Helping a sick or dying relative ease into death with the least pain and as much dignity as possible can be a harrowing experience. The following is one man’s story, in his own words, of how he coped with the traumatic deaths of several family members and a close family friend over roughly a three-year period. He has asked that his identity be withheld to protect the privacy of friends and relatives.

“I had to live through the slow death of quite a few family members.

It started in 1987 with my aunt, who had cancer. They called daddy and I drove him to her house then we took her and someone else to the hospital. She was gasping and in pain. Within two days she died in hospital.

My great-grandmother was about 103 when she died. One leg and the toes on her other foot were removed due to sugar (diabetes) and poor circulation – she was like that for more than 20 years. She started to go downhill suddenly, and then lost consciousness and slipped into a coma. The doctor said they should put in a feeding tube. That lasted for nearly a week. Her daughter, my grandaunt, gave her food through the tube.

My father had Parkinson’s that progressed into Alzheimer’s. His mind was going, but he did not reach the point where he did not recognise anybody. The shaking progressed and he (lost his firm grip), and then the forgetfulness started. Initially doctors said that it was emphysema because his lungs were not working.

We had to have a nurse by him day and night for the last two years when he could not help himself. At that time, about seven years ago in 1998, we paid $70 per hour. His care used up nearly half of the family’s savings, but that is what it was there for.

Fortunately, the doctor prescribed medication that made him sleep a lot. We had nurses running shifts for 10 hours a day, seven days a week for a year, nearly two. They would move him around and wheel him out in the backyard in the days. We would try to read the newspaper to him and he would struggle to talk; his mouth was not opening and closing too well, he was getting weaker and weaker.

Then at 6:00 pm every day, the nurses made him lie down and put him in the bed and made him sleep. The nurses tried their best, but he used to get bedsores because he was lying down most of the time. His muscles wasted away and he went down to skin and bones.

Then his bones were pressing against his flesh and no matter what we did, like moving him from one side to the next, he got sores at all the pressure points like his shoulders and hips. Once those start, they don’t stop. We used to carry him to a doctor, but our neighbour was a doctor so he would come over sometimes to check him out.

He ended up with a chest cold, bronchial pneumonia. The doctor had come and looked at him and prescribed him medication. I spent the whole day trying to fill it. His breath kept getting shorter and shorter until it stopped. He died right there in the living room.

Shortly before my father died, my grandaunt, who was so vibrant even in her old age, quickly went down because she had an enlarged heart. I saw it on the x-ray that they did of her chest. She used to struggle to breathe. It went on like that until she was unconscious and we took her to the hospital where she regained consciousness, but she was not doing well and wanted to go home.

She had problems swallowing and they put in the tube. She was in there for three days. The doctors realised that they could not do much so they sent her home. We rented an oxygen cylinder, and moved her bed downstairs. We got the same nurses who looked after my father to go over to her. I used to watch them put the Suppligen, or whatever they were feeding her at the time, in a syringe and pump it through.

She lasted less than one week at home. She was 80 plus. I was there the morning that she died and had to leave. She died one hour afterwards.”

Family members were not the only ones whose deaths have affected him.

“I stopped at my former girlfriend’s mother’s house one evening on the way back from the country, it was about nine o’ clock. I had to be calling and calling her from the gate and, finally, she came and opened the door.

I saw that she was not doing well at all and I called the neighbours and my girlfriend, who headed out of town to be with her. They took her to the hospital in Falmouth and the next day while she was being transferred to the Cornwall Regional Hospital in an ambulance, she died. She was a smoker and had lung issues that led to a heart attack.

The father of that same girlfriend had cancer and eventually he was hospitalised in the Cornwall Regional Hospital and died.

I never saw my nanny (who cared for him as a child) for many years until we got a message to say that her husband had died.

They were two old people living in a little house in the country by themselves and the neighbours did not know who to call. They only knew that she used to call me her godson and they found my number in the phone book. She was older than (her husband) and was sick for a long time and he did not take good care of her.

When my cousin and I went to look for her, she was in such a bad condition and barely knew anything. We cleaned her up, but the next day she died as well.”

Even today, he is still dealing with the trauma of coping with a terminally ill person, though not a family member.

“Weeks ago, my current girlfriend’s father had major surgery. I gave blood for him and visited him at home, when he was in the hospital, even in the intensive care unit.

They discharged him and he is home recovering slowly, but he does have a terminal disease. It is always difficult, but I am the man about the place, so I have to deal with it.”