In the Midst of Life

price I must pay, so be it,’ and she would have turned and taken Life by the hand.

EUTHANASIA
     
    Itis surprising how many people are quite unable to talk about death, yet are happy to talk about euthanasia, and they do so with the assured confidence of one who knows all the answers. Consider the following conversation I had with a neighbour in 2008. He started:
    ‘I’ve got to go and see my mother in the local care home.’
    ‘I didn’t know she was there.’
    ‘Yes. She fell and broke her pelvis last year. She’s eighty-six. She’ll never walk again.’
    ‘That’s very sad, at that age.’
    ‘It was dreadful in the summer. That hospital’s a disgrace, you know. It ought to be closed down. She developed MRSA. We nearly lost her.’ He sighed. ‘They managed to pull her through, but her mind was gone; she doesn’t know where she is or who we are.’
    ‘It would have been better if she had died of MRSA, then?’
    ‘Oh no. I’m a great believer in euthanasia.’
    ‘But what’s the difference?’
    ‘She was suffering. It shouldn’t be allowed. But if they gave her an injection, a little prick, she wouldn’t know anything about it.’
    ‘She’s probably suffering now, in the care home.’
    ‘Yes, and it shouldn’t be allowed. Euthanasia’s the answer. I’m a firm believer in it. You want to read up about it on the web.’
    I wrote this conversation down verbatim immediately, so that I would not forget it. He was obviously shocked when I suggested that she could have died of MRSA, but then immediately said that she should be ‘euthanised’.
    In May of this year, I asked my neighbour’s permission for this story to be published, and I asked him about his mother’s present condition.
    Hesaid: ‘She is in a dementia care home. It costs us £ 500 a week. She is doubly incontinent, she can’t really walk, she has no real mental understanding. Does she have any quality of life? No.’
    I asked him, ‘Is your opinion about euthanasia the same?’
    He was very clear in his reply. ‘Oh yes, definitely. And my father had the same belief.’
    ‘And would you still say that she should have died three years ago when she broke her hip, which was the beginning of the end?’
    He was thoughtful for a very long time, and then said, ‘Yes. Euthanasia is the best, but as it’s not legally possible, I think she should have been allowed to die of the MRSA infection.’
    Later in the conversation he repeated his opinion about the hospital being a disgrace because of MRSA. This attitude is heard all too often. When I was a young nurse, old people in hospital frequently developed pneumonia and died. In the 1950s massive doses of antibiotics started to be given to kill pneumococcal organisms and every other infection. But micro-organisms are the basic life form, and, when attacked, they adapt and mutate in order to survive. This is the Darwinian law of life. So these simple cells have developed a resistance to antibiotics, and no hospital can be blamed. There have always been infections in hospitals, and always will be. These ‘super-bugs’ are no more than a variant of ‘the old man’s friend’.
    The remark that suffering shouldn’t be allowed is widely held, and many would agree with him. Yet suffering is a part of life, just as happiness is, and it is certainly not a justification for ending life. Suffering stalks the wards of all hospitals, but it is not senseless; if it was, all life would be senseless, and it is not. Indeed, suffering is a mystery that we cannot fathom, and never will be able to. The mystics embrace suffering, as one of the steps towards perfection.
    I remember a lady whom I nursed when I was at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital. I will never forget her, or what she said. She was a nun from a prestigious Roman Catholic teaching order, with schools in France, Belgium and England. She was a Latin and Greek scholar, and was deeply respected not only for herintellect but also for her teaching skills and her administrative abilities.
    She was only forty years old, but her body was inflamed and distorted by rheumatoid arthritis. Her joints were virtually locked, like those of a wooden doll, and any movement was agony for her. We made matters worse by administering quite the wrong treatment. At the time it was thought that aspirin helped arthritis. Perhaps it did, sometimes, but this lady was allergic to aspirin, and she developed a duodenal ulcer. Nothing was known about