I will be as concise as I can, but it is necessary to tell you a lot about my wife before I come to the point of my post. Today she has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and I am at my wit’s end over her decision about it.
She is 55 years old and has a well-paid medical job (non-NHS) which requires a certain level of fitness. She studied long and hard to obtain this job, starting quite late in life; she has been doing it now for 3 years and doesn’t want to lose it if possible, together we are building up for our retirement in a few years, hopefully in sunnier climes where she is always at her happiest.
She is one of the most strong-willed people you could wish to meet; not in an arrogant way by any means, those who know her would say that she would move mountains to help you. She is not materialistic either, show her a fashion label and she will tell you you could get almost the same thing at Markies for a lot less and look just as good. I have found that when she makes a plan, or comes to a decision, she will stick with it until it’s done.
She considers herself lucky to be here, during her thirties she had acute peritonitis which nearly “saw her off”, and at the age of 40 (two years after we met) had a strangulated hernia which was life-threatening for a while. So she counts every day as an added bonus, and tries to live her life to the full. She has one son (by a previous marriage), their relationship has been stormy but beneath it all they love each other dearly.
And now we have been through this - a routine mammogram, leading to a biopsy, a lumpectomy and today a recommendation for a mastectomy.
Her decision is this - she will take a course of tamixofen, but under no circumstances will she consider surgery. Her reasoning is that she will lose her job (she has always been very proud of the fact that she never had to rely on anyone else - including me! - and will always pay her way), she might still get 5-10 years of a reasonable quality of life (her thinking here is that if she hadn’t gone for the mammogram she wouldn’t have found out anyway) and she doesn’t want to be a burden to anyone. When the inevitable happens, she will take morphine and go quite happily. She would say to you “we’re all headed in the same direction, some of us get there earlier than others, that’s just the way it is”. There have been no tears on her part (as yet), we knew this might be coming, and she is very open about it, everyone knows the situation and she is the calmest of everyone about it…
Needless to say I am torn by emotion here. I love this woman to bits, I respect her wishes and acknowledge that in the end she has the perfect right to make her own decision, but it’s not just me who will be affected. There is her son, her sister and family, and several close friends who will all be devastated if we lose her.
I think there may be time before a final decision is necessary, during the consultation it was confirmed that it is a slow-growing type of cancer, but the consultant was of the opinion that a mastectomy was the only answer. In order to delay the decision, I will be arranging through my company BUPA membership for her to have a full CAT scan and X-ray (surprisingly this has not yet been done or offered) to see what the full extent of her condition actually is.
Do I have the right to insist that she goes through this treatment? Ought I to persuade her that she should undergo a treatment that will (in her view) ruin her quality of life? Or should I accept that the decision is hers and hers alone?