Dying without palliative care

At 13 I knew what death should look like, and not from doctors. Cancer took over my grandmother’s life in our small apartment, in Ukraine. A cramped apartment, but surrounded by mine and my mother’s love. When I was 23, my mother died in my arms from cancer. Doctors weren’t there to tell me Mom was dying — I knew by remembering how my grandmother looked.

The shadow of grandmother’s death and its pain have been hovering over me and Mom all of those years after the paramedics pronounced her dead on a pull-out couch in our humble kitchen. We are all at risk of not knowing when we might find ourselves in a vulnerable position, which we have no control over. Mom knew this and was screened annually for cancer. When she was 43 she felt a bump on her back which, after a long investigation, turned out to be a cancer of her soft tissues. But, at first, she was misdiagnosed and wrongfully treated for four months. With this, she had to rush to Israel for treatment.

At that time, I already lived in America, where I immigrated when I was 18 years old. Upon my arrival in Israel, entering the hospital where my mother was being treated, none of the doctors took the time to get to know me; let alone talk about my mother’s condition. I was sitting by her bedside assuring her she’ll be okay without knowing it myself. Without hope, we saw some improvement. Coming there a second time, after three months, my hope was to see her in a better condition. Instead, I was met by a large tumor that grew under her arm and bled every day, and my mom being unable to…