“The NHS is simply not equipped to meet the psychological needs of the dying – and that has to change”
Writing in The Guardian, Mike Addelman says:
“My wife died a few months ago from cancer after battling it bravely for almost three years. The physical symptoms were so tough: pain, nausea, loss of mobility, and others too distressing to talk about here.
But the suffering she endured from the moment she received her diagnosis, until she entered the hospice where she ended her days, was almost entirely down to the difficulty she had coming to terms with her disability. It was the deep depression and rampant anxiety that very quickly spiralled out of control that made her life – and the lives of those closest to her – so difficult.
She was unwilling to go outside – not even to sit in our lovely garden, not even to listen to the birds. She cried every day, sometimes all day. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t read a book, didn’t know what pleasure felt like. In the last year of her life, all she could do was sit silently on our settee, watching dreary daytime television …”
You can read more here.
