8 - Margaret’s Back Story Part 2: 10 September 2024

Margaret was taken to Mary Potter Hospice by ambulance from Royal Adelaide Hospital on Wednesday 12 July 2023.  It happened when I was temporarily at home.  I think she planned it that way. She had a room of her own at Mary Potter.  I rushed there when she rang me and said she was in the hospice.  I arrived as the nursing staff were taking her to the bathroom.  

Going to the bathroom had been a significant problem for Margaret ever since she had fallen and broken 4 of her back vertebras in mid November 2022.  She had refused to let me take her to a doctor for this because she said there was nothing they could do except give her pain killers.  She was of course correct about the inability of the doctors to do anything except give her pain killers.  There was no real solution except for her to endure the tremendous pain.

When Margaret woke up – usually between 12.30 am and 1.30 am – needing to go to the toilet, she could not get up from bed without my help.  We developed a routine.  I stood beside the bed with my hands outstretched and she would grab my hands and ever so gradually lever herself into a sitting position.  Once sitting upright, it was easier for her to then lever herself out of bed and stand up.  I stood immobile while she found the strength to sit upright and then to stand.  After I helped her to the toilet, I left the bathroom until she told me she was ready for me to help her stand up from the toilet bowl. 

The process was excruciatingly painful for her and usually took between 45 minutes and a whole hour.  We both knew that once she woke up needing to go to the toilet, neither of us would get any additional sleep that night.  This process happened every night from mid November until Friday 7 July 2023. 

The most obvious and immediate blessing from Margaret’s transfer to Mary Potter was clear as soon as I walked into her room.  The nurses were taking Margaret to the bathroom as I arrived – and they were doing it in a way I never could.  They had a lifting contraption swung into place over her bed.  The “lift” slipped under her body and gently brought her upright without her having to exert herself.  Once in the upright position, the lift swung her across the bed and gently lowered her until she was sitting in the wheelchair.  Once wheeled to the bathroom, the lift ensured she was safely and painlessly able to sit on the toilet or have a shower safely.

Although her body was so severely disabled, Margaret never gave into the pain and she never lost her sense of humour.  Death was so very close, but she refused to give in to it.  While she could breathe, she was determined to live every moment to the maximum possible extent.  When I arrived on that first day in the hospice, she insisted that I immediately wheel her outside so she could smoke cigarettes.  Despite the bitter cold, we would often remain outside for an hour while she tried to drag the final puffs of life out of her cigarettes.

By Monday 17 July 2023, Margaret was still alive and the doctor in charge wondered why.  He ordered a cat scan on that morning and I again rushed to be with her, arriving before she was taken to Radiology for the scan.  Holding her hands, I blurted out that we were surrounded by a Circle of Love.  Then they took her for the scan

I was home that evening when she rang to say the oncologist had just left her.  The oncologist beamed with joy because he had good news.  The scan revealed the cancer has completely vanished.  The scan had been unable to detect any signs of cancer in her body.

Margaret immediately began to get better.  Within a day, she no longer needed the lift to get herself into the wheelchair.  She began to push herself around the hospice unaided.  She found a history of Calvary Hospital in the adjoining ward and the staff gave it to her.  She gleefully showed me a photo of herself taken in the 1960s.  As Margaret recovered from her death sentence, it soon became clear that she no longer belonged among the dying in Mary Potter.  She began to wheel herself very sedately around the Hospice, not wanting to seem too alive while all the other patients around her were so obviously dying.

My astonishingly wonderful wife had quite literally cheated death and was getting better.  It was very difficult for either of us to contain our joy.  She was no longer dying and I would no longer have to arrange for her funeral.  Only in movies did endings like this occur – but this was not a made up fantasy.  This was the complete truth.  My gorgeous Margaret had really and truly beaten death.

On Sunday 6 August 2023, the Hospice allowed me to drive Margaret from Mary Potter to Griffith Rehabilitation Hospital.  She no Longer needed an ambulance.  The name given to Griffith gives a huge clue about the type of patients who it allows to be admitted.  If you are dying, there is no room for you.  You are only admitted to Griffith if it is possible for you to be rehabilitated and resume a normal life.

I drove Margaret home from Griffith late in the afternoon of Wednesday 16 August 2023.  She no longer needed to be in a hospital to stay alive.

She had done the impossible.  She had beaten a cancer for which there is no possible cure.  I could barely contain my joy.

Margaret’s death occurred in the Intensive Care Unit at Ashford Hospital at 3.16 am on the following Tuesday.  I was present and I had to tell the staff to turn the machines off so she could die in peace.  I can still hear the noise made by the machinery trying to squeeze the death out of her body.  Then there was complete silence.  The nurse given the task of recording events, made her final notes and Margaret’s struggle for life had finally ended.

More than a year has passed and I still weep.