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Help Suzanne Aucoin
Nov 17, 2007 - The St. Catharines Standard
She taught us what it means to live a good life
I understood that afternoon as I watched her sleep that I'd have to write this one day.
I had no idea then where following Suzanne Aucoin would lead or exactly how her
story would unfold.
But as I watched the chemotherapy drug flow through a clear tube into a port just
below her collarbone, I already knew the ending.
Or at least, I thought I knew.
I'd only met Suzanne a couple of times before that afternoon at the cancer treatment
centre in Hamilton - five days before Christmas in 2005.
It was the first time I'd seen anyone get chemo.
Suzanne had invited me along. She thought it would be a good way for me to begin the
series of stories I wanted to write on what it was like for her to fight terminal
colorectal cancer.
She told me she might drift off. She explained it wasn't actually the chemo drug that
did it. It was the Benadryl they gave her along with the chemo. It always made her
tired.
Suzanne asked me to help her pull the blanket over her as she lay in the hospital bed.
She was sound asleep in minutes.
I sat in a chair at the foot of her bed and looked around the large room.
There were dozens of other people in the chemo clinic in pretty much the same
positions as me and Suzanne. The cancer patient in bed, trying to get one more
chemo dose before Christmas, and someone at their bedside.
For so many people in a large open room, the hum of medical equipment and
fluorescent lights was the most noticeable sound.
And then, off to the side of the room, I noticed her. She looked to be a medical aide
or possibly a nurse.
In the quiet as Suzanne slept, the woman was preparing IV bags to deliver chemo
medication to more patients. One after another, she hung dozens of the chemo bags
from a metal frame on wheels. When it was full, she pushed it to the side and began
loading another one.
The image of the chemotherapy assembly line was impossible to overlook. And it's been
impossible for me to shake ever since.
Suzanne was just one of many.
If a single cancer treatment centre in one city needed all those bags of medication on
a single afternoon, how great was the need everywhere else? Across the province?
Across the country?
But Suzanne, I learned over the past two years, stood out among thousands stuck in
the same dire straits.
She was at the forefront of a new breed of cancer patients. Those who are unwilling
to automatically believe their doctor and the health-care system know best.
Suzanne was young - just 37 when she died last Sunday, four years after being told the
cancer she thought she'd beaten was terminal.
She was determined to research the latest cancer treatments, regardless of whether
they were offered in Ontario or not.
And she refused to allow an inequitable and dysfunctional health bureaucracy to stand
in her way.
"You can't wait with this cancer," she explained that first day I went with her for
chemo. "You can't wait for people to make decisions about your health. You can't wait
for forms to be filled out. You have to go where the drug is."
And for Suzanne, going where the drug was meant going head-to-head with provincial
health officials.
Her arguments were persuasive enough to convince Ontario's ombudsman to
investigate why Suzanne had been turned down on two occasions for out-of-country
coverage for the expensive cancer-fighting drug she was paying for in western New
York.
Earlier this year, he ruled in Suzanne's favour, calling the ministry's treatment of her
"cruel" and misguided.
The ministry followed the ombudsman's recommendation to refund Suzanne $76,000 in
medical costs and launched a review of its out-of-country medical benefits program.
It would have been easiest for Suzanne to forget about fighting the government and
concentrate solely on fighting her disease.
But she couldn't walk away from the injustice of the situation. And that's what has
inspired thousands of people who followed her story. Suzanne took great satisfaction
knowing that her victory over the Health Ministry wasn't a win for her alone.
It stands to make life - and the bureaucratic maze of Ontario's health system - easier
to navigate for countless cancer patients.
But despite her accomplishments and successes, Suzanne was as human as anyone else
who knows they're dying.
She was frightened of what was to come. Her fears and anxiety made her mind race at
night, robbing her of the sleep she needed to gain strength.
She found herself struggling over some of life's most universal questions: What was her
purpose? What's next?
The last time I saw her, Suzanne was again sleeping. She was resting in a bed at
Hospice Niagara's palliative care centre two days before her death.
As I sat at her bedside, my thoughts turned back two years to our first chemo trip
together.
And I realized the ending I'd envisioned wasn't turning out at all. Back then at the
cancer clinic I had expected to learn more about what it's like to die. But Suzanne
taught me and anyone who paid attention to her what it means to live a good life.
I also never expected Suzanne's story to finish with me losing a good friend.
She taught us what it means to live a good life
I understood that afternoon as I watched her sleep that I'd have to write this one day.
I had no idea then where following Suzanne Aucoin would lead or exactly how her
story would unfold.
But as I watched the chemotherapy drug flow through a clear tube into a port just
below her collarbone, I already knew the ending.
Or at least, I thought I knew.
I'd only met Suzanne a couple of times before that afternoon at the cancer treatment
centre in Hamilton - five days before Christmas in 2005.
It was the first time I'd seen anyone get chemo.
Suzanne had invited me along. She thought it would be a good way for me to begin the
series of stories I wanted to write on what it was like for her to fight terminal
colorectal cancer.
She told me she might drift off. She explained it wasn't actually the chemo drug that
did it. It was the Benadryl they gave her along with the chemo. It always made her
tired.
Suzanne asked me to help her pull the blanket over her as she lay in the hospital bed.
She was sound asleep in minutes.
I sat in a chair at the foot of her bed and looked around the large room.
There were dozens of other people in the chemo clinic in pretty much the same
positions as me and Suzanne. The cancer patient in bed, trying to get one more
chemo dose before Christmas, and someone at their bedside.
For so many people in a large open room, the hum of medical equipment and
fluorescent lights was the most noticeable sound.
And then, off to the side of the room, I noticed her. She looked to be a medical aide
or possibly a nurse.
In the quiet as Suzanne slept, the woman was preparing IV bags to deliver chemo
medication to more patients. One after another, she hung dozens of the chemo bags
from a metal frame on wheels. When it was full, she pushed it to the side and began
loading another one.
The image of the chemotherapy assembly line was impossible to overlook. And it's been
impossible for me to shake ever since.
Suzanne was just one of many.
If a single cancer treatment centre in one city needed all those bags of medication on
a single afternoon, how great was the need everywhere else? Across the province?
Across the country?
But Suzanne, I learned over the past two years, stood out among thousands stuck in
the same dire straits.
She was at the forefront of a new breed of cancer patients. Those who are unwilling
to automatically believe their doctor and the health-care system know best.
Suzanne was young - just 37 when she died last Sunday, four years after being told the
cancer she thought she'd beaten was terminal.
She was determined to research the latest cancer treatments, regardless of whether
they were offered in Ontario or not.
And she refused to allow an inequitable and dysfunctional health bureaucracy to stand
in her way.
"You can't wait with this cancer," she explained that first day I went with her for
chemo. "You can't wait for people to make decisions about your health. You can't wait
for forms to be filled out. You have to go where the drug is."
And for Suzanne, going where the drug was meant going head-to-head with provincial
health officials.
Her arguments were persuasive enough to convince Ontario's ombudsman to
investigate why Suzanne had been turned down on two occasions for out-of-country
coverage for the expensive cancer-fighting drug she was paying for in western New
York.
Earlier this year, he ruled in Suzanne's favour, calling the ministry's treatment of her
"cruel" and misguided.
The ministry followed the ombudsman's recommendation to refund Suzanne $76,000 in
medical costs and launched a review of its out-of-country medical benefits program.
It would have been easiest for Suzanne to forget about fighting the government and
concentrate solely on fighting her disease.
But she couldn't walk away from the injustice of the situation. And that's what has
inspired thousands of people who followed her story. Suzanne took great satisfaction
knowing that her victory over the Health Ministry wasn't a win for her alone.
It stands to make life - and the bureaucratic maze of Ontario's health system - easier
to navigate for countless cancer patients.
But despite her accomplishments and successes, Suzanne was as human as anyone else
who knows they're dying.
She was frightened of what was to come. Her fears and anxiety made her mind race at
night, robbing her of the sleep she needed to gain strength.
She found herself struggling over some of life's most universal questions: What was her
purpose? What's next?
The last time I saw her, Suzanne was again sleeping. She was resting in a bed at
Hospice Niagara's palliative care centre two days before her death.
As I sat at her bedside, my thoughts turned back two years to our first chemo trip
together.
And I realized the ending I'd envisioned wasn't turning out at all. Back then at the
cancer clinic I had expected to learn more about what it's like to die. But Suzanne
taught me and anyone who paid attention to her what it means to live a good life.
I also never expected Suzanne's story to finish with me losing a good friend.