When I asked the nurse about it, she checked the chart and said simply that the doctor had not ordered it. I immediately noticed that she was no longer being hydrated. That came in the evening of the next day, when I returned from an excursion home to feed the kids and found Suzanne had been moved to the cancer ward. The doctor told me that at this stage in the disease, it would only “feed the cancer.” When I replied that this must mean Suzanne was close to death, the doctor answered – rather implausibly, I thought – that hunger strikers often survived for many weeks.īut this wasn’t the moment of greatest shock.

And yet, it was only the next morning in Emergency that she and I met for the first time with a palliative care physician – someone specifically trained to attend to the needs of the dying.īy this point, Suzanne had not eaten in a day and a half, and I asked the doctor out of Suzanne’s hearing whether they would be feeding her intravenously.

It had been clear for at least six months that Suzanne, whose cancer had metastasized to her skull and was pressing on her brain, had entered the closing stage of her terminal illness. She was obviously quite thirsty and when I asked one of the Emergency physicians to start hydrating her intravenously, he quickly arranged for that to happen. By the time the ambulance got her to Emergency, she was largely immobile and had great difficulty speaking. Suzanne had collapsed at home after having prepared her breakfast but finding herself unable to eat. In the four years I accompanied my wife Suzanne as she endured the diagnoses and treatment for breast cancer, the most shocking moment came just five days before she died.

Does herbs etc deep sleep expire