Marie Curie Cancer Care Collecting

Regular followers of this blog (God bless you) will know that I lost my dear husband, Phil, to cancer back in 1992 when he was only 45 and I ten years younger. There was no Marie Curie Cancer Care Hospice in Newcastle at the time and Phil passed away in the Freeman Hospital.

The doctors and, especially, the nurses at the Freeman did their best but a hospital is not that good a place to spend your dying day. It is a busy place with a constant background clamour of other people's tellies (why are they allowed so loud?), conversations, trolleys rattling, ward rounds. Even though the door to his room was shut and the blinds to the corridor closed cleaners, water jug fillers, drug and blood sample nurses kept coming in, possibly on automatic pilot. Each one would look horrified and apologise, trying to get out again as quickly and quietly as possible.

The room looked out into a light well: red brick walls, no sky, no leaves, no breeze.
So even though it was a beautiful autumn we felt none of it.
Lots of people sent cards and good wishes but there was no where to put them once they'd been read. A bed, a locker, one chair on either side of the bed, a wash-hand-basin, a bin. All very clean, clinical and cold.

There was caring, kindness, a little dignity, but no peace.

About five years later Phil's sister Pat developed a brain tumour and spent her final weeks at the Marie Curie Cancer Care Hospice. When she was well enough I visited her and oh the difference.

Her room looked out into the garden, there were French windows to let the sunshine and fresh air in. She could watch the little birds coming down to the trees and see the flowers bloom. Every surface had cards and letters bluetacked to it. The only people who came into the room were those who had real business to do so. There was a wonderful deep tranquillity about the place. I usually came away in tears, partly because we were loosing Pat but also, I must be honest, with anger and jealousy that Phil hadn't been able to have such care.

According to her Dad "Pat passed away with that cheeky grin still on her face."

I am collecting for Marie Curie Cancer Care so that more people spend their final days like Pat than Phil.

As this has been such a serious blog here is the poem which was pinned above Pat's bed and given to everyone at her funeral.