Una & Bill - Interview 49
Una & Bill - Interview 49
Age at Interview:
62
Sex:
Female
Background:
Una is a retired former NHS Patient Involvement Facilitator, married with 3 adult children (1 died recently). Ethnic background/nationality: White Irish.
Brief outline:Una's husband Bill first noticed symptoms at the end of 2005 and was diagnosed aged 63. A ventilator greatly improved his energy levels for nearly a year. He had a PEG fitted but does not yet use it for feeding.
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Compared to other illness it's a relief to have some certainty and not be on a roller coaster of hope and disappointment. There's no pain and no aggressive treatment to worry about.
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I think in a way Bill feels that he's not going to be stuck. Somebody in our group has had MND for, I don't know, fifteen years or so, is a young woman and is stuck, completely immobile, with twenty-four hour care, uses a computer as a communication device. And I think in a way we're going to be spared that. You have to kind of count your blessings don't you? On the carers' course there were three women whose partners have MND. The others were all cancer sufferers. And we've concluded to ourselves that it was sort of liberating to know that there was no pain, there was no ghastly intervention. There was no roller coaster of sort of hopefulness and disappointment, that it was, you know, the path was kind of clear. However many plateaus there would be, you know, this was the storyline. And in a way we were quite grateful for that. We weren't hoist on aggressive treatment and hopefulness or anything like that, and that was quite good, I felt. We've all felt it actually. |
