A DEATH TO DIE FOR Read online

  Some time went by, I found out later that when the consultant found Helen he informed her of the diagnosis and she had understandably dissolved into floods of tears but thankfully she had several colleagues on shift that afternoon who rallied around to support her.

  All the time the nurse stood by the bed but it didn’t really register with me what she was doing or anything she said, my eyes could not focus as my vision was a blur because of the tears and I had gone deep inside my self as I was trying to make sense of all this madness.

  I had always said to people that my view on life was pretty simple really and that the only certainties were death and the tax man and so you must live life to the full until you die. I had had a good life, I always had a roof over my head and good food on the table, I had never had to go to war (although I got pretty close in June 1967) and had always had someone who loved me so when the great reaper came to call he wouldn’t get a complaint from me.

  But now here it was, the end was less than three months away and my head was full of questions, what was it going to be like, was it going to be painful, would I be aware of it coming would there be a bright shining light, would I see my son and parents again how would I get Helen through it, had I left her with the financial where withal to carry on, how would it effect Jim’s ‘A’ levels would he be able to get a dispensation because his Dad had died…… would I be able to die with dignity or be a snivelling wreck, my mind just wouldn’t stop whirring I could almost feel the cogs going round.

  And then through the blur I saw movement coming towards me, it was Helen in her blue uniform, as she got closer my eyes managed to focus on her, I could see that she had been crying as there were tear stains on her tunic top, she had a ball of tissues pressed against her upper lip with her right hand and her eyes were brim full of crystal clear liquid, as she reached for me and as she leaned forward the pent up tears escaped her lower eyelids and fell on the bed cover just in front of me.

  She could hardly speak, but in a quivering voice she managed to say ‘My poor darling’ and then she placed her arm around my shoulder and drew herself to me so that our foreheads were touching the tears came freely from both of us, I reached out with my good arm and tried to pull her close, to offer some reassurance but there was none to be had and so we stayed like this, lost in each other while the consultant and the nurse looked on.

  After a short while we pulled apart, Helen dabbed at her eyes with the tissues and then reached out and wiped my cheeks which were wet from my own tears, the consultant came round and stood at the side of us, he said in a quiet voice that there was little that he could say that would help at this time but if we had any questions that he would try to answer them, we said at the moment we just wanted to be together on our own, so he said that he would leave us for a while with the curtains closed.

  Helen and I just looked at each other for a moment and then I asked her what she had been told, she explained what the consultant had said but to my bewilderment he had told her that it was unlikely that I would make it to Christmas, I could hardly believe that in a short space of time someone had just wiped two months off of the rest of my already much reduced lifespan.

  Helen moved closer, she put her arms around me under my arms and with my right arm I moved my paralysed left arm onto her shoulder and then put my right arm around her shoulders and grabbed my left hand so that we could hold each other tightly, Helen’s head was on my chest just under my chin and I could feel her sobbing, my eyes filled with tears while all the time I was doing little coughs trying to keep my throat clear and desperate not to have a coughing fit that would disturb the moment.

  I do not know how much time had passed but eventually the consultant along with a nurse reappeared inside the curtains and said that I would be moved from the admissions ward to a medical ward along the corridor.

  We reluctantly released our embrace and Helen wiped her eyes again and then got off the bed, she collected all of my belongings from the bedside cupboard while the nurse assisted me out of the bed, she helped me to put on the hospital slippers and a gown and asked me if I felt that I could walk or did I need a wheelchair.

  I was stood, balanced and although a little fuzzy I could still put one foot in front of the other and so I said that I would walk, although it proved to be more of a shuffle and so this little knot of people consisting of me, Helen, the consultant and the nurse moved slowly the short distance along the corridor to the medical ward.

  It was about 4.30pm when I was shown to my new bed at the end of the ward by the window, well a not so new bed actually, it was a sad old bed which seemed to droop down at one corner and not at all like the other beds I had passed, I have to say it looked like I felt - old and broken.

  The nurse sat me on the edge of the bed and the consultant asked her to fetch an ‘obs’ station to check my blood pressure and said that I would be connected to a saline drip to stop me dehydrating, while he told me this Helen busied herself putting my bits and pieces in the bedside cupboard and then came round and sat on the bed beside me, she reached out and gently took hold of my hand and although she bravely tried to smile and comfort me her tear filled eyes showed the turmoil she was going through.

  Helen said that as much as she did not want to leave she needed to go as Jim would be getting home from college and she would have to sit down and explain to him what the consultant had told her, she handed me my mobile phone so that I could phone her if I needed to call her back to the hospital urgently but otherwise she would be back later with Jim and after a tearful goodbye she walked out of the ward.

  This was the first of many times that I wondered if I would ever see her again.

  Because I was still prone to coughing fits, when the nurse came to connect the saline drip to my cannula we agreed that I should keep my gown on so that I could sit out in the chair next to the bed and once she had finished I was able to fully take in my surroundings for the first time.

  I remember it as a six bed ward, in the bed opposite was a old emaciated poorly man who seemed unaware of where he was and who kept calling out in a strained and pitiful way, in the bed next to me the occupant was on his side with his back to me and the bedcovers pulled high so that only a tuft of hair was visible on the pillow. Just then at the far end of the room a nurse entered the ward responding to an alarm from the bed occupant nearest the door, I can’t fully recall who occupied the other bed.

  As I watched the goings on I was approached by a nurse who said that she had been asked to carry out a swallow test on me, she carried a small tray with a spoon and a small jar of jam on it, she explained that I had to show her if I could manage to swallow. The nurse took the lid off of the jar and took a small spoonful of jam, she asked me to open my mouth and said that I should suck the jam off of the spoon and try to swallow it.

  You would think that having not eaten anything for so long that I would been ravenous for anything that passed my lips, however whether my condition had altered my taste buds or not I don’t know but the jam tasted horrible and it seemingly took forever to get it to slide down my throat but eventually she was able to record in my notes that a successful swallow had occurred.

  I felt that I just wanted close myself off from everything around me, so I stood up took a deep breath and remembering to wheel the drip stand around with me I drew the curtains and then sat on the sagging corner of the bed, I knew that Helen would be letting the family know what was happening but I also knew that she was going to need a lot of support over the coming days and weeks.

  Now for the first time since the shock of the news of my impending death I was on my own, the surreality of my situation started to bear down on me, there were the noises of the ward going on outside my little curtain enclosure, people talking and moving about, the clatter of trolleys and a fairly regular plaintive cry from the old chap opposite, occasionally nurses would trespass into my private world to ask how I was getting on but I did not feel able to respond.

  Because it was al
most impossible for me to make myself heard over a telephone I sent a text to my younger brother Andy, I don’t do predictive text so I input the following in full, “Dear Andy, I’m in hospital, things are worse than first thought, please come urgently. Geoff” within a matter of seconds I got a reply phone call from him wanting to know what was going on, in a rasping voice and in between coughs I managed to give him the gist of what had happened and that I needed to see him, he said that he would be leaving work soon and would go home to let [his wife] Sue know what was happening and then come straight from Fareham to the hospital, he reckoned it would take him about two and a half hours.

  Being somewhat cocooned gave me the opportunity to think and gradually the realisation dawned on me that I had to make a decision, probably the most important decision left for me to make and I knew in my mind I had to do this before I met my brother face to face, how was I going to cope with the end of my life, could I be strong for those around me or would I let my wait for departure dissolve into a drawn out recriminatory, blame the world for my ills session, all I knew for sure was that I wanted to die with dignity and I think that it was this determination which set the course for the following days and weeks.

  By now time had moved on, I would guess that it was about 6.30pm, I was still sat on the bed when there was the rustling of someone trying to find the gap in the curtain and then Helen appeared in my world again with Jim at her side, although Helen found the strength to smile I could instantly see from Jim’s expression that the leap in thought process from Dad who was ill to Dad who was dying had taken a lot out of him, his eyes were puffy and ringed in red.

  Jim came and sat on the bed next to me, not sure what to say or do, Helen carefully worked her way around the stand and drip feed and sat in the chair, she gently took hold of my left hand which had the cannula in it and I put my right arm around Jim’s shoulders, he said the phrase that I would hear many times, “I don’t know what to say”, how could anyone under such circumstances, then he said “I love you Dad” and with that we all dissolved into tears.

  Helen managed to grab a handful of tissues from the box on the over bed table and hand them around and as we all blew our noses in unison, the strangest thing happened, we started to chuckle through the tears in the way that families do, I again put my arm around Jim and pulled him tight and said “I love you too son” while trying to squeeze Helen’s hand at the same time with my weak left arm.

  Although the mood had picked up a bit, the weight of the situation soon bore down on us again and the smiles quickly faded, Jim asked how was I feeling, I managed to wheeze to him that it wasn’t too bad at the moment apart from not being able to speak, the frequent coughing fits and not being able to use my left arm properly.

  However inside myself I actually felt that the release of tension had lifted the black fog which had enveloped me for the past hour, Helen unpacked some more bits that she thought that I might need, some underwear, a pair of lightweight loose walking trousers, my slippers and a couple of sport shirts and I asked Jim if he would pull back the curtains.

  Helen said that she needed to go to see her office manager to let her know what was happening so that they knew she would not be coming in to work for the foreseeable future.

  Not long afterwards Andy arrived at the door of the ward having made very good time, he paused to register where I was and then walked quickly towards me, Jim helped to me to stand and making sure he did not catch the drip feed Andy embraced me, I managed to raise my right arm and hold him tightly and we patted each others backs in the way that men do, he used that phrase again and as we pulled apart, we both had tears welling up in our eyes he said that he had been in touch with Helen on his mobile while driving up and knew roughly what the situation was and what could he do to help.

  Andy was stood in front of me with Jim stood just behind him, I said to Andy as best I could that if what I have been told was true then things would quickly be out of my hands as I would be on serious pain killing drugs and wouldn’t know much about what was going on, I told him that I loved Helen dearly and wanted to be with her and I was prepared to undergo some treatment if it would give me more time with her and Jim but I told him that the most important thing for me was that I should die with what ever dignity could be afforded to me and I asked him to solemnly promise that he would help me to do this.

  Without a pause for thought Andy said that he would do whatever he could to uphold my wish and with that I looked over his shoulder, Jim had heard what I had said and was surveying the scene in front of him intently, I caught his eyes with mine, raised my eyebrows and nodded to him to see if he had taken in the meaning behind my words, with tears in his eyes he nodded back to me which said to me that he understood.

  Helen came back to the ward and we all stood and looked at the lop sided bed, Andy and Jim set about it with some gusto no doubt venting some of their pent up emotional energy and after a couple of strong tugs and a few kicks whatever was holding the corner of the bed down suddenly released itself and the bed became level again, another small victory which allowed us to smile.

  It was now close to 8.00pm and it had been a very long and trying day for everyone which showed in all our faces, I was particularly tired and as Helen had already arranged for Andy to stay overnight to save him having to drive back South I said that they should get off home and after some tearful goodbyes they slowly left the ward, briefly waving before they disappeared along the corridor.

  I saw my mobile phone on the bedside table, so manoeuvring the drip stand along with me I carefully moved around the bed and picked it up, using just my good hand I managed to text to Helen’s phone “Missing you already”, within a few moments my phone bleeped and message appeared on the screen I clicked on select and “Missing you too, all my love XXX”.

  I worked my way back round the bed and sat on the new restored corner, it was only now that Helen had gone from view that I realised that at each parting I would have no way of knowing if we would see each other again and more tears fell from my bowed head forming wet patches on the floor where they fell.

  Through the tears I noticed a blurred white shape approaching and as I looked up I could just make out the face of a nurse stood in front of me, there must have been a staff changeover I thought, she bent over and placed her hand gently on my shoulder and quietly asked me what was the matter, she had genuine compassion in her voice and through the sniffs and the sobs I managed to squeeze out what had gone on and how low I felt, I asked her if she could please pull the curtains around the bed as I just wanted to be on my own.

  She said we might be able to do better than that and turned to walk away, I watched her disappear out of the ward and the next thing I heard was a clap of hands and her voice calling to the other night staff, I couldn’t catch what she was saying but about twenty minutes later she returned with two other nurses, they gathered my belongings from the bedside locker and the nurse in white helped me to my feet, she then put my gown around my shoulders and with her pushing the drip stand along side me we slowly paraded out of the ward and along the corridor in the opposite direction that I had come earlier.

  This odd little group processed passed the admissions ward and then passed another ward, in both heads turned with inquisitive eyes to see what we were doing.

  We came to a set of fire doors across the corridor, there was a window and an open door in the wall to my left and the nurse in white lead me into a private room with an all singing all dancing bed, an ensuite shower and toilet.

  In the far wall there was a window with the curtains drawn shut, the over bed light was dimmed, the nurse in white said that this room had become free and I was the one in most need of it’s quiet surroundings.

  My belongings were stowed away once more and the nurse in white helped me get on the bed and moved the drip stand near to me, she piled up the pillows behind me so that I was sat upright and showed me how the emergency call button worked, she then asked if I wanted to have an oxygen
nose tube, when I said yes I thought it might help she went to locate one which she duly did and on her return fixed it into the wall socket behind the bed and fitted it to my face.

  This was a surreal time for me and my religious education had pretty much petered out after I left Sunday school but I am pretty sure I know what to look for in angels and this apparition in white seemed to have all the right attributes even though I was unable tick the wings box.

  The nurse in white drew the curtains to the corridor window and shut the door on her way out, for the first time in three days I was left entirely on my own, I was too tired to think and quickly fell asleep, however it wasn’t long before I came crashing awake again gasping for air as though I was drowning and after gaining some composure I decided to pull a blanket around myself and sit in the lounge chair with my head laid on the side of the bed and like this I managed some sleep.

  I never asked the nurse her name and don’t remember ever seeing her again after this happened but I very much appreciated what she had done for me which must have been near to a miracle in today’s health service.

  Wednesday 30th November 2005