How to choose a better death

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Catriona Olding has narrated this article for you to listen to.

In 1984 I was a third-year student nurse. The last secondment before my final exam was gynaecology. The wards were housed several miles away from the friends and familiar faces of the Edwardian general hospital where my training had been based. It was an unfriendly place. The staff had little time for outsiders and none for this skinny, ginger, idealistic student nurse.

In those days, before accurate scanning equipment was widely available, the diagnosis of ovarian and uterine cancer was difficult and treatments much less effective than they are now. The outlook for many was bleak. Some of the patients on the ward where I worked were a deep ochre colour from jaundice, and were so emaciated it was a miracle their skeletal legs could carry them. One woman habitually changed into a frilly yellow babydoll nightie before visiting time, which along with her heavy makeup only amplified the tragedy of her situation.

Three weeks into my stint, I came back after a couple of days off-duty to a scene which has haunted me since. A smell, worse even than gas gangrene, permeated not only the ward but the entire floor of the hospital. In a single room near the ward entrance lay the source: the woman with the yellow nightdress. Sister warned me that the woman, who was still conscious, was suffering horribly. Months before, the consultant, a kindly man in his fifties, had promised the woman he wouldn’t let this happen – but it was the weekend and, with no mobile phones, he couldn’t be reached. The junior doctor on call was powerless to help. Only the consultant in charge could prescribe what was required.