Good Life, Good Death by Derek Humphry

Author:Derek Humphry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2017-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

TERMINAL ILLNESS

IN THE MIDDLE OF all the professional activity and family happiness, disaster struck. Jean found a lump in her breast. In the 1970s, there was little awareness of the need for women to have mammograms for early detection of cancer. When the lump was found, it must have been fairly well advanced. Four of Jean’s aunts had died of breast cancer, thus she knew and often spoke about the possibility of her getting it as well. But not, she reckoned, until her sixties as was the case with her aunts, and perhaps by then there would be a cure. She was forty-one. Within days, she was in the hospital for examination, and it was found that the cancer was already well advanced. She was kept on the operating table, and a radical mastectomy was performed.

As she emerged from the anesthesia, I was at her side. Hazily, she asked me if the breast had been removed. Reluctantly, I had no choice but to say that it had. Her face seemed to collapse with shock and she burst into tears. Quickly, the nurses gave her more sedatives, hastening her back to sleep. I staggered out of the recovery ward to fall into Edgar’s arms, crying like a child.

The medical profession went into high action to try to save her life. Radiation and chemotherapies seemed to help for a few months, but then pains began to develop in her bones, showing it had now become bone cancer. Jean fought every way, medically and psychologically, to beat the disease. She dressed brightly, careful to cover up the surgical scars and radiation burns, and dealt with people in her pleasant manner as though nothing had happened. She wanted only closest family and friends to know.

Edgar and Clive did everything possible to help and cheer their mother, doing household chores and visiting her during the spells when she was in the hospital. Unfortunately, Stephen was going through his period of teenage growing problems, adoption confusion, and racial identity. His rebellious attitude grew worse after leaving school, gaining and losing several jobs. Jean’s terminal illness of course added hugely to the strain on the family. Edgar and Clive had become resentful of Stephen’s upsetting behavior. In one temper tantrum, Stephen kicked in all the panels of a fairly new little car we owned. Then came an emotional flashpoint, when I knew I had to act.

Jean refused something he had asked for, at which point he screamed at her, “Why don’t you hurry up and die!” Jean and the other boys were appalled.

I told Stephen, by now sixteen: “Get packed. You’re leaving home.” Immediately I drove with him into London and across town to the Notting Hill ghetto. There we went to the home of Mrs. J. R. Pugh, a huge, lovable “market mamma” type who took boarders and foster children of all races into her homely house in Old Oak Road. Although I have forgotten how, I had met this wonderful West Indian woman during earlier racial upsets in Notting Hill.

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