But one of the reasons why there are fewer female gynaecologists is that it is a very time-consuming speciality, and you'd be awfully hard pressed to find enough women who'd give all their time and effort to it.You'd hope that the people who've taken up gynaecology - 80 per cent of whom are men - have done so because they have a particular aptitude for and empathy with that specialty. I think it would be unwise and unfair to deny them the ability to practise what they do best.Dr Laura Cassidy is a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at the Clyde Hospital in Greenock.. It was an April afternoon when my father fell ill My mother came home to find him asleep The air in his bedroom was hot and meaty He had drawn the curtains tight against the spring sunshine. She knew something was wrong because only the day before he had been striding round his beloved garden, pruning shrubs and training clematis as usual. He was usually in the garden by six in the morning and stayed there till it was dark. Taking to his bed was an aberration which suggested we should worry but nothing could have prepared us for the weeks that followed. By the time my father was diagnosed with cancer, a few days later, it had spread from his liver to his spine There was nothing that could be done to stop it All we could do was wait for his death.
That wait was to turn my attitude towards euthanasia upside down.Initially he was taken to a local hospital. The young ambulancemen who came to carry him away were reassuringly strong and jolly but my father would not let them touch him till he had "tidied up". His hands trembled as he tried to drag a comb through his fine raven hair, streaked with silver. I felt sorry for him and angry with these intruders, bulky in the little bedroom, with their professional smiles and polished bedside manners They joked as they carried him down the narrow staircase. He looked as if he weighed no more than a dry leaf, tiny and crumpled in the stretcher, ashamed rather than frightened.The local hospital failed to diagnose the cancer straight away.
They dismissed the symptoms as typical of a dehydrated geriatric The word "geriatric" was a shock. My father was 73 and proud to have been in hospital only once, to remove a piece of shrapnel which had stuck in his gut, unnoticed since the war. He was a bully, a superb raconteur, an intellectual show- off, a roaring drunk, an articulate opinionated writer, a voracious reader. And now we were confronted with a forlorn old man smelling of fear and rot.The day he was diagnosed he told my mother not to tell us, his children. He never admitted he had cancer to my brother or me before he died.
He only told my mother because she had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer herself and was undergoing treatment. He made a great show of being cheerful and pretended he felt marvellous.He came home briefly before being moved to a London hospital for specialist treatment Our local doctor came round for a drink and a chat. My mother, brother and I gathered in the drawing room to entertain him We all felt rather hysterical and laughed a lot It was a glorious, golden May day. The doctor told us that there was nothing he or anyone in his profession could do He drank rather a lot of whisky. We smoked cigarettes ceaselessly and poured wine as if we were having a party.
Like so many people who knew my father slightly, the doctor had grown to admire him and now counted him as a friend. We ended up comforting him as much as he comforted us.My father's stay at the London hospital was short-lived I visited him there one muggy Sunday afternoon The windows of his room were closed and the room stank. All the flowers were dead, the water slimey and putrid in the vases. In the bathroom a pair of soiled pyjama-bottoms lay on the floor The bedclothes had not been changed He was sweating. One of his ears was infected and oozed a sticky brown discharge onto his pillow. A nurse told me briskly it was up to the relatives to worry about patients' clean pyjamas Furthermore, she said, my father was a "difficult" man. What he was mainly being difficult about was being bathed - he loathed his frailty and having to depend on nurses to wash him.