Chapter 12 - The End

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Sara and I nervously awaited Christmas. Would Max survive to see Christmas Day? How would we cope in the future if he died at Christmas? We did not know.

Max was in pain and we gave him morphine but he also exercised phenomenal control over his body.

He asked why he needed the morphine and drugs because he had learnt to control the pain. He seemed to be able to abstract himself from the pain if he lay quietly and relaxed, almost meditating, and staring into space.

The morphine doses we gave him were gradually increasing. We had been told to give as much as was needed within the constraints of the dosages that we had been given. This was an unnerving experience. When the dose doubled then I drew the conclusion that Max's situation was twice as bad. His dose started at five milligrams and stayed at this level for some time. After two weeks this doubled to ten milligrams. I was apprehensive at such a huge jump. Yet again I had an awful lot to learn.

Max was generally in good spirits but had a lot of problems walking. We would take him out as often as possible, but a lot of the time he felt listless and too tired to do anything.

Sara and I so wanted to give Max some sort of quality of life during his last days. When he felt well enough we would take him into town in his wheelchair. We all enjoyed getting out of the house which, like the hospital, had started to make us feel imprisoned and claustrophobic.

Sara and I were jubilant when Christmas Eve arrived. Given the initial prognosis that Max might survive from between three weeks to three months, we were so grateful to be approaching the upper limit. Not everything was against us.

We were not sure if Max still believed in Father Christmas. We thought he had his suspicions and he was of an age where children in school could destroy such myths . He voiced his suspicions to me but I denied that we provided his presents. We had been so honest about everything else but if Max was going to die Sara and I wanted to preserve some childhood magic before his death.

On Christmas Eve we waited and waited for Max to fall asleep but he was too excited. Every time we passed the bedroom we could see he was still awake. At about eleven o' clock and Sara and I were getting tired and wanted to go to bed. Sara crept in and caught him nodding off. She quickly put the presents at the end of the bed.

Max woke and chaos ensued.

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