Category Archives: Terminal Cancer, Day by Day

Terminal Cancer, Day by Day

Things We Say at the End

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I want to tell you about this part of Brock dying, because I don’t think many people know about it. I didn’t, before I read Maggie Callanan’s Final Gifts.

When we get close to death, that line between being awake (conscious) and being asleep (un/sub-conscious) starts to break down. A common metaphor is having a foot in both worlds at the same time.

I knew about this stage, having read Final Gifts and some helpful books from Cowichan Hospice, but still didn’t recognize it as a sign that Brock was close to death when I saw him entering the stage. That’s probably thanks to denial. Denial is an amazing thing.

Anyhoo, Brock told me about the weird things he started to think, feel and even taste in the month before he died. Anyone who knew him well will know that he was a very scientific, practical guy, and was not a poet or abstract. But the first “weird” thing he told me was that he had started to feel like he was (sometimes) three people.

For example: he said he knew he’d have a good sleep if all three of him were ready to go to bed. If one or two of him were missing, he’d have a hard time falling asleep or wouldn’t sleep well.

Knowing Brock, this was crazy pants talk.

And he wasn’t half-asleep or drunk when he told me this. He was just normal Brock, trying to explain something he experienced that was hard to explain. And yet . . . he wasn’t old-version-of-Brock enough for me to feel okay saying, “That’s crazy pants talk,” even though old-version-of-Brock would have thought being three people at once was ridiculous.

This three-people phenomenon happened a lot.

I once brought him a glass of chocolate milk, because he’d asked for it, and he said: “Phew. I can drink that. I thought I’d have to drink all three glasses.”

Or when he made a physically strenuous journey to the washroom at the hospital, with help from me and a nurse, and he said: “Oh, that wasn’t as hard as I expected. I didn’t have to do it three times.”

At one point, Brock and I brainstormed where his three people came from. The father, the son and the holy ghost. Ego, super-ego and Id. Okay, a lot of cultural patterns occur in threes. Maybe there’s a reason, given Brock’s experience of being three people at once.

I want to share some of the Brock quotes I wrote down in the weeks before he died. I’m going to do this not to make fun of the crazy-pants things he said, but because I want you to understand how surreal this time was, and maybe to prepare you for when you witness your own dying loved ones approach their deaths.

I wrote these quotes down because I thought I’d be able to share them with Brock someday, when he was all better, and we’d laugh about how funny he’d been. I thought this knowing full well that he was never going to get better.

Here we go:

“I was about to offer you whatever I was eating in my head.”

“I think we’re done with the bread, if you want to put that away. And, as I’m saying this, I’m realizing there is no bread.”
(Said while I gave Brock a back massage.)

“I was going to ask you for another spanokopita. And then I realized I hadn’t just eaten a spanokopita.”

“Is that the smallest letter?”
(Said September 10, ten days before Brock died.)

“What’s that noise? A bug zapper?”
(Said while battling an infection in the hospital, about the noise from his IV drip.)

“Where’s the car parked?”
(While half asleep on the toilet. Travel is a common theme among the dying, apparently. I assured him that it was parked nearby, and I knew where it was.)

“People have been saying that it’s a good time to invest, looking back.”
(Said while falling asleep sitting up. Brock was always nervous about my money management skills.)

Final Gifts emphasizes how important it is to simply listen to these statements from people when they’re close to death. Disagreeing or trying to correct them can cause anxiety and self-doubt and embarrassment, and discourage them from sharing more of their experience.

I feel lucky that Brock told me about his three-people feelings, and that I got to witness this amazing, strange stage of his dying. I wanted to share it with you too.

Terminal Cancer, Day by Day

A Stoic Response to Loss

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Sometime after Isaac was born in 2013, I lost my sense of smell. Or maybe it happened while I was pregnant. My relationship with food roller-coasted dramatically during those 34.5 weeks: I was constantly queasy for the first three months, to such an extent that I couldn’t even walk through a grocery store without feeling sick. I was grateful that we lived on a farm, our closest neighbours hundreds of feet away, because I could wander over to an isolated corner of our property and try to breathe in enough fresh air to fight down the nausea, or vomit in the privacy of the scrub trees.

Then, around the three month mark, the switch suddenly flipped and I loved food again. It was a distinct moment, as I entered a grocery store in Cobble Hill, and I almost cried with relief (and pregnancy hormones). Suddenly the shelves of food called out to me. I remembered how good my favourite foods smelled and tasted, and I filled my shopping cart with everything I hadn’t been able to stomach since the start of my pregnancy.

And then, around this time or within the next year, my nose stopped working.

I wondered how it was that others were able to notice Isaac needed a diaper change. I couldn’t smell anything. I learned to pat his bum constantly, to check whether he needed a dry diaper.

Family rhapsodized over the scent of a newborn, but I thought they were just being weird and this was another of those “romanticizing parenthood” delusions.

Visiting friends commented on the manure-y air when a farmer neighbour fertilized their pasture. I never noticed the smell, but thought I’d just become acclimatized.

Brock paced the house, hunting down a rank can of garbage or bag of compost, unable to sleep. I teased him for his overly sensitive nose.

Finally I realized I was no longer smelling freshly-cut grass, or my cups of green tea, or the lemon filling of my pies — my three favourite smells.

I asked my (award-winning) family doctor about my missing sense, and he said it was probably a stress thing, what with the pre-eclampsia/premature birth and Brock’s cancer and all. He had a point: my life has been a soap opera.

And then I realized that I couldn’t taste anything either. Maeve tested me: she put some oil of oregano drops in my mouth. Apparently oil of oregano tastes revolting and smells worse. I only experienced the sensation of it going down my throat. It was hot and my eyes watered, but I couldn’t smell or taste anything.

There doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about my missing senses, so I’m learning to appreciate this new way of experiencing the world.

A family friend sent me a spectacular bouquet of stargazer lilies when Brock died. I remember how these flowers are supposed to smell, and I can’t experience that right now, but I am floored by how beautiful they are. I spend a lot of time studying the blossoms, all the variations of pink and white and the interesting textures on the petals.

Last week I joined a long table of family at the Old Firehouse Wine Bar for Old Fashioneds (Brock’s favourite drink) and ordered the meat & cheese & bread plate: the bread was drizzled with truffle oil and sprinkled with rock salt. The bread was amazing. I think I could taste the salt (or at least experience how it felt in my mouth), and I loved the textures of the bread and cheese. Jeff made me non-alcoholic drinks of various colours (and, presumably, flavours), and I felt the tonic water fizz down my throat.

I like to conduct little experiments to test my senses. Today I composted three-day-old crab shells (from a farewell feast when my visiting sister left for home) and sniffed mightily, trying to smell what I’m pretty sure must have been a horrible, strong stench. I could smell a little bit of sea creature-ness, but nothing unpleasant.

I still stop and sniff every flower I find, mostly to be a good role model to Isaac.

I’ve been writing all of this out as it comes to me, trying to articulate my experience, and now I see all kinds of metaphors in my sensory loss.

I discovered Stoicism (the ancient Greek philosophy of life) while listening to an Ideas interview on CBC Radio, while driving home from the Sidney Farmers Market in 2010-ish. The interviewee, William B. Irvine, had written a book called A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. I don’t know which came first — my Stoic approach to life, or my discovering Stoicism and striving to adopt its approach. All I know is that friends and family often comment on how I’m able to remain happy (and how Brock was able to be happy) despite the life challenges we’ve faced. Stoicism — and, specifically, Irvine’s Guide to the Good Life — articulates how I deal proactively and reactively to stress.

One main tenet of Stoicism is to recognize what we don’t have control over (e.g. cancer) and instead focus on what we do have control over (e.g. our quality of life). We couldn’t cure Brock, but we could make his final years, months and days extraordinary, by road-tripping across Canada and hosting election parties. Instead of weeping over Brock as he died, we watched Lord of the Rings as a family and karaoked “Mr. Jones.”

I lost my ability to smell or taste. I had a difficult pregnancy, almost died from eclampsia, and then became mom to a premature, underweight baby. My 38-year-old husband just died after living with cancer for three years.

But I smile most of the time, had a good laugh with my dad this morning, and continue to water a vase of stargazer lilies with the hope of seeing more blossoms.