An unsparing, clinically graphic narrative/journal of a brief
marriage to a life-loving woman doomed by cancer to premature
death. Robinson insisted on marrying ex-journalist Joan even though
she had already lost a breast to cancer, had undergone a colostomy,
and had just learned that her uterine cancer had metastasized.
Although sex soon became impossible, he was enchanted by his wife's
"intellectual verve" and "genius at friendship." For the
transplanted Britisher, she was "my refuge in a foreign land and my
interpreter of alien ways." Soon, however, a ureterostomy
operation, septicemia, phlebitis (caused by a tumor mass pressing
on a leg vein), and removal of a large section of intestine had
Joan alternating between hospital and home, between bouts of
unbearable pain and periods when she was her life-loving self. In
addition to housework and teaching at the Univ. of Massachusetts,
Robinson had to handle daily irrigations of her colostomy and
rectum plus changing her ureterostomy bag, procedures he describes
in detail. He also had to cope with America's chaotic healthcare
system: neglectful nurses, a recalcitrant insurance company, the
costs and difficulties of obtaining home nursing care. And through
it all, a TV crew was shooting the documentary, Joan Robinson: One
Woman's Story. Joan at last fell into a final three-day coma
attended by a procession of friends paying homage and caressing
her. It was, says Robinson, "a monarch's death." Not for the
squeamish, but one of the most honest and eloquent accounts yet
written of terminal illness and death. (Another powerful account of
death and dying is Noll's In the Face of Death, reviewed above.)
(Kirkus Reviews)
This book is the story of the last two years in the life of a
bright, expressive and courageous woman dying of ovarian cancer, as
told by her husband through the journal he kept during her illness.
Eric and Joan Robinson knew of her prognosis when they married;
together, they made a conscious decision to spend with each other
what little time Joan had left. It is an honest and often harrowing
account of two people's failures and triumphs, as they tried to
make sense of a life totally undermined by terminal disease. Eric
describes his daily routine of nursing his increasingly
incapacitated wife and the perennial problems of hospitalization,
housekeeping and finance, all of which he juggled while trying to
keep up with his responsibilities as a college professor. He
describes his tormented emotional state, which became a jumble of
intense love, resentment, devotion, fear, anger and even disgust at
Joan's physical deterioration.
General
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