Our mother passed away this month.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago. In 2021, it spread to her bones. That part I didn’t know. She kept it from me and my siblings. I guess she was trying to protect us. She’d started a new course of immunotherapy to bring the cancer under control. I can’t imagine the despair she felt when the oncologist told her the treatment had failed.
I wish I was there to give her love and support. But I wasn’t.
Our mother was a sweet, caring woman with an eccentric personality. She loved to read and had a vivid imagination. I took her for long country drives and we had lunch together. She’d spend the day at my place and play with the dog. Our relationship was strained from a difficult childhood, but we’d made great strides to repair it. She was a heavy drinker for a long time with a history of domestic violence and unhealthy relationships with men.
Our mother lived in poverty most of her life. Her sixties and seventies were spent in boarding houses. At the time of her death she lived in a decrepit caravan park in regional Australia. The caravan park was rough and dreary and I hated going there. It was the last place a woman aged 77, battling cancer, should be.
Our mother suffered a fall just before new year. It was the height of the Omicron wave in NSW and she was taken to the local hospital. She spent close to a month in that place. Visits were highly restricted due to Covid, and our only contact was via text messages. She spoke of feeling like a prisoner in the ward. She spoke of atrocious food she couldn’t eat. She spoke of getting no rest in a busy hospital overwhelmed with patients.
Our mother was discharged with no follow-up support from social workers, or home-care measures put in place. When I spoke to her on the phone she was a frail woman who could hardly speak. I drove to the caravan park and found her curled up in a blanket. It was a shocking scene. She had lost half her body weight and was gray in the face. Her arms were swollen with bruises from botched blood tests. She was barely lucid and couldn’t hold a conversation. Her partner was exhausted and said he no longer had the strength to carry her to the shower and toilet blocks outside the caravan.
Our mother was clearly dying, but she was terrified to go back to the hospital. I didn’t want her there either, and I didn’t want her to die in a decrepit caravan park. So I borrowed a wheelchair and bundled her into the back of my car. She lay in my lap and a friend drove us to another town. It was hot and humid and we plonked through potholes to a small community hospital where I prayed our mother would receive better care.
We pulled up in the ambulance bay and several nurses rushed to the car. They were stunned by her condition. They feared they couldn’t provide the care she needed in the small facility. I was very pleased and grateful they admitted her. They gave her a private room and treated her with the dignity and respect she deserved.
After a phone call to the oncologist and a review of her patient records, it was clear our mother had little time. The cancer had spread to her bones and her liver was failing. Nothing could be done to save her and palliative care was the only option.
I spent hours at her bedside, spooning custard into her mouth and encouraging her to sip protein shakes. I bought her comfortable pyjamas and showed her photos of our dog on my phone. I told her I loved her again and again. I told her she was a wonderful mother and a beautiful person. I ached with grief for not knowing the cancer had spread, and not spending more time with her.
I desperately wanted a conversation with our mother, but she was unconscious most of the time. Very rarely, she opened her eyes and I rushed to her side. She no longer recognised me and needed morphine for pain. It was so cruel to be there each day, unable to speak with her.
Our mother’s death left me angry and full of questions.
Why was a woman her age with cancer forced to live in a decrepit caravan park? Where were the social workers and home-care support services?
Why has the affordable housing crisis in this country dragged on for years, with no intervention from this government, particularly the minister for housing, Michael Sukkar? I know our mother was terrified of going into aged care. It’s no surprise with an aged care system in absolute chaos and a minister, Richard Colbeck, who has repeatedly neglected his duty to reform the sector.
Most of all I’m angry at the way the government handled the Omicron wave in the new year period when our mother was admitted to hospital. She was discharged from that place a battered, bruised and withered woman because of the dreadful care she received by an overwhelmed health system. Yes, she had cancer and her prognosis wasn’t good, but I’m convinced that what she endured hastened her death, and took her before we had the chance to say a proper goodbye.
The protests by nurses in NSW over conditions in the healthcare system confirmed it.
The federal and state governments failed our mother. It failed in its duty of care to protect a vulnerable elderly woman, and she’s not the only one. There are thousands of them.
This mean, incompetent government must go.
It’s failing our society and neglecting our welfare, housing, health and aged care systems.
James May is a freelance writer in Sydney
