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Carers
Roger - Interview 41  

Roger - Interview 41

Age at Interview: 59
Sex: Male
Background: Roger is a mini-bus driver, widowed, with 5 adult children. Ethnic background/nationality: White British.
Brief outline:Roger was married to Teresa, who was diagnosed with bulbar onset MND. She died a year ago, aged 64, less than six months after the diagnosis.

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She died peacefully as he held her hand. He felt the moment of death almost as a jolt. The hospital staff showed great human sympathy.

 



There are particular things that upset me but they tend to be sort of - the scent, you know. I go into the wardrobe or something and there's perhaps a jumper or something at the back and you suddenly catch it. And it's when it catches you unawares… And the flashback-type things, because I'm sorry to say during the course of this there were quite a few little traumas and the times when things didn't go quite right and were very upsetting. 

Her death itself was probably the least upsetting. She went very peacefully. I was holding her hand at the time and I'm convinced I felt the spirit pass, sort of. But the experience wasn't what I expected. I would tend to talk - and words that we use, you know - people “slip away”. It tends to suggest something gentle, slow, almost wave-like. It wasn't. It was a very sudden terrific whoosh. It's not at all what I'd expected. And I was holding her hand and it was. It wasn't an electrical shock but it was akin to it. It was a jolt and a movement like that. Now my daughter was standing at the foot of the bed at the time and the way I reacted I didn't have to tell it. She knew exactly the way I jumped what had happened and she was on her heels.

I wanted to ask you about how the way the health services had dealt with her death and the way she died. 

No problems there. They just, everybody just backed off. I think one of the doctors came in and said, what do we want and what do we need, and all the rest of it, and a little nurse came in. Probably unofficially but you can't live in a hospital chair for a couple of weeks and not build relationships with people. And she just came in to, to give her sympathies, support. No I think at that moment in time they need to stop being professionals and be human beings… I think as professionals they're used to death and their attitude was, “Well, at least she's now out of her suffering.” I think what is likely to affect them more is the effect that the death has on people round about them which included a fair number of the nursing staff because Teresa had been in there some while.
Jonathan Miller - Motor Neurone
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