Caring until the end: United by their grief

Mitch Williams and Lucy Haslam (pictured) both recently lost family members after battles with illness, and the pair agree costs could be greatly saved, while granting the wishes of terminal patients, if there was adequate funding for community services.

“They need to realise they would free up money by putting in a good community-based service and supporting families that are caring for their loved ones for free by allowing more people to go out at home; they’re going to have more money to inject into critical care or whatever,” Mrs Haslam said.

“But we do need a good level of basic service. We do need to have a doctor who can come and do a home visit; that’s trained specially in palliative care.

“It’s hit and miss whether GPs have the training, the interest or the time – and most of them we know don’t have the time,” she said.

With just one palliative nurse in Tamworth, Mrs Haslam said the lack of personnel was the glaring problem while her son Dan fought cancer before passing away nearly a year ago.

“We actually saw the palliative care nurse once, maybe twice, but it was certainly not really enough. He wasn’t actually delivering any care; it was just a little bit of information at the beginning,” Mrs Haslam said.

“We knew he was the lone man and we automatically had that sense that we didn’t want to impose because you knew he was already flat-strap.

“One or two occasions when we did need somebody, there was nobody to call.”

Mr Williams had a similar experience when his mother battled metastatic breast cancer.

“There’s a single person in all of Tamworth,” he said. “He’s an absolutely wonderful man, but because of the region he looks after and the inadequacy of his staffing, he would only come when we rang and said, ‘We need more help’.

“There’s no service that can say, ‘We’ll be here on Tuesday and we’ll see you again’ so you’d ... then think, ‘We can cope until then’.”

Mrs Haslam said the pair were “just two people that met by chance”. 

“If we’re just two people, how many others are out there with stories that are similar? There’d have to be thousands,” she said.

The pair said data suggested 90 per cent of terminal patients wished to spend their last days at home.

“All the statistics say that most palliative care patients would have a preference to die at home if they were able to, but very few get to do that because the services are so limited,” Mrs Haslam said.

Mr Williams said the cost of palliation in public health could be reallocated to other sectors if community services were bettered.

“In rough terms, it’s $1000 to $1200 a day to have someone in a hospital bed.”

Mrs Haslam said it was vital to ensure comfort for patients and their families during their battles.

“Mitch is a bit traumatised by the experience, we’re certainly traumatised by the experience. That’s not how you want it to be at the end of someone’s life. The main memory you have is how much they suffered at the end, rather than how wonderful their life was,” Mrs Haslam said.