Pari was one of those friends that embrace you with their
care and tenderness. She was full of a
radiant laughter and good humour. It
encompassed all who came into her circle and she allowed it to embrace everyone
she came across. As if to say, you are worthy
of my love, whoever you are! I met her
at a strange time in her life when she went back to being a student after years
of working as a District nurse in a rural community. She sweated blood over those first assignments at university but,
after discovering her brain had not atrophied in the proceeding decades, she
took to the course and university with delight.
She told me of a client, Suzy in England who she visited in
her role as district nurse. This woman
was in the terminal stages of cancer and required increasing doses of
palliative medicine to keep the pain at bay.
It was Pari's job to make sure her passing was as pain free as
possible. Pari said she remembered
thinking that endings are always hard but no one should face them alone. It requires courage to live and to die, especially while everyone around you is living and you
are facing death. Suzy had it in spades and was resigned to her life
ending. Medical treatments had been
applied and endured to no avail. So
instead she was planning her departure and with two young children and a
husband there was a lot to think about.
Towards the end she was moved into a special unit in the local
hospital. It was thought easier to give
regular pain medication and for the family a valuable break from heart breaking
24 hour care.
Pari also visited her in hospital. The health service has now forgotten such continuity of care is
vital. Having the same district nurse
who has watched your journey from health to illness and held your hand during
chemotherapy, hope, radiotherapy, hairlessness and final acceptance that no
more can be done is a comfort. Not some
new stranger who knows only this sad end game of your life. Pari watched the disease’s progression with
growing realization that the end was very close.
An intense weariness and sleepiness in Suzy became ever present. There was no more fight in her left, just a
desire for the whole thing to be over.
Then, disaster happened. As Pari
said, you cannot imagine anything this bad getting worse but it did.
Her husband decided he could not take anymore of death and illness and loss. He arranged for
the two children to be put into social care and left.
When the news was broken to Suzy of her husband leaving and her children
being placed into social care, it was whispered gradually to avoid traumatising
her. Once, the message had been given
Pari watched as her sick friend stirred as if from a deathly
stillness. Her face became mobile, her
arm movements more deliberate. The
transformation continued throughout the day and it ended with her discharging
herself, against all advice, while arranging her children to be taken out of care and back to the
family home. As Pari visited, Suzy
literally dragged herself from the sofa to the sink making huge vegetable/fruit
drinks in a blender. She managed the
children and when they slept she would weep on the large sofa and rage against
her illness. Pari had never seen such true grit. There was a steely determination
to persevere, to beat this thing. Incredibly, Suzy did. She
lived a further eight years, long enough to start her own successful restaurant in the local
village and bring all her children into young independent teenagers. For Pari it was a constant reminder that we
know so little of the unbelievable reserves people have within them. Of how the mind, once set on a path, can indeed
do the impossible.
