Why I’ll never regret turning off my dad’s life support machine
Anna insists it was an act of love – even though doctors hadn’t given up hope. What do YOU think?
WHENEVER my stepfather had a tipple when I was a teenager, he’d start off in a great mood, reeling off his extensive repertoire of silly jokes and making everyone laugh.
But inevitably, after the second or third glass, he would turn to the same old subject: death. More specifically, his death.
David’s monologue soon became familiar; how he never wanted to get old, that he wouldn’t be able to stand being diagnosed with a terminal illness — and abhorred the thought of being wheelchair-bound.
My younger brother Adrian and I would roll our eyes. Our mother Marion would tease him that he wasn’t going anywhere. But these conversations turned out to be more poignant than any of us realised back then.
Because, years later, the three of us found ourselves sitting at David’s bedside as he lay unconscious, wired up to a ventilator — a machine pumping every breath into him — and we had to decide whether to turn it off. And with heavy hearts, we did. Controversial though it might sound, it is my belief that we granted him the greatest gift of all. We did what he would have wanted, rather than cling on to him simply because we were too heartbroken to say goodbye.
So, until I know that Formula One legend Michael Schumacher faces a good quality of life, I can’t rejoice in the news that he is now out of a coma.
Last week, the former racing ace was transferred from Grenoble University hospital to a rehabilitation clinic in the Swiss city of Lausanne. For almost six months he’d been kept in an artificially induced coma following his skiing accident in France last December.
Although he is said to have nodded to an ambulance crew, and has apparently kept his eyes open for extended periods, there is no indication if the fast-living Schumacher, loved by his family, friends and fans, will return to his old self.
Of course, I don’t know if his family have faced the terrible decision of whether to turn off his life-support system. But with his wife Corinna reported to be at his bedside permanently since the accident, it’s obvious they’ve been determinedly clinging on to hope.
However, I believe hope can lead us down the wrong path. Sometimes it exists only in our hearts, rather than our heads. And it’s in those traumatic times, faced with losing those closest to us, and when their lives are in our hands, that we need to take decisions based not on emotion but on cold, hard facts.
To that end I believe that sometimes, if you love someone, you’ve got to let them go. That’s what I and my family did, and there’s not been a day since that I’ve regretted it.
MY
STEPFATHER came into my life when I was just five, after my parents’ marriage broke up. It was the early Eighties and he quickly worked out that the way to my heart was through endless toys and gifts, whether it was the latest Sindy or Pac-Man game.
He would spend hours painstakingly perfecting my school projects with me, we’d fake wrestle on the living-room floor on Saturday afternoons while Big Daddy did the real thing on TV, and he’d embarrass me by shouting my nickname ‘Roo Roo’ across the school playground.
Even in my 30s — I’m now 37 — I’d find a fake plastic lizard or some such silly thing in my handbag after returning to his and my mother’s Peterborough home f or t he weekend. His idea of a little joke.
David was ‘Dad’ to me. That’s why I chose him to give me away when I got married, despite my biological dad still being alive. ‘A real dad is the one who is there for you day after day after day,’ I texted to David on the last ever Father’s Day we spent together. He was always fit and healthy — a passionate advocate of fruit and veg — and he cycled to and from work every day. He retired from his factory supervisor role in 2009 and he did slow down, a little. But it was highly unusual for him to not be able to shift a cough and virus that struck him down in March 2010.
A couple of days later — on a Monday morning — I got a call from my brother to say David had collapsed at home and an ambulance had taken him to hospital.
I raced out of my London magazine office and got a train to Peterborough while my brother did the same from Brighton. When I arrived at A&E, my devastated mother said that David had suffered two cardiac arrests and was in an induced coma while machines kept him alive.
Doctors never found an answer to why his body had failed him so catastrophically. His heart — in fact, all of his organs — were giving up on him, and he was only 63.
The cramped waiting room for the intensive-care unit, with its endless cups of tea and hushed voices, was our home for the next three days.
On the first day, I was too upset to sit by David’s bedside, but the following day, when doctors decided to bring him round, my brother and I waited patiently next to him for some sign of life. Sometimes his fingers might twitch and we’d jump out of our skin, but mostly he was completely unresponsive. It was terrifying and bewildering.
First we were told to prepare ourselves for the worst, that each organ was closing down. Then there seemed to be good news — he was attempting to open his eyes.
Yet this frightened me, too. Because none of us knew if he would still be the David we all loved. There was a strong possibility he’d suffered irreparable brain damage. My worst fear was that he’d be trapped in a vegetative state.
I remembered all of his monologues about death that we’d sat through, and I knew that unless we could guarantee he’d leave hospital as the man we’d known — independent and able-bodied — he wouldn’t want to leave at all. And so, after consulting with my mother and brother, I told the doctors just that.
I also asked if they were attaching some emotional significance to someone ‘attempting’ to open their eyes and whether it was medically any more significant than, say, a slight increase in kidney function.
While any decision was ultimately for the doctors and my mum to take, I felt the weight of responsibility for David’s life in my hands. Surely we had to put our emotions aside and do what was right for him?
Another day went by and there were no other signs of life. The medical evidence suggested his organs were closing down. So the three of us made the decision to let him go.
The risks of him coming back with severe brain damage were too huge, his future too uncertain and, more than anything, I knew he’d never forgive us for making him stay against his wishes.
THE
doctors found it hard to accept our decision. That’s understandable, as they’d worked tirelessly to save him. But they also admitted that many families begged them to do whatever they could and then regretted it six months or a year down the line when their loved one had no quality of life.
One doctor eventually told us we were doing the right thing — it was devastatingly sad but true.
So we said our goodbyes, and I watched my mum kiss her husband of 30 years for the last time. We didn’t stay with David as he took his last breath — it would have been too traumatic. I just pleaded with the doctors to make sure he wouldn’t be in any pain.
We drove home, mute with shock. Then, half an hour after we’d arrived, we got the call to say he’d passed away. The fact he had gone so quickly was proof again to me that we’d done the right thing. We did what David would have wanted.
Please don’t think I’m judging the Schumachers if they want to try anything — and everything — to hold on to Michael. He isn’t, after all, a 63-year-old man who’s been determined never to make old bones. At 45, there’s the possibility of many years ahead.
It may still be that he’ll make a miraculous recovery, though most doctors agree the chances are slim. Dr Gary Hartstein, a former F1 doctor, wrote on his blog this month: ‘I fear there will be no more good news.’ And, having been in a similar situation, I fear the same.
I never imagined as I skipped beside David when I was five that his life would one day be in our hands. But, in the end, I believe letting him go was the ultimate act of love.