Second Gestation

The term "gestation" is normally taken to mean the nine months of development of a human in the womb. The other Oxford English Dictionary definition is "the development of something over a period of time". The time from my daughter's diagnosis of a terminal cancer to her death was nine months."I didn't want to be told then" (that I was going to die). Just one comment about the communication skills of clinicians on the journey. This memoir of my daughter's life and death is written from a perspective of a mother and a doctor. As well as telling her story of the nine months from diagnosis to death, I visit areas such as empathy, communication skills, palliative care, the assisted dying debate as well as the disease itself and it's origins in the asbestos industry. I explore the conflicts that arose from my roles as mother, carer and informed advocate and how she reacted to these roles. Rose's personality sometimes made my roles challenging and I tell the story of her childhood and young adult life in order to shed some light on this personality. The aim of the book is to give insight into the patient's journey through a terminal illness. It may help those who have suffered a similar loss. I also aim to give context to communication skills learning that all doctors undertake and illustrate this with stories of fantastic communication skills and, unfortunately, very poor ones. I invite every clinician to revisit the way they communicate with their patients and believe that lessons can be drawn for all of us in the way we communicate with others. It is undoubtedly a sad book, but there are flashes of humour and of uplifting moments. Any money I make from this book will be donated to research and to the hospice movement.