conversations about medicine and life

Jack the therapy dog: his final visit

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Joanne O’Carroll-McKellar

This is the second story about Jack the therapy dog on Corpus. Read Joanne O’Carroll-McKellar’s earlier piece here: Therapy dog: Jack and the SPCA Dog Squad.

Joanne O’Carroll-McKellar and Jack at Leslie Groves Rest Home, Dunedin.

Jack ran out of the front door and slipped on the wet step. He landed heavily on his left front leg. Next morning we visited a rest home and hospital for our monthly SPCA Dog Squad visit. I noticed a lump on his leg. He didn’t seem to be too perturbed and was his usual caring self with the residents. However, I wasn’t  happy about his leg. We went to the vet. The initial diagnose was arthritis. An x-ray was scheduled, then a biopsy ordered. The result: osteosarcoma. Bone cancer … what a shock. He was far too young. Bone cancer is very aggressive in dogs and they can die within a very short space of time.

Thankfully Jack didn’t appear to have much pain. The decision was made not to intervene too much medically and that, keeping in mind his needs, he would live as normal life as possible. He became my world. A planned trip away was cancelled.

Jack was retired from the Dog Squad, but we still filled in if other volunteers were unable to be there. He missed his work, as did I. We both enjoyed visiting the residents in various rest homes.

The tumour on Jack’s leg grew to the size of a golf ball. He was now favouring his leg a little. His daily medication became a game of what would get the medicine down … paté or a slice of saveloy.
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Unlonely centenarians: the secret power of Super Agers

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Sharon Leitch

100 candlesNot many people make their 100th birthday. It’s a big deal, and rightly so: the family celebration and obligatory photos, the card from HRH (not so far off the Big Day herself), perhaps a write-up in the local paper. “Tell us!” the journalist asks, “what is the secret of your longevity?” We collectively lean forward to catch their snippets of wisdom. What is their secret? A Philosopher’s Stone? The Elixir of Life? After all, living for a Very Long Time is as close to immortality as we can achieve in the here-and-now.

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The treasures we surround ourselves with …

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Max Reid

woodcut by Janet de Wagt
Woodcut by Janet de Wagt

Some years ago, I was managing a large not-for-profit aged residential care facility in Wellington. We offered a range of rest home, hospital and dementia level care, and we were operating in a very competitive market, a market increasingly dominated by private ‘for profit’ aged care providers.

A perennial question for organisations in the aged residential care sector – be they private or not-for-profit – is, ‘What makes what we offer distinctive?’ Even earlier in my career, while undertaking a business degree, I remember a marketing lecturer defining the three key aspects of ‘market distinctiveness’:

You have to be either the biggest, demonstrably the best, or the most innovative.”

Sound enough concepts in themselves, perhaps, but somewhat difficult in a sector (like aged residential care) where virtually every aspect of the service you provide is detailed in standardised specifications and contracts, and then audited to within an inch of a contract’s life.

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Smoke in the head

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Grace Carlyle

opening blindsI have an elderly neighbour. We have a signal: each morning I look to see whether she has pulled her curtains. Then I know she is all right. This became less important after she had three falls followed by two operations and acquired a St John alarm, as well as home help to call in three times daily. Still, every morning I look to see the curtains are pulled. I go across whenever I am able and we have a cup of coffee. Often I cannot walk that far but I try to manage at least once a week.

She arrived in New Zealand with her eldest daughter sixty-five years ago, soon after the New Zealand government allowed Chinese wives to immigrate. She speaks a Chinese dialect and her English is limited but her ability to capture difficult concepts with the words she does know frequently takes my breath away, they are so poetic. What a poet she would have made had she only learnt to read and write. My only language is English but we mime at times and laugh a lot. She gave birth to twelve more children and worked in her husband’s market garden. She cannot manage the garden she has now, but for years I would see her out there for hours – small wonder her garden and house were immaculate. They put mine to shame. Once house-proud, now I value poetry above dust.

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Euthanasia and the common good

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Charlotte Paul

When I started thinking hard about euthanasia, I visited my friend who has a progressive illness affecting his body and mind, and who is in hospital-level care. His partner has moved into the same residence to help look after him. She responds to his suffering with love, and you can sometimes see in his eyes that he recognises this. I honour them both: his endurance and gratitude; her generosity.

But, with euthanasia in mind, I think about them both in a different way. Is his suffering unbearable? Although he wouldn’t be competent to make a request for euthanasia, should it become legal in New Zealand, their situation calls into question the value of his endurance and her generosity.

In what follows I explore my intuition that actively ending suffering by causing death undercuts the meaning of suffering.

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