Perhaps if I had done so, I would have learnt that they would have allowed my mother to continue her pretence.But I was so overwhelmed and exhausted with caring for my mother that such efficiency was beyond me. They wouldn't even see me without her.Now that it is all over, I realise I should not have taken no for an answer. I should have pushed my way past the person answering the phone, turned up and insisted on talking to the authorities. Nor would the hospice allow me access to their advice, their counselling or their Macmillan nursing, without my mother being taken there first.

I therefore got a referral via the cancer specialist, bypassing the GP's refusal.But when I rang - and I rang two or three times as the stress of it all mounted - I could never extract a promise that my mother's denial would be respected. The commander, a sensible man, saw the funny side but warned the GP that others might not. Yet as my mother got worse, I wanted help, even if she did not I rang the hospice and found the poet had now moved on. One of her patients, a retired naval commander, had had a bad experience there.A female poet, somehow attached to and roaming round the establishment, had offered to write him a special poem.

This poem compared his forthcoming death from lung cancer in some detail with drowning at sea. When I asked if my mother could be referred to the hospice, she begged me not to do so. "It's something to do with my false teeth not fitting."Her GP understood her well. A week or so after I had told her, a consultant carefully explained to her that she had a tumour on her tongue which needed radiotherapy."Do you understand what's wrong with you?" the consultant asked her, groping for her informed consent "Oh, yes," said my elderly mother with a charming smile. Yet I also know that she needed her denial.When the first diagnosis of her cancer was made (to me, not her), she asked me several times: "What is really wrong with me?" Each time, my reply was: "Do you really want to know?" It took six weeks before she answered in the affirmative and then I told her.After that, she knew, but she preferred not to know. My mother's attitude made looking after her more difficult than it need have been. And this hospice gave me the strong impression it would not respect her right to deny the truth.Pretending you don't have cancer when you do can be infuriating for those trying to help you, as I know only too well.