Book extract: Legendary surgeon Chris O’Brien’s daughter shares his final days

SURGEON Chris O’Brien was famous for saving lives, so his early death seemed entirely unfair. In heartbreaking detail his daughter has written about his last days.

06/05/2009 NEWS: Professor Chris O'Brien from the Channel Nine (9) TV program 'RPA'.

IT BEGAN with a sudden and most acute headache in the early afternoon of Wednesday 3 June 2009.

Appointments in the Order of Australia had been released to media ahead of the announcements on the Queen’s Birthday public holiday. Chris had been appointed an Officer of the Order and I had spent the morning fielding calls for interviews.

From the moment he had woken up, Dad had been quiet. Mum [Gail] made him scrambled eggs and he ate them slowly. Nursing staff came to change his wound dressing and he didn’t make this usual friendly quips.

Chris O'Brien with wife Gail.

A journalist and a photographer from The Sydney Morning Herald came. I escorted them into the lounge room where Dad had spent so much time over the previous two and a half years. I kissed him goodbye and left for a seminar at university.

Outside, the day was grey and overcast with a spattering of rain. Dark silver light filtered in through the window.

When he was alone again, sitting in his blue armchair and nursing a slight headache that did not seem particularly unusual, it is more than likely that the tumour ruptured a blood vessel and caused a bleed in his brain. He called to Gail softly, a sound as loud as he could muster. The pain inside his skull quickly became so excruciating that he could barely speak beyond a whisper. Gail heard him and ran in. The cerebral spinal fluid was leaking out of the hole in his head. She rang Dr Wheeler, who told her to bring him into the hospital for a scan.

“Christie,” Mum whispered as Chris held his head down with his eyes closed. “Helen said to come in for a scan.”

“There’s no point,” he said. “I’m dying. I need some morphine.”

She knew it too.

Chris O'Brien became famous through his often starring role in the Channel 9 series RPA.

The plan had been for Dad to die at home. The previous day a bed had been delivered from Greenwich Hospital palliative care unit and set up in my bedroom. But in fact we

were completely unprepared for him to die at home for one main reason — there was no morphine in the house.

Gail phoned the local medical centre and asked for Chris’s GP. The receptionist told her that he was having eye surgery, and Gail asked for somebody to come quickly.

She hung up and waited next to Chris. When nobody arrived she phoned again. But the doctor who was on duty said she had a waiting room full of patients, and could not get there.

“Don’t let me die in pain,” Chris said. And Gail knew she was letting him down. She had to get some morphine. She dialled Triple 0. The operator told her to ‘get the patient lying down’.

Gail didn’t want instructions. She just wanted them to bring morphine. She was on the phone a few minutes later when the doorknocker slammed. Our dog barked. ‘Can you get that dog and put it in another room?’ asked the operator. Two young paramedics stood on the doorstep.

“Thank God. My husband needs morphine.”

‘We don’t have any morphine,’ they said. ‘We’ll need to call an ICU ambulance for that.’

Gail was on the verge of tears. One of the paramedics called for an ICU ambulance and ran up the driveway to wait for it.

The other, a young woman, waited with Mum. Helpless, they crouched by Chris, who barely moved or acknowledged they were there. Finally a third paramedic arrived from the

ICU ambulance. He said he had no intention of administering any morphine unless Gail said Chris was going to hospital.

“But he wants to be at home!” Gail said. “We’ve got the palliative equipment for him to die at home.”

Chris O'Brien campaigned tirelessly for the cancer centre that would be named in his honour — The Chris O’Brien Lifehouse.

They carried him to the hospital bed. But still the paramedic refused to administer the morphine unless Gail agreed to take him to hospital. When she did, he gave it to Chris immediately.

As the morphine seeped into his veins and started to do its work, the skies opened up and it started to pour. Dad was bundled onto a stretcher and the straps were fastened around him.

The ambulance sat at the top of our steep driveway and Mum and James [my younger] brother held umbrellas over his body while the paramedics pushed him up the hill. The ambulance doors swung open and Chris was slid inside.

The cruel irony of it all, Gail thought. His own death such a mess, and after he has done so much.

“Mum, can I go with Dad?” James asked.

“Okay, I’ll get his things and see you at the hospital.”

About ten minutes into the journey to the hospital, Dad looked up at James and murmured, “Where’s Mum?”

“She’s coming behind us,” James said. He gave a tiny nod as he acknowledged the answer. Then he lost consciousness.

Adam [my older brother] and I were called and the family congregated in Gloucester House [at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital], where one of Dad’s colleagues led us into a small room. We sat in soft chairs and listened to oncologist Dr Lisa Horvath telling us there was nothing they could do.

Mum stood up and walked out to Dad, who was lying asleep on a bed nearby. She held his hand and called in his right ear.

“Christie!” He opened his eyes, turned his head and looked at her. They locked eyes and he smiled at her for the last time.

Gail and Chris O’Brien with their children Adam, Juliette and James.

He was moved to a room on level 10 of RPA that overlooked the University of Sydney campus. We kept vigil for the next thirty hours as his big, strong heart continued to pump life through his body. Extended family, friends and colleagues moved gently in and out. His breathing became

laboured and at about four in the morning he suddenly sat bolt upright.

“Dad!” we said, hoping for a miracle yet. But his green eyes looked at us without recognition. He spewed vomit and we yelled to each other to roll him on his side. We squeezed his cheeks and tried to unclench his jaw as he groaned. And then he was gone again, into the depths of

unconsciousness.

Juliette and Gail O'Brien. Picture: Steve Baccon

As Dad lay in that hospital bed, his body restless and sometimes letting out a long, deep groan, a powerful passage from Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness echoed in my head:

“I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing under foot, without spectators, without glory, without the great desire for victory, without a fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid

scepticism, without much belief in your own rights and even less in those of your adversary.”

As the hours passed, his body eased into greater and greater gentleness. Mum tried to remove his wedding ring, but it hadn’t been removed for months and was now stuck so tightly over his swollen finger that it wouldn’t budge. A nurse brought in metal cutters and clamped down on the handles with all her force to break the ring free. My mother fingered the ring and

put it in her pocket.

At about six in the evening, [Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd arrived, having

flown to Sydney straight after parliament to be here. He gave each of us a big squeeze.

“My God, you’ve been a brick,” he said to Mum. Then he stood by Chris’s bedside, held his hand and read the citation for his Order of Australia.

“Whereas with the approval of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Australia and Sovereign of the Order of Australia, I have been pleased to appoint you to be an Officer in the

General Division of the Order of Australia.”

Chris O'Brien talking with then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at Government House in Sydney in 2009.

Respecting the sanctity of the circumstance, he stayed just a few minutes more.

The last two hours of my father’s life were peaceful. His breathing became lighter and lighter. As it did, a dense white fog settled on inner Sydney. It curled through the streets and

engulfed the football fields and sandstone buildings of the University of Sydney that I could see from the window of that hospital room.

Shallower and shallower, his breath became still. Was he still drawing air? It was hard to tell. I lay my head on the soft, white sheet next to his body and watched for the tiniest movement in his chest. There could be a miracle yet, I prayed.

But then he didn’t breathe again. It was just after eight o’clock at night on Thursday 4 June. Outside the fog hovered close to the earth. Nothing moved. Nothing changed. There was no

cataclysmic crash of thunder or howling from the skies. The world simply continued to spin. And we were left standing on it.

This is Gail by Juliette O’Brien

This is an extract from This is Gail by Juliette O’Brien, reproduced with permission from HarperCollins Publishers. It’s in bookstores now. $32.99

Originally published as Book extract: Legendary surgeon Chris O’Brien’s daughter shares his final days