Coping With Terminal Illness

 

I was asked to join a discussion group recently about coping with terminal illness in a close friend or a relative.   I had to think long and hard before I agreed but eventually I did and in any case it was only one meeting, just one afternoon.  It couldn’t be too arduous surely? – and of course in the final analysis it wasn’t because part of me actually did want to take part in order perhaps to talk about how I could have done it better myself.   It’s safe to say we are never satisfied as to our behaviour in times of crisis.

 There were only nine of us in the group which was a relief because I had imagined thirty plus.  The youngest looked in her twenties and the oldest seemed to be me.  There was only one man and the overall mood was much more positive than I had anticipated.   The lone male was clearly more accustomed than the rest of us to discussion groups and started the ball rolling by launching into his mother’s battle with cancer of the breast which had been going on for a number of years.   Support had become second nature to him he said and largely he felt he didn’t do too bad a job because his love for his mother was great.   There were times, however, when he would have liked more help from his siblings who, all being married with young families of their own, had less time and energy for the task than he did. A woman called Mary said we could all claim busy lives and his siblings really had an obligation to lend a hand.

Joanne, whose husband had been ill for several months said that the worst thing for her was the fact that the cocktail of drugs he took had changed his personality to some extent and he no longer had any patience whatsoever for the antics of their two year old son.   In turn the child had become more demanding which meant that her own mother was clearly more reluctant to care for him than she once was.   Until then I had been quite unaware that the situation might have been much more stressful for me than it ultimately was.    Terry’s feeling was that an honest and in depth conversation was needed with the disinclined mother to encourage her to pull her socks up immediately.   Easier said than done of course.   I found myself thinking how much Himself had changed under his drug regime and how hard it had been at times to handle his variation of mood, how guilty I had felt when I knew I wasn’t handling it well.  

 Barbara who looked about sixty was supporting her daughter through a particularly aggressive illness and was to be imminently left with several teenage grandchildren to care for.   She said remaining positive was hard at times but that each member of the family was pulling their weight.   She felt that planning things to look forward to was very important and so she and the children organized coffee dates in pleasant places two or three times each week and their efforts had the desired effect upon the patient.   I recalled how when Sinead was here earlier in the year, she went above and beyond the call of duty to plan treats for her father – I remembered with fondness how much he looked forward to them, in fact how we all looked forward to them.

The afternoon passed strangely pleasantly as we drank tea, shared experiences and passed on tips for surviving what to most of us had initially seemed impossible to survive.   Jody who had been mostly silent spoke rather unexpectedly about surviving against all odds because she was that one in a million survivor.  Diagnosed with terminal cancer some twenty years previously when her baby daughter was barely six months old, against all odds she had lived on to tell her story and yet there was still no rhyme or reason for her endurance.   It had simply been that way.  We each sat quietly, lost in thought.

 Later, walking home after a shared early dinner with the group at The Paddington, I took the long route because the moon was full and the night was mild.   I wanted to reflect upon those things I had learned.   How could I have better coped with my husband’s recent illness?  His own positive attitude had eased the path for all of us – he had faith in modern medicine and expected that he would be cured.

 What made the journey easier than it might have been?   Having two of my children close by, being sure of their support and their love helped immeasurably.   It will always be hard to measure the strength and reassurance their presence crafted.  The four of us faced the ravages of the illness together.

 What made it harder than it needed to be?  The family member who chose from the inception to step away from the problem, take no part in it and pay no heed to his father’s illness, treatment and death.  That made it infinitely harder.