48-year-old Willemsen is terminally ill: lung cancer. “When I found out, it was terrible,” she says. “I stopped working, that was not possible at the time.” She had her own GP practice, which she gave up. “I was very sad and it was very difficult.”
She didn’t make that decision to stop working alone, which is exactly her point. “I have found a good coach, whom I speak to every three months to draw up a new plan. It is very important to have good guidance if you are terminally ill, to talk about what you still want in life and how you will allocate that time.
Last stage of life
This is how Mirjam came to the conclusion that it would be better for her to give up her practice and work as a self-employed person, so that she could organize her own time and working days according to what was and what was not. She shakes her head. “I am also being treated in the hospital, but there is talk about the treatment. It is not enough about my goals, the quality of life after treatment. That is a piece of palliative care that I want to highlight more, which is discussed more must be.”
Because as a general practitioner, Willemsen knows better than anyone how important it is to talk about what someone still wants in life. “About how someone wants to spend their last phase of life and about what the dying process should look like. As a GP, I very often deal with situations in which people die suddenly or are terminally ill and have a long illness. I can easily separate that from my private situation and think it’s a very nice part of my job: to give someone a good end and to guide them nicely in that last end of life.” The GP is co-writing a new guideline on ‘proactive care planning’.
Great uncertainty
What Mirjam noticed, once she sat at home after giving up her practice, was that it was very important for her to participate in society. “That’s a big part of everyone’s social life. I found myself sitting at home, but my friends were at work and my kids were at school. I felt lonely; I wanted to have a coffee, but no one was there. It was for very important to me to go back to work.”
At the beginning of her illness, Mirjam found it difficult to talk about death, but ‘it gets easier when you come back to it more often’. “It gives me reassurance now that I know what I want and that I have put things down on paper. I can decide for myself how I leave my family.” The only thing she still has trouble with is the great uncertainty. “Not knowing how long you can go on like this and what to expect. That bothers me more than how long it will take.”