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If the young have to go they deserve a good death
Stevenson's Country, May 25, 2005
By Philippa Stevenson
We talk, write and read endlessly about the living.
The dead are subjects of discussion much less and the bit in between - the dying - barely gets a look in.
Euthanasia campaigner Lesley Martin, convicted last month of attempting to kill her terminally ill mother, contributed one view on dying with her book, To Die Like a Dog.
The title alone - also now of a play to be made into a television documentary - suggests we allow our loved ones to die terrible deaths. It harks, too, to the idea that we are kinder to animals because we mercifully kill some with illness.
I've known animals die naturally and brought abrupt ends to the life of ailing pets. Those deaths were nothing like the emotional, draining and uplifting dying days of people I've known, including my father's nearly a year ago.
The aim of my family and his resthome carers in those last trying hours was to ensure his comfort while nature took its course - to give him every chance to live and have a peaceful ending.
His was just one experience - that of a 78-year-old man with Parkinson's who died of congestive heart failure.
This is another - the story of Jann Rutherford's last days as told by her mother, Nancy Paviour-Smith.
Jann was a talented jazz pianist, best known here to Wellington audiences. After moving to Australia in 1989, winning top jazz awards, audience acclaim and the respect of other jazz musicians she became yet another New Zealander that Australians were pleased to claim.
Jann was blind from birth so was unable to see that what she'd been told was an ulcer on her tongue had got much worse. With her mother at her side in May 2002 a Sydney oncologist told her she had terminal cancer. Treatment to slow the disease's progression meant either removing her tongue or chemotherapy. She was 37.
"I might as well not be alive if they cut out my tongue," a shocked Jann said. It was the only time she said anything about preferring death to life.
Jann entered hospital to start treatment. Nancy, who lives in Hamilton, returned briefly to the Waikato to prepare for a longer than anticipated stay in Sydney and while home contacted Hospice Waikato to ask "a whole lot of questions."
"They didn't tell me too much to frighten me. They were encouraging and very practical."
Back in Sydney, Jann and Nancy walked and bussed daily from home to hospital for chemotherapy and other appointments. Jann was fed via a tube to her stomach but loved to take long walks. She and fellow musicians played music at home and managed a few gigs.
Jann booked a Sydney studio to record her second CD in January but on December 15, seven months after her diagnosis, mother and daughter flew to Hamilton. The date is etched in the memory of Nancy's husband, John Paviour-Smith. It was tough being apart and to support Jann without their own support network.
Jann literally became the centre of the household. Her bed was put in the dining alcove, in the middle of the Paviour-Smith's riverside home where she was surrounded by loving family, friends and palliative caregivers. She played the piano and took walks along the river.
"The hospice nurses didn't come in with sympathy and sadness but with kindness and nursing ability," says a grateful Nancy. "They seemed to have an inner happiness. They didn't leave you feeling worse than when they came in, helping you to work your way through it with hugs as they came and left."
The hospice carers' positive attitude bolstered Jann's determination and gave her hope "not of a cure but that she could go on for a long time." Their skill and support with medication enabled Jann to be relatively pain-free yet still retain her artistic and creative ability.
The hospice also supplied a powered bed and Lazy-Boy chair, laundry service, a house cleaner and later a night nurse to relieve the family of 24-hour care - help that enabled family and friends to spend more time with Jann.
Jann played at the Hamilton Jazz Club before she and her father, Peter Rutherford, returned to Sydney for the January recording sessions.
It took a supreme effort and Jann returned to Hamilton much weakened and, although just 38-years-old, looking like a wizened old lady.
Despite the medication she was in pain many times. She became difficult to understand; communication became very creative. She was bathed and massaged, walked around the house, surrounded with music and had the company of loving family and friends and caring doctors and nurses through "her journey".
She heard her completed CD, The Scented Garden, and on March 9 last year, a month after returning from Sydney, she died without stress, "just breathed, breathed away."
"Jann had a full life and she lived it right up to the end," says Nancy. "The hospice care allowed Jann to live her life to the end and die with dignity."
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