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Letting go of a loved one: When roses matter more than bread
When it comes to care and letting go, we have to consider not just what sustains life but all the things that make life worth living.
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In medicine, bread is what makes life possible while roses are what makes life worth living and both warrant attention in medical care.
ST ILLUSTRATION: MIEL
Tan Kok Yang
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“My mother is a fighter, she has fought all her life and she will continue to fight for me! Please do something, doctor!” A distressed daughter said this to me as her mother, Madam A, lay desperately ill in the intensive care ward. I had operated on Mdm A just two days earlier for gangrenous intestines. The patient was overwhelmed with infection. The machines were barely able to bring oxygen to her tissues and the medications that we used to support her life had made all her fingers and toes turn bluish black.
I struggled to help the daughter understand the likely futility of our medical care. The bond between this daughter and her mother was clearly very strong and it broke my heart to dash her hopes. Mdm A was a single mother and had struggled through great hardship to raise her child. The daughter had gone on to do well in life and now her dreams of giving her mother a life she never had, some recompense for the sacrifices she made, were being shredded by the spectre of death. As she cried, I noticed the barely conscious Mdm A had tears welling in her eyes too.
