Sister says no life should pay the price of a horrible death; husband says death is the cost of life

Katrina’s sister Sandra and Michael’s wife Lesley both died from cancer, in very different cases. They have drawn on the distressing experiences to weigh in on the assisted dying law.

Former Adelaide school principals Katrina Spencer and Michael Campbell are mourning loved ones ravaged by cancer too quickly, too soon.

Katrina’s sister died from lung cancer in 2016 and Michael’s wife died from stomach cancer last year.

While both have shed equal tears – one says no life should pay the price of a horrible death, and the other says death is the cost of life.

The complete strangers are sharing their very personal experiences of death to shine an honest light on two very different ends.

They are doing this before our parliamentary representatives decide on controversial law reform expected to legalise assisted voluntary dying in SA.

These are their stories.

SANDRA SIEMERS

Katrina Spencer’s father hid a small collection of medication in the backyard shed as an insurance policy should his life begin to end the painful way his eldest daughter’s did.

“He’d squirrelled tablets away and he told us we’d never find them and when it was time he would make the decision because he knew the doctors couldn’t make it for him,” said Ms Spencer, from Adelaide’s northeastern suburbs.

Her father – George Spencer – died peacefully last year, aged 97, surrounded by his loved ones at Calvary Hospital, in the city. He died from complications after surgery for a fall.

“His death was much, much more peaceful and more loving and calmer,” said Ms Spencer, 64.

Four years earlier, Ms Spencer and her father watched their sister and daughter – Sandra Siemers – die a long and painful death that began with a terminal lung cancer diagnosis 18 months earlier.

Sandra Siemers with her dog Dave in 2013 – three years before her death from lung cancer. Picture: Supplied

Katrina Spencer with her dog poppy and her sister Sandra Siemers and her dog Dave, taken in 2011. Picture: Supplied

“She was gasping for air every breath of the way and in excruciating pain,” said Ms Spencer, a retired school principal and former Education Department director of literacy and school improvement.

“It was a slow, agonising downhill descent – and it wasn’t days like dad’s death was – we spent weeks and weeks watching her suffer and waste away, not being able to eat, or talk, or manage her pain,” she said.

“She was very heavily sedated but she still woke up in pain – they never found an effective way to manage her pain – it was never enough.”

Ms Siemers was 72 when she died at home in Berri after a bedridden six months. Two years earlier she had completed a degree in Accountancy – finally accomplishing the higher education dream she was forced to sacrifice as a teen to provide for the family and help care for her six younger siblings.

In their last goodbye, Ms Spencer told her eldest sister she loved her.

“I told her: ‘I’m going to miss you’. I told her I was being robbed of an extra 20 years of having her support and friendship.”

Ms Spencer said her sister repeatedly begged her, the palliative care nurses and her own daughters to end her suffering.

Through tears, she explained the recurrent dialogue with her sister as she deteriorated each day: “We would say to her: ‘If we could do something, we would, but we can’t’. It was heartbreaking – she knew she was never going to get better and we could do nothing to help her.

“She died in so much pain and I couldn’t do anything in the end to help her – I couldn’t fulfil her wishes.

“If she could have the death she wanted and deserved, my sister would have been able to say goodbye and spend her last moments in happier times with her family rather than having them wipe away her tears.”

Katrina Spencer’s older sister Sandra Siemers died in pain from lung cancer. She wants voluntary assisted dying laws passed so no-one ever suffers this way again. Picture: Tom Huntley

LESLEY CAMPBELL

Michael Campbellwipes away tears from his cheek with the back cuff of his shirtsleeve.

“I just miss her,” he said. “I really miss her – I often turn around to share something with her and she’s not there.”

His wife Lesley died aged 63 from stomach cancer a year ago next month.

“She was supposed to have surgery to remove her stomach,” said Mr Campbell, a retired school principal.

“But they found that the cancer had spread to her diaphragm – which meant it was stage four,” he said. “We knew it would kill her.”

Michael Campbell with a photo of his wife Lesley who passed away from cancer. Picture: Mark Brake

He recalls the first time, exactly, he met his wife of 44 years.

“It was ten past six on the sixteenth of November 1972,” said Mr Campbell, 66, from Adelaide’s southern suburbs.

They were teenagers attending a youth group meeting and Lesley was, typically, late.

Tardiness was her signature trait, said Mr Campbell, because she was often so caught up in conversation that she lost track of time. “She loved people and knew how to really listen.”

All around the house is her presence. Pictures and pictures of the couple’s travels together across 25 countries hang on the walls.

Lesley and Michael Campbell on their wedding day, September 11, 1976.

“In the end, the cancer was everywhere,” said Mr Campbell. “You could tell she was in pain even though she never complained.”

But, he said, the palliative care team at home, and in the last two days of her life at the Mary Potter Hospice, made sure she was comfortable in body and mind. “She received nothing but great care and compassion.”

Lesley died at the North Adelaide hospice in Michael’s arms surrounded by her daughter and sister-in-law.

The married couple spent their last four hours together holding hands.

“Lesley had her eyes closed all that time and I talked to her about life, about the things we’d done together and reassured I was going to be okay because she was worried I wouldn’t cope.

“I felt that she was peaceful – there was no question of pain – none at all,” he said.

“As Catholics, we pray for a happy death and I think, for Lesley, we got as close to that as possible.”

Mr Campbell said his wife was a spiritual woman, who believed through death she would be with God.

He said voluntary assisted dying was not a path either of them would choose.

“While we do not wish death on anyone, it is a price we all pay for life,” he said.

“I have nothing but compassion for anyone who feels they need to end their life because they are suffering.”

Michael Campbell's wife Lesley Campbell travelling in Norway, 2015.