Second Love and Hospice Experience

My husband, John, was a bit older than I, a very prominent attorney with a very strong personality. After 20 years together and a lifetime of smoking, he developed lung cancer. As many of you know, lung cancer is the number one cancer in our country. By the time he was willing to have his pain investigated, he was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer that had metastasized to all organs and bones. Before we learned of his diagnosis, we had discussed that if this was to ever be our fate, we would pass on treatment and try to enjoy our last days together.

John was blessed with three highly successful children, including a daughter who was an oncologist herself. Once word got out of his diagnosis, his children came to Nashville and met with his new oncologist. They decided on his treatment without John or I having any time to discuss it amongst ourselves. They bullied him into chemo, which was to start the very day of the meeting. The chemo weakened him to a state where he was no longer able to stand or walk on his own. Our wishes were not only squashed, but I was treated so poorly, accused of wanting him to hurry up and die, and yelled at for even the mere mention of Hospice or palliative care. By week two, they had their own discussions, excluding John and me. By week four, John was so weak he felt that another round of chemo would literally kill him, and I agreed. He called me at work, begging me to be a strong force, not make him do any more treatments, and to allow him to go. Once at the oncologist's office, the oncologist agreed that he was too weak, and he referred us to Hospice. Of course, John's children were livid and felt I had manipulated the situation.

Once in Hospice, we learned that John's son was not giving him his pain medication properly, despite what he was telling us. The hospice nurse took me outside and said that as his medical power of attorney, it was my responsibility to see that he was comfortable at all times. At that moment, I had to go into "nurse mode" and become the advocate for my husband's care. John passed away peacefully two weeks later, surrounded by his family, who were playing his favorite songs and showering him with words of love and forgiveness.

However, I firmly believe that if we had had an end-of-life advocate there with us, walking us through all of this and listening to John's actual wishes from day one, especially the one of no chemo, things would have looked entirely different for all of us and, especially John. The Doula would have advocated that his wishes be honored over the wishes of his children, or even mine. 

With today's blended families, dysfunction, drug and alcohol abuse, or even in some cases an absence of any family, an end-of-life advocate or Death Doula can prove invaluable.