‘Can you say goodbye to the love of your life?’

Erik: ‘Christine sent me an app in the summer of 2017 asking if it was true that she had seen me in a hardware store in Limmen. Although it had been seventeen years since I had taught her, I remembered her immediately. She was intelligent, analytical, open and also very beautiful. Of course we never had anything: she was a student, I was a teacher. But the moment Christine texted me, she was unhappy, and I was going through a divorce myself. We started emailing, texting and calling every day. The first time I stood at her door, a little man opened the door with outstretched hand, “Storm, nice to meet you.” Although I don’t have children of my own, I got on well with Storm. Christine really liked that, because his real father is out of the picture. We fell madly in love. I had never been happier, and neither had she. Finally we had found the love of our lives.

Wrong thing

A few months before we got to know each other again, Chris had had a colonoscopy performed in Alkmaar because she had complaints and colon cancer ran in her family. A huge polyp was removed from her rectum. After examining the polyp, the doctor said it was not cancer. However, she was told that she had crawled through the eye of the needle and that she had to stay under control. The complaints persisted and at the end of 2019 she was in so much pain that she underwent another bowel examination. On Christmas Eve, we were at our house in France, the doctor called: ‘It is wrong, there is talk of metastasis.’ We drove back to the Netherlands in a hurry. On December 30 she received a puncture in the hospital and the next day we got the results: a very aggressive colon cancer, which was everywhere.

We wanted a second opinion at the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek hospital. There they retrieved the polyp that had been removed and examined it again. The pathologist concluded that it was indeed cancer in 2017. Chris no longer trusted the hospital in Alkmaar and wanted to continue her treatment in the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek hospital, but the first conversation with the oncologist was remarkable. She said the statistics show the average patient only has a few months to live, and advised us to make the most of it with just the two of us and our son. Chris started to scream loudly, she became completely hysterical. I had never seen that with her, she wasn’t like that at all.

Crowdfunding

Chris started googling and came across professor Kees Punt, an authority on colorectal cancer at the Academic Medical Center. Punt was significantly more optimistic: “If you’re lucky and the chemo works, it could turn into a chronic disease.” A very different approach. I won’t say we left the hospital skipping, but it was close. Initially, Chris’ body responded very well to the chemo. The tumor marker went down beautifully. Chris felt good and looked good too, so there didn’t seem to be much going on.

But after a few months, her situation deteriorated greatly. Chris also turned out to have cancer in her peritoneum. She was not eligible for a separate treatment for her peritoneum, because there were metastases everywhere. That made her terribly angry, she was furious. She found out that the hospital in Ghent has a treatment for peritoneal cancer, called Pipac, an experimental therapy that is not recognized in the Netherlands, so the insurance did not reimburse it. A treatment cost about 2,500 euros and she needed at least 12, so she started a crowdfunding campaign. We wrote a nice story and put it on Facebook. Within a week we had reached the target amount, it was unimaginable.

Deterioration

When she got home to recover from the first treatment in Ghent, her situation deteriorated dramatically. There was a lot of fluid behind her lungs, which had to be removed in the hospital in Beverwijk. Chris hoped that she would also be able to get chemo there, because she had stopped because of the treatment of her peritoneum. The conversation with the oncologist in Beverwijk was short. Chris said, ‘I want chemo.’ The oncologist replied: ‘You really can’t do that, you wouldn’t survive chemo. Now prepare yourself for dying very soon.’ Chris got very angry again. She cried, “I can’t leave, I have a son!” That was the worst thing for her, that she had to leave her son behind. She knew I would take good care of him, but she couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing him again.

Everything indicated that she would indeed die: she had a very thin face, her body was like that of a Michelin man, her lungs were under water and the cupboard was overflowing with medicines. And yet she insisted she would make it, and I supported her in that. I don’t know exactly when the switch went off in her head. At last she lay in bed staring a little at the ceiling. She could barely see me and Storm, our presence was too busy for her. When I asked how it went, she replied, “I’m trying to find my balance.”

Goodbye

Two days before she died, she called me. When I came up, she was standing next to her bed: ‘I want to sleep now.’ After saying the words, she lay back in her bed. I cried and asked if she was sure. The doctor came and then we had to say goodbye. Say goodbye to the love of your life, how do you do such a thing, that is impossible? Storm hung around his mother. Chris himself said nothing more. Immediately after receiving the injection, she fell asleep.

Later that day I suddenly heard a knock upstairs. Chris had woken up and was sitting on the edge of the bed. I was shocked: ‘What are you doing? You can fall!’ She replied a little angrily, “Yes, may I?” The doctor came back to give her extra sleeping pills. The next morning Chris woke up again. She was clearly in pain. I called the GP desperately: ‘This can’t go on any longer!’ This time the GP gave Chris a dose that was certain that she would not wake up again. Then Chris suddenly straightened up and produced a prolonged gasp. When she lay down again, the GP said that she had not died yet and that this was normal with palliative sedation.

After I let the doctor out, I went back upstairs and grabbed Chris’ wrist. I didn’t feel a heartbeat or hear any breathing. So she had died after all when the doctor and I had been there together. I have a terrible sense of guilt about that. What I would have wanted was to hold her. Then walk with her to the bridge and guide her to ‘the other side’. Tell her how much I love her and that hopefully we would see each other again someday. Instead, I was waving from a distance. At least, that’s how I’ve felt ever since.’