‘At the end, we all want the same thing, to feel comfortable, safe and to feel we’re not alone’
Once given just six weeks to live, Alexis Fleming now stares death in the face at her animal hospice in south-west Scotland – and often she’ll offer it a Hobnob, writes Janet Christie
went through a time when she was homeless, sleeping in her car and hostels, reaching a physical and mental low where she didn’t know if she wanted to keep living. Finally diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, the autoimmune disorder of the intestinal tract in which the body attacks itself, which had caused inflammation, scarring and deep ulceration throughout her intestines, as well as an inflammatory arthritis, she faced an uphill battle every day.
“It was so painful I couldn’t stand. I had to crawl along the ground. I knew I was dying.”
The turning point came when things appeared to be at their worst. Given six weeks to live by doctors, with a huge mass in her intestines, she faced more treatment that she didn’t think her body could take.
“I knew that the pharmaceutical route was ending because it was destroying me. I was feeling more ill all the time with the steroids and chemotherapy and the only other thing on offer was an immunomodulator which would knock out my immune system, stop me being around animals and shorten my life. Death, death, death. I knew in my gut that my body didn't need more to deal with, it needed something to heal it.”
Fleming turned to cannabis oil after much research, taking a gamble with her last six weeks. By the time of her next hospital appointment, she knew things had changed. “I knew it was going to be good news because I wasn’t in excruciating pain anymore. But when you actually see it on an MRI...
Apart from finding two old scarred bits, my intestines were completely healed, not just okay, but completely healthy.
“Cannabis oil is the only thing,” she says. “It gave me my life back and I wasn't expecting that. I couldn’t believe it when they said that big mass had gone. It saved my life. This place is built on it really,” she says. “l think there's a lot of prejudice – folk think those using cannabis are lying about in a haze. I hope my 20-hour day, which I can only do because of it, dispels that idea.”
Now Fleming is back functioning on four hours sleep a night, doing hard physical labour around the hospice and coping with the emotional strain. “Given what I throw at it, my body’s holding together pretty well. I'm delighted. I’m really lucky.”
In her darkest times it was the animals that needed her that kept her going, and while it’s obvious what the animals get out of the hospice, Fleming reckons she gets every bit as much back. How does she think they’ve helped her?
“In more ways than I could ever say. OK, sometimes when I'm trying to get out of the house and someone’s standing on my foot and another pees on the floor, or they just want to eat, you’re just like, grrrr, they drive you nuts. But we're all like that with our families. When you're having a cuddle with an old man dog that’s never had many cuddles, and he feels king of the world because his wumman loves him, that's a gift to us both. It's lovely to be able to make people feel special and loved. Often the only difference between how they were before and how they are now is my love. It’s changed their life. It's using that love you've got inside to see it in front of you. That makes up for all the nights when you're thinking, at midnight, ‘oh god, a rat hole’, or a mite outbreak or someone dying.
“When you’ve been out 18 hours in a horrible day, stumble in the door soaked to the skin, and there's a massive Staffie smile waiting for you, you cannae no respond to that. It's always a two-way thing. I just love spending time with them. Though I wish they would all go to their bed at night.”
After a year in which almost everyone has lost someone, Fleming’s observations about our inability to talk about dying and terminal illness, animal or human, strike a chord. “We don’t cope with death or grief very well. I wrote the book for that reason as well as to share what I've experienced. It won’t be for everyone, but it’s for anyone who's lost someone, felt grief or faced death, for anybody they've loved.
“Maybe it helps to see there’s another way of accepting death into our lives. If we accept life, we must accept death. In the past 11 days I've said goodbye to six of the folk who were here and there are two more probably terminally ill, a couple of the chickens. Old dogs I've known for two years and I'm having to end their lives in the middle of the night. I've just said goodbye to a lamb.
It's acceptance that this is what's happening. I’ve found that being able to face death has lessened its grip on me. Anybody who feels caught in grief, I hope seeing it from another angle might help.”
The hospice is run on a donationsonly basis and Fleming doesn’t take a salary or pay anyone. All of the money received goes into the care of the animals. There are volunteers – her dad, and Kerry, a neighbour who turned up with sandbags when the house flooded and has been a pal ever since – and small party visits are about to resume now lockdown has lifted. So far Fleming has raised £400,000 to convert the house and add infrastructure, creating a hospice that is cosy and comfortable, not clinical and cold, and estimates that annual running costs are “probably £50,000. I try not to think about it!”
The hope is the book will raise muchneeded funds that will enable her to rebuild the hospice and make it more fit for purpose, “maybe get a car that you can put sheep in and I’d like to fix the garden so I could grow my own food and medicine,” she says.
Despite press attention, awards such as community champion in the 2018 Sunday Mail Great Scot Awards and a short documentary called Crannog, which premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, there are those who voice criticism. However, Fleming doesn’t waste her precious time on trolls.
“I don't expect everyone to agree. I get a lot of ‘why’s she not doing it for humans, why aren’t you putting the money to this or that? Usually the first thing you try to ascertain is whether THEY are? It's not for everybody, and that's OK.”
In fact it’s because Fleming is aware of the injustice and inequalities of the world around us, and has faced hard times, that she’s dedicated to making her small corner of it better. And rather than resent the effort and commitment that is required, she’s grateful for it.
“I feel like my life is more rich, because you're always trying to interpret, because it’s all about feelings and emotions with animals. So I feel more fulfilled than I ever have, even though it's taken everything. The world is a kind of heaven but there's so much horror in it that doesnae need to be there. I get that we're gonnae die, I get that we're gonnae get ill, and accidents and gruesome things happen, people are starving and there’s injustice. I just want my own wee bit of it to be not that. The only way I can cope is to do this,” she says.
“Seeing someone come alive because of your love changes you, stays with you. Every day I go out there, everyone's okay, the old men [dogs] are lounging in the sun, the collies are playing, everyone's okay. The aim is just to keep everyone content.
“I cannae run an animal hospice and be surprised when folk die. It’s going to happen. And you cannae be alive without knowing people die. The further away I’ve got from that fear and dread of it, it's easier to get on with the good bits. The love and the life and all that kind of stuff.”
“It’s all about feelings and emotions with animals”