Lung Cancer

Yes when you first get the news that you have got an incurable cancer it's just numbing, you really don't know how you're going to cope, it's, nobody wants to be a coward but when you're told that you're dying and there's nothing you can do about it you don't want to be a hero either.  

It's, I suppose when the doctor looked at me and said that I was dying I could have looked back at him and said "Well so are you." We are, all of us are dying but what they've actually done really is taken some years off me. But in the end everybody faces death, everybody. Not everybody gets the opportunity that I've had to organise my life and my death come to that. I've organised my own funeral, and if I'd have got killed in a car crash I wouldn't have them opportunities. So I think you've got to be philosophical about it really and say that you was going to die anyway and you've lost perhaps twenty years may be. But, and they was probably the worst twenty years of your life anyway when you get old and decrepit and that, so I won't have that to worry about.
 

And one thing which does really worry me is the pain, not suffering to get better, but suffering if, you know, if I come to [a] stage where they can't do anything for me. And I have asked my children and my husband to put me out of my misery, because I don't want to suffer, and I'm sure if they think enough about me, they'll not let me suffer. Because I wouldn't let any of mine suffer. And I don't think it's necessary. Because if doctors know that you've come to state of no return, then all you're doing is suffering, then I honestly think they should give you a needle.

Have you ever brought this up with any doctors or nurses?

No. I have with me family, me family know how I feel. And I think it's because I've a cancer, you know, because I watched me sister die with cancer, and it's alright people saying they can control it. Through my experience of it, I haven't seen where they can fully control it. So nobody's convinced me yet. And if my, I come to stage because my cancer comes back or whatever, I don't want to live. There's no point, because you're putting your family through agony as well, just watching you day by day, and I wouldn't want it. 

How have the family reacted to all this?

They haven't, actually, they've just listened to me. They've never commented yes or no, but I would hope that something has sunk in. And I do feel that they wouldn't want me to suffer, I know that, and I know that my children wouldn't. And I know that they couldn't sit there and watch me suffer. They'd have to do something.

Is that your main worry, or fear?

That's my main worry about cancer. I just hope that it never happens, but you never know what's going to happen, do you? But let's face it, having cancer, it does put in your mind that a time's going to come when you're going to suffer. But I honestly think in this day and age, when people have come to that stage, it shouldn't happen. 

I think that if my quality of life is good, they can, I'll have as much treatment as they want to give me. But when my quality of life has finished, that's it, I want to go. While I can walk about and do what I do and, you know' But as soon as that's gone, that's it. End. 

So did you start looking for more information about lung cancer after you had the diagnosis?

Yes I did. I read a couple of books and read a load of leaflets and it was really at that stage that I sort of made up my mind well, I've got two options I can sit down, do as little as possible, be waited on and wait for the cancer to take me out, or, I can pretend I haven't got it, knowing full well that I have, and try to live my life as normally as possible and do what I've always done, and that's a decision that I took. It was one of the reasons why no one was told other than my immediate family, the children. And they were desperately upset when they found out. They've come to terms with it, it's a bit of a catch 22 because the more I carry on as normal perhaps the less serious it makes it appear to them and perhaps when the end comes it might be more of a shock than it might have been. The difficulty with cancer is knowing how it's going to take you out at the end. I mean obviously your condition is going to deteriorate, I assume you'll get more and more breathless, that you'll be bedridden, perhaps that's a slower introduction into the final end for the family. But I believe there are other occasions when perhaps it could create a heart attack and I'd just be gone, which would be better for me.

Mmm, have you ever asked people about that sort of thing?

I, in addition to all my hospital appointments and out-patient appointments I see my GP on a three monthly basis to see how I'm going on. And we had this particular discussion because I said "What's going to happen when the hospitals can no longer give me any more treatment that's going to benefit me, will I be sent back to you to be finished off?" That was my particular terminology to him and it actually made him laugh which was quite good and he said, 'Yes.' And I said, "Well the only concern I've got with that is I've heard the most horrendous stories of people being in hospital in the late stages of cancer, morphine has run out and there's no doctor to sign any more morphine, to sign a prescription form and people are laying there actually screaming and wriggling in agony." He did admit that he'd heard those particular stories himself but there is now specialists who are specialists in pain management and certainly they would be involved at the end. It again begs the question how long have you got? I think from radiotherapy they reckon one to five years. We're all individuals you can't tell.

So what I do is I live every day, not as if it's my last day but just every day as I would normally live it.

And then you went on to see the consultant about the radiotherapy, and you said how devastating that was?

Yes.

And can you say a little bit about' you said there was somebody else in the room. Can you say a bit about that, you haven't mentioned that before?

No. There was a person there, a lady. I cannot honestly remember if I was asked permission or not, or, I mean they must have said who she was but I really wasn't taking it in. And afterwards she took me to another room and, she was a special cancer nurse from a local hospice, which shocked me quite a lot. She offered me a long weekend in the hospice, which, you know, I was just, well, I was very shocked with the whole thing. 

I think she used the word 'when' I need medication I can go into the local hospice for about seven days while they work it all out, which to me was an awful, awful shock because I was not ill. Why would I want to go into a hospice? I was not on any drugs, so there was no way that I felt ill at all. I was coping with things, so, quite, well, I dismissed it completely. But it broke me. I'm not a person that can easily be broken but it actually broke me, and coming out of the hospital I was very, very, very upset thinking that I was going to die the next week. The following day the hospice phoned me up, a different person, asking me if I'd like to go and meet the staff at the hospice, which again I replied, no. I'm too strong, you know, this was too sudden, no one had explained anything to me, why would I need to go to a place like that? So the answer was no. It did almost totally destroy me, I lost quite a lot of will at that time.