A Hospital Bed at Home: Family stories of caregiving from diagnosis to death

Abstract

In the nine years spanning my mother's initial diagnosis of breast cancer and her death in November 2006, people often told me how much they admired her 'fighting spirit' - her determination to conquer the disease that kept returning to ravage her. I didn't like the martial imagery but found myself employing it too, just in a different way. From where I was standing, the cancer was the fighter, a relentless opponent, always coming at her with another jabbing punch. To her breast, chest, hip, groin, then the knock-out blow, to her brain. Mum's chief defence was an unflagging but anxiety ridden optimism; her attitude was quite literally never say die. As the number of tumour battle sites mounted, I could see that the odds were stacked against her, but she never reasoned in terms of probabilities. She took refuge in the good news stories told by survivors, she quested after the miracle cure that would confound medical science, she prayed to God for healing. Was this courage, I wondered? This refusal to accept the most likely outcome, this frenetic hunt for an escape clause?