In 2003 it went to her bones. At this point it had spread to the lining of her skull.
In 2004 it went to her liver – the seat of her terminal diagnosis. My mother’s oncologist put her on a low dose of Taxotere and Adriamycin from August 2004 to September 2004. And again – with a different regimen – from November 2004 to January 2005.
In 2005 she underwent several months of palliative chemotherapy under a lovely palliative care doctor based out of Greenslopes Private Hospital (up until this time Mum had been seen by doctors at the Wesley Hospital) who reduced the tumour in her liver and doubled the length of time she’d been given to live, which was roughly six months.
When my mother was first diagnosed she read a lot of the cancer literature. She shoved the German alternative chemotherapy trial results under the noses of her oncologist and treating doctors. She wanted them to see there were alternatives to their wisdom.
In consultations with specialist doctors I took notes while Mum talked. I asked a few questions, but overall I remained in the role of dutiful daughter. At 22 I didn’t seek out the cancer literature myself. I trusted my mother to know what she was talking about as she always had – or so I’d believed. But in hindsight, and with the knowledge gleaned from my own illness, I’m amazed at the choices she made. At the way she played Russian roulette with her own life. Of course, she didn’t see it this way.
As I’ve said, I believe fear played a huge role in directing her away from conventional medicine. When you walk into an oncology unit and get plugged into cytotoxic drugs, you are truly a cancer patient and your life is on the line for all to see – by you, most clearly of all.
I helped Mum in post-surgery recoveries, but I didn’t live nearby. I would ultimately return home. If I’d stayed closer geographically, would her decisions have been different?
When we talked about her impending death she said that I got as close as possible to knowing her without being her. She trusted me to give doctors the okay to increase her morphine or to give instructions to turn off a life support machine, if it got that far. And it did. Three days before Mum died, two doctors talked to me outside her room.
We’re going to increase the morphine to reduce your mother’s discomfort. Do you know what this means?
They both looked into my eyes for comprehension. I knew exactly what this meant. Euthanasia is hotly debated in Australia. Officially it isn’t used, but in practice it is, mainly for those in hospital dying. Doctors regularly assist them to go without pain, and more quickly.
Do you know what this means?
Yes, I do. Okay. Yes.
Your mother will slip into a coma, which’ll likely last three days, then her organs will close down and eventually her lungs will stop working. Soon after we increase her morphine she won’t be able to speak with you. If you need to speak with her before she goes into a coma, you should do it now.
In the end my mother was going to die of organ failure brought on by a medically induced coma, not by the creep of cancer’s throttling tendrils.
In the last week of Mum’s life three Canberran friends had flown up. Ngaire and two others: a psychologist and talented painter with his wife, who worked in promotions and made people welcome as if she’d harnessed some of the sun’s warmth.
The day they all went to see Mum in hospital, I took them out to lunch on a cliff top overlooking a sparkling Gold Coast beach. I’d driven down that morning with Ngaire and hadn’t had much time alone with my mother. Before I left to drive them to a seafood lunch I leant over the hospital bed and hugged Mum tightly and she said, You don’t have to go.
I smiled and replied, I know, but they’ve come all this way and I should take them out.
Mum nodded then hugged me again. You’re being so brave, my darling.
Not really, I replied, then left for lunch.
These inane words turned out to be the last I ever spoke with my mother. If only I’d known, I would never have taken her friends to lunch. I would’ve stayed and said all the bottled-up things I realised I wanted to say after she died, like: I loved my childhood, thank you for that, you were a wonderful mother and life teacher, I’m so proud of you and you’ll be okay.
When my mother died, so too did my history. I was marooned in the present without a past storyteller – my co-truthteller. Now the only past I had was my own recall of events – no new baby stories or anecdotes. Orphaned to the present.
Three days before Christmas – five years after her death – I put my mother’s collection of postcards into a display folder. They dated back to the early 1970s. On the back of a lot of them were scrawled words from men who’d loved my mother. One in particular, a man who’d met her when they were both students doing the extra postal rounds at Christmas, wrote 60 postcards. He also wrote multiple letters which hadn’t survived. My mother didn’t have much luck in her later relationships but at least she inspired great passion and love in the men she did hold close. No small thing. I remembered when she handed them to me from her stationery drawer and I said, Cool, I can use them.
Don’t you dare, she’d replied, these are my collection.
I turned over a postcard of a brightly coloured teddy bear and it was from ‘Janette’, congratulating Mum on her daughter’s arrival into the world. It was addressed to Heather and Roger: this was the first time I’d seen evidence of my parents on the same page, proving, finally, that
