ABSTRACT
A young wife had battled over the years to support her husband through the trials of chronic renal failure, haemodialysis, failed kidney transplant and an increasing disability which was psychological and social as well as physical. Finally, exhausted and demoralised, their relationship destroyed, she could take no more. She left him./Some months later he took his own life. The staff of the renal unit shared her grieving. She writes:
All of us who had cared for him were stunned. It drew us together and, when talking with the nursing staff then, I found that for the first time the isolation and distance was broken. The great tragedy is that this genuine contact between the staff and myself came only after Kevin’s death-I needed them at the beginning, and all the way through.
