I feel like unloading; take or leave with no hard feelings…
Since my mother and grandfather died within 3 weeks of each other around Christmas ‘06-January ‘07, I’ve been visiting my grandmother weekly, first at her retirement village apartment, then in her aged-care hostel room, and lately, twice weekly, in a series of public and private hospitals. It has been warming (and wearing) to be able to help, but it’s painful watching my beloved Granny, alone in a way she has never been in her life until now, endure bravely and more or less stoically, as her once-active body and lively mind fall slowly apart around her wretched, unfailing, steadfastly beating heart.
“I wish the good Lord would take me now!” she has said to me, leaning forward on her walker with subdued but defiant fierceness – and other words to similar effect on several other occasions… and here is where I go into a good solid ptooey of a dummy-spit about the health system and the, ahem, ‘medical industry’.
Granny, who as a war widow (Grandad was TPI) has all her medical costs paid by the DVA, has entered the age and condition in which one is constantly monitored and assisted through the day’s basic functions – there being little else you can manage, and you manage basic functions by no means well either – while your pain levels, though constant, are minimised and your general health is kept at its medicated best. The little declines common at this age – which if left to accelerate might lead to merciful release – become an administrative issue: when the patient slips from Level X care needs to Level Y care needs – from, say, being able to go to the toilet without assistance, to needing help – she must be moved from the hostel to the nursing home. You can’t flip back and forth over that line, even if medical policy actually contributes to your seesawing health. Besides, already you’re a mere husk, wretchedly disabled, eating without relish, shitting without control, decaying without privacy. No-one wants to end up bedridden as well, condemned to total dependence on overworked staff who (though many of them are absolute saints) cannot really respect you for what you used to be – but cannot help you towards death either. So you must be maintained at Level X as long as possible, until eventually you slip from their loving pharmaceutical clutch. It’s hardly surprising you’ll likely start to go batty in the process.
There is no way out of the extended wait, for her or me. She is soon to have a hip replacement – at 90 – because although at first she said no, I’m too old, it’s a waste of resources, a surgeon convinced her it will lower her pain levels – though he couldn’t guarantee it would enable her to walk and so stay semi-independent. She tells me she’s hoping the anaesthetic will kill her, though the doctor has assured her that doesn’t happen any more. A modest but staunch old-style Protestant, she lacks the courage of her more nihilistic convictions – in the face of her lifelong upright obedience – and probably didn’t make her wish clear to the doctor. Sadly, even if she did, that was the wrong doctor. She needs to tell her GP, not the surgeon, but such refinements are beyond her understanding these days. And I, of course, can do nothing but ease her daily (or rather bi-weekly) way until time wins or desperation gives her courage to tell every medico she sees.
But how long, forgodsake, how long? This vapid, industrial catering to the basest instinct – shared by the lowest of animate organisms – demeans us all. And not just when we reach decrepitude: frankly, I can think of about a million better things to do with my forties than spending them caring like the family spinster for someone who, to tell the godshonest truth, would rather not be here any more anyway. Poor Granny – Mum was so much better made for this task than I; she would’ve buoyed Granny in her faith, and she wouldn’t have been oppressed by the stupid, purposeless, bureaucratically perverse pointlessness of it all – and the gloomy awareness that one sterling reason Granny is still alive is that people, industries and corporations are making good money out of her misery.
The rabid right claim euthanasia – by definition a ‘good death’ – is a crime. How ironic. I think the lack of a clean, simple, properly counselled, supervised and legislated option to end your life is a crime.
