Cancer 22

I was looking at the Dignitas website earlier, wondering why it is only in Switzerland that there is a civilised way of dealing with voluntary death due to illness or disability. I wonder whether I should join, if only to be prepared for contingencies. As it says on the website, many people join to be reassured and never make use of its services, just happy in the knowledge of its availability. At least it then becomes an option. Given the amount of pain I am in when the drugs wear off, and the limited possibilities for the future, Dignitas may become one of the real options.

This may be cowardice, and just speaking from the perspective of it being early in the morning without drugs, but I don’t think so. Throughout this process I have tried to consider all the possibilities at the time, those opening up, those closing down. At the start I had positive options, the complete cure, the freedom from cancer. That option has gone. Now it is the options with cancer, which include palliative management and a relatively long life (not probable), palliative management and a few months (maybe), palliative management and weeks (perhaps a high probability given that I am receiving no chemo and the last tumour grew at such a fast rate).

As I have said before, I think I am ready for any of these options – particuarly if they can be managed without pain. The Dignitas option is for when this cannot happen. When I have had enough.

The problem is I don’t think those around me are ready. Why should they be? They are the ones who are going to survive this and live without me. It may be selfish of me but I think I will be missed. On the other hand who was it who said the dead are soon forgotten, to be recalled occasionally and with sadness, but the living get on with their lives?

I am the dead. I am not jealous of the living, because while they will live I won’t exist, so jealousy makes no sense. I would of course like to live, and I will take options that give me a better chance to survive a little longer, as long as it is a good life. I don’t want to sit in this hospital for the rest of my life, recovering from some operation, unable to breathe fresh air, unable to see my house and my loved ones, constantly requiring drugs for pain, and watching the faiing lives of the people in the beds around me.

I am the dead. Most people do not have the grim reaper holding his scythe above their heads. They do not know when they are to die, whether tomorrow or in decades. It makes a difference being dead. It is not that everything becomes focused, and seen sharply in the light of mortality. My body is spending too much time trying to mend the wound I have in my abdomen. It closes me in, focuses me on my own body to the exclusion of other matters. I am not watching the news. I don’t know what the weather is like. I am not even reading a novel. The only outside influences I have now are people, both visitors and those who send me messages.

I have little hope. I am not even really dreaming of getting home, driving somewhere nice, having a holiday, and so on. My biggest hope is to get home to my family and friends.