continued from chapter 13: part 1
When we were early into Hal's illness and covering all eventualities,we did discuss euthanasia.
We were walking hand in hand during an early evening neighborhood stroll and We were into the "what-if's," which seemed remote then. I asked him whether he would want to get in a stock of lethal medication in case he ever suffered unmanageable pain, with no hope of relief. He agreed that he did wish this and we made a few preliminary enquiries about how it could be done. Hal preferred tablets of some kind and he said he would write an undated letter to keep with him which would act as a suicide note to keep his helpers out of the reaches of the law.
We kept it in the back of our minds but it seemed to be less and less important
as we struggled for living time. I know now that Hal would never have asked for those pills and as you'll learn in the next chapter, it was fortunate that I didn't have them on hand.
I had always believed that if anyone I loved was dying I would bring him home to die. This isn't always practical or workable and in Hal's case, his pain wasn't under control until the very last few days. If he had asked to come home, I would have found a way to arrange that.
Although in my heart I knew Hal's cancer would result in death, my soul could not grasp the concept and throughout his illness I struggled to emotionally prepare for his death.
Nowadays you read of groups of friends banding together to provide round-the-clock support to a terminally ill friend wishing to be at home. There are visiting
nurse programs, you can get advice by calling the cancer society and you can also sit down with the social worker if one is assigned to your partner.
My two support group friends who managed to have at-home care, said their spouses were relatively free from pain and were not hooked up to an intravenous, and that may be why I didn't seriously pursue this notion.
That and the fact that Hal never asked.
continued in chapter 13: part 3
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