“Who the bloody hell is Mary Potter?”
That’s what Kevin thought when his oncologist told him hospice would be in touch. “They said Mary Potter will be in contact.”
At the time, there was plenty going on. Kevin says, “I thought, well, it’s Mary Potter—somebody that comes in and waves a stick over me.”
A few days later, a nurse and social worker from Mary Potter Hospice came to see him.
“They were probably there a good couple of hours. They explained everything … it was a bit of weight lifted off my shoulders.”
Over the years, Kevin worked in management, travelled for work, ran a café, and spent much of his life around others. “I’ve always been a sort of people’s person.”
These days, it’s family who keep a close eye on him. “My son and his partner … And I have a daughter in Melbourne. I’d hate to pay her phone bill.”
“Anything I need, anything that I don’t know that I need, they just do it.”
Kevin is ‘stubbornly’ house-proud. But lately, he’s been too exhausted to keep everything tidy. “Me being me, that impacts a bit.”
‘Just talking’ with his nurse helps him.
“I think in a good sort of way she sort of nipped in the back door and convinced me that people don’t come to see whether I’ve changed the toilet paper or swept the floor.”
Later, Kevin attended the hospice day programme. “I was worried when I first started coming.” He thought it might be a room full of people talking about illness.
“Absolutely nothing like I thought it could be.”
Kevin enjoys sitting next to someone he says has “a wicked sense of humour.”
There were a few weeks recently when Kevin didn’t have the energy to attend. Then the phone rang. It was his dedicated hospice volunteer driver.
“Kevin, it’s Gay here. Are you sure you’re all right? Is there anything I can do?”
“The spirits lift,” says Kevin.
These days, Kevin still laughs when he thinks back to that first question, ‘Who the bloody hell is Mary Potter?’ He had no idea what to expect.
When he thinks about others who may find themselves in his position one day, he says simply:
“If somebody else gets the same care I do, that’ll put a smile on my face.”
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