| The usual response when people hear I work in palliative care is “Oh, that must be depressing,” or “Doesn’t that disturb your faith?” On the contrary, I tell them, my faith has grown stronger, seeing people face pain and indignity with courage.
Palliative care is an unglamorous speciality. It doesn’t have the cachet of saving lives, but I know I make a difference to the lives of almost all my patients. There’s a lot of satisfaction in that.
My patients give me more than I’ve ever given them. A once fit man, who was dying at home, taught me most of what I know about quality of life. He was on a ventilator, unable to speak or eat, but found comfort in sharing love with family and friends. He died a few weeks after I met him, but I’ll never forget the peace and joy he found in his growing faith.
I do sometimes talk to people about spiritual things, if I think that’s what they want. There are no rules about that. But it’s important not to force it on them.
Some people need support from palliative care earlier in their illness before they come to us; but sometimes they’re afraid because it is associated with the end of life. Half the patients I admit to the hospice are discharged home.
Our work is inevitably linked with cancer, but we’re trying to make life easier for patients with other conditions, such as heart failure and chronic bronchitis.
I’m 37, and decided to enter this branch of medicine when I was 20. One day at the London Hospital, in October 1992, I heard a lecture by the Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Duncan Vere. He was also a Christian. From then on I knew what I wanted to do. Even now I can visualise the lecture theatre, and the spot where I was sitting.
I don’t believe you have to be a Christian to do this job. It helps me, and many of those who got the idea of palliative care accepted — from Cicely Saunders on — have been Christians. Some of my colleagues don’t profess any faith, however, but care deeply about people.
I’m vehemently opposed to the legalisation of assisted dying in the UK. Being ready to die, and refusing treatments to delay that, is everyone’s right. But demanding to be killed is something quite different.
Much of the apparent public and professional support for it comes from a poor understanding of the dying process and medical treatment at the end of life. People assume that euthanasia or assisted suicide are the only way to avoid distress at the end of life. That’s not true.
My conviction as a Christian, and as a doctor, is that we are called to alleviate distress and help people to continue to find meaning in their lives, often when it’s hardest for them to see it.
I was surprised to be asked to preach at the BBC’s service for the NHS. I’m often asked to speak in public, but it was a long time since I’d preached a sermon. But I’m a son of the manse — my father was a Baptist minister — so maybe I picked something up.
You might say my favourite Bible passage goes with the territory: it’s the famous verses from Isaiah chapter 40: “But those who hope on the Lord shall renew their strength; they will rise up like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
My first ambition was to be a clown, but I changed my mind when I found out that meant having buckets of water poured down your trousers.
My hobby was cycling. I grew up in Bangor, north Wales, and used to bike round Snowdonia. I also play the clarinet. I don’t have much time for either, now. When I came to Swansea I bought my first house, and it came with 100 feet of untended garden. Most of my free time goes on clearing the jungle.
Given the above, my favourite fair-trade product is definitely a Kirby knife, which I read about in a book by Monty Don. It comes wrapped in the local newspaper from the Indian village where it is produced. It’s available from The Organic Gardening Catalogue (www.organiccatalog. com).
I’ve been hugely influenced by Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. He was a psychiatrist who spent time in a Nazi concentration camp. He observes that, in extraordinary situations, what we consider “normal” behaviour is not normal. What is called for is extraordinary responses.
I’m not really bothered about being remembered, but if I was, I’d like it to be as someone who didn’t give up, and who brought people some small comfort when they needed it.
If I was going to be locked in a church, I’d have to choose between Sisyphus, to talk about surviving futility, Job to talk about hope winning over despair, Bach improvising on the organ, and Thelonius Monk on the piano. Or could I have all of them? If I have to die in there, I hope there would be a decent choir to sing Daniel Jones’s setting of Henry Vaughan’s “A Hymn for Peace”.
Dr Idris Baker was talking to Margaret Holness.
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