Surgeon dismissed my dying husband - Liz Lochhead

SCOTTISH Makar Liz Lochhead wept as she recalled the “appalling” way she and her husband were dealt with by an NHS surgeon when told he was dying of cancer.

Scotland’s poet laureate said the surgeon who broke the news to them was “lacking in common humanity” and “shouldn’t actually be near human beings unless they are under anaesthetic”.

Her husband, Tom Logan, died of pancreatic cancer last June, before Lochhead took on the role of Makar at the start of this year.

Lochhead was speaking at the launch of a new group which aims to get Scots to speak more openly about death, dying and bereavement, making the subject less of a taboo.

The group – Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief – is an alliance of more than 40 organisations and charities which say that avoiding thinking and talking about death can have devastating consequences for the dying and bereaved. Speaking at the launch of the group in Edinburgh yesterday, Lochhead apologised for arriving late, explaining: “I got upset and thought it would be better to wait until I was OK.”

She said the night before taking up the post of Makar in January, she had written a letter to the consultant who had given her and her husband the devastating diagnosis.

Lochhead said she hoped reading sections of the letter would be a plea to those working in the NHS and training doctors to understand the impact they had when giving this kind of news.

She said in May last year she was sitting with her husband waiting to see the consultant, whom she referred to as Mr C, at Gartnavel Hospital in Glasgow.

Reading from the letter, she said: “I know every word that you, Mr C, said and the manner in which you said it, and will remember this for as long as I live.

“You said… ‘well, it’s bad news I’m afraid. It is the worst. You have inoperable pancreatic cancer. I’m a surgeon. I do cancer operations. I can’t operate, you may as well go home tomorrow. I see you live nearby’.

“What’s that got to do with anything, I remember puzzling me at the time.”

She said the surgeon explained cancer survival was measured in five-year periods. Lochhead said he stated blankly to her husband: “You won’t be alive in five years.”

Lochhead said the surgeon went on to complain about some “petty protocol” regarding admission procedures that was nothing to do with them.

“You might be a brilliant surgeon,” she read. “But you’re an utterly inadequate human being, at least in terms of communication skills.” Mr Logan died only a month later. Lochhead said other doctors who had to pass on bad news during his care had done so with simple honesty, clarity and compassion.

But she said that the surgeon, and a registrar who also saw them, were “just appalling”.

“I hope if either of you or anyone you love ever come to such a terrible place as we were in, you never encounter anyone as lacking in common humanity as you,” she read.

Lochhead said she had never received a response to her letter. Making a last comment about the consultant who dealt with the couple, she said: “That man should not be in the job he is doing.”

A spokeswoman for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: “We are very concerned to hear of Ms Lochhead and her husband’s experience. Bereavement, death and dying are highly emotive issues, and all our staff are expected to deal with these in a sensitive and caring manner.”

Kate Lennon, chair of Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief, said: “Death is inevitable for all of us, but the problems and stresses we create by the difficulty we have as a society to acknowledge this are not.

“Avoiding thinking and talking about death can mean people don’t die where they want to, families are left fighting legal battles because of a lack of wills, and the people living with bereavement are isolated because no-one knows what to say.”