitting up – but she’s usually too dopey to do even that. Sleep – or dozing – is her prime occupation. Food – once her passion - is now uninteresting. She hardly seems to have the energy to eat.
The other day my wife visited them around teatime and N’s husband had cooked a shepherd’s pie – with his cooking it was hardly a mouth-watering meal – but it was food. N’s plate had about enough on it to feed a cat. She tried to sit up on the side of her bed but needed both my wife and her husband to help her. With her plate on her lap she tried to eat but, says my wife, it was as if the fork was too heavy to lift.
Then, all energy drained, N slowly toppled sideways – my wife just had the presence of mind to grab the plate as N collapsed onto her pillows. They let her rest for a while and then sat her up again but it was no good – she collapsed again, so they put her back into bed. There my wife fed her a few mouthfuls but N quickly lost interest. A few sips of water and she dozed off again.

Fortunately (in a way) with little going in, there’s little coming out, so at least her absorbent ‘nappy’ pants manage to catch and contain her urine and faeces. She makes little or no effort to get up to go to the toilet and she is simply letting herself sink deeper and deeper into lethargy.

Carers come morning and evening to clean and polish her but they don’t have an awful lot to do. A quick clean-up is all she wants to put up with – then back into her bed. She is now about to be handed over to carers from Somerset County Council who handle ‘long-term’ care. I hope they’re a pleasant as the carers who have been calling so far.

M managed to ask N what she wants to happen when she dies. After 50 years of marriage he still didn’t know her wishes! “Am I going to die?” she asked him. Her awareness is fairly limited – it matches her level of alertness. At least he now knows – she wants to be buried beside her mother.

As I said, this is going to be a month of waiting. N will continue to fade away until one day her system will fail to keep her going. When that will be is anyone’s guess. We have tried to ask the medical people how long she has – what state her cancer is at, etc. The most succinct answer I’ve received was from a Staff Nurse at Musgrove. ‘Don’t think of a cancer as being Stage 2 or Stage 3, etc – just be aware that it is inside her and growing. Just how fast it will grow is up to the individual cancer and will be affected by her radiotherapy. The radiotherapy will only slow it down (hopefully) but it isn’t a cure. You can only say how long a person has got left once the cancer spreads to vital organs. Then, and only then, is it possible to say just how long a body can survive without the use of that organ.’

We notice how N is losing condition. Her eyes seem to have become sunken and her limbs are just sticks now. Where once fat filled her out, now just folds of skin hang down – her arms, for example.
I took a few photos of her the other day, at the request of her family, and she couldn’t summons up the energy to sit up so that she could be pictured with her husband. I snapped her as she lay on her pillow – her eyes were vacant – her mouth slack.

My guess as to how long she can survive is a matter of weeks. Surely her system can’t cope with virtually no nourishment? Surely something will give up? We shall see – and with three family birthdays all coming up in the next three weeks it’s going to be touch and go as to whose celebration becomes a wake.