Soon after returning home after the Christmas vacation, he was admitted to the hospital only to be released after a few days. During the following weekend it became abundantly clear that he needed to be in the hospital.The doctors performed an ileostomi on the right side of the bowel in order to relieve the one he had that was blocked by the tumours . When they were performing the surgery they found that Romans intestines were completely blocked by metastases. Roman got the death message and was transferred into palliative care and sent home. Basically to die!
As soon as Roman was able to come home, the people around him noticed a immense change in him. It seemed like being able to return to his own environment, gave him a new found will to live. He thrived at home. There wasn't a day that he didn't walk up the stairs to the second story to sit up there and paint or draw. He did among other things finish a deck of Tarot Cards that he had started while he was in the hospital. He has documented these cards meticulously here on this blog.
When the weather got warmer, he started walking down through the basement and out on the deck behind the house to sit outside and work.
Around the 14th or 15th of May his pain had increased so much that he was in agony most of the time. He was constantly giving himself morphine from the pain-pump and in the end we all noticed that the morphine had no effect any longer. Once again he ended up in the hospital. After a few days in surgical gastro ward he was transferred to the palliative ward where they could operate in a spinal catheter.
After adjusting this pump it was clear that it only took care of some of the pain, namely the pain in his stomach while the added groin pain he had been experiencing the last several weeks, did not disappear when using the pump.
These last three weeks Roman has suffered tremendeous pain. It.. has been extremely hard to take care of him as he has been very sensitive to touch. The last few days he has experienced terrible pains and has lost more and more touch with reality as each day has progressed. Finally yesterday morning he wrapped his arms around his wife and kissed her twice on the lips and slipped into an unresponsive state of mind. Getting more and more unresponsive he finally drew his last breath at 3.43 on Friday morning on the 12th of June. It was good to see him finally be able to let go!
Roman Scott decided in January that he wanted his body to be donated to science.
A memorial exhibition will be arranged come fall.
Roman Scott was highly loved, and will be deeply missed!!
Rest in Peace Mr. Roman Scott!!
Showing paintings at IST Asker
Painting a Wall Street commission.
Making an igloo! (back in 2009)
Home for the weekend! During the dreaded summer of 2013, spent doing radiation treatment in Oslo.
Painting in the basement.
Product of our Wyoming roadtrip back in 2010.
On the East Coast, 2010
Thanks for writing this excellent account of the last years of Roman's life, and his transcendent approach to his end.
ReplyDeleteI only learned today of Roman's death. He was a student of my dad's back in high school. Roman drew him some pictures of Freud for his psychology class. Such sad news. Roman was a talent. I never met him, but my dad spoke highly of him. Thank you for this post.
ReplyDeleteThank you for these words. I only recently found out that Roman had died. What a shock to hear. We worked together as "idea people" at Kostabi World in the early 1990s. Roman was one of the sweetest people I have ever met. He was also sharply intelligent, insightful and imaginative. What a terrible lose. My heart goes out to his wife Heidi and those near and dear to him.
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