It is the long nights that seem so endless when pain settles in. The sick person is reluctant to wake a loved one, feeling guilty already about the family's escalating level of stress and exhaustion from day-time care duties. Advanced cancer brings not only pain, but shortness of breath, nausea, and all the fears that facing death involves. Enter a night nurse and suddenly everything seems more manageable. Courtesy of the Irish Cancer Society (ICS), a night nurse is available for people close to death from cancer who want to be at home with their families during their last days. Any family, regardless of income or location, can avail of this free five-night service, via their Home Care Team (which is attached to the Hospice Service), public health nurse or GP.

"Between 800 and 900 families per year call in one of our night nurses for a maximum stay of five nights," says Ann-Marie McGrath, an oncology nurse who works on the ICS Cancer Help-line. "It takes the anxiety out of having a dying family member at home. The family can sleep, knowing they have the back-up of the night nurse."

Aine Vaughan has been night nursing in the Dublin area for the ICS for the past three years, having returned from New York where she worked in cancer and terminal care nursing. A qualified counsellor, her main interest is in people: "Nursing is not simply a science; it is a caring profession with a personal dimension. With terminal care, the person needs more of your time, and you can give it, which is not the case with every kind of nursing.

"I don't get distressed in the job. Because of my experience, I have a far greater understanding of death now, and its inevitability." The patient has usually "left worldly stress behind", but the family may be suffering from a mixture of turbulent emotions. "They are anxious, fearful, guilty and exhausted. I have to take care that I don't absorb all their stress. I wouldn't be any use to them if I folded up too."

Aine feels privileged to be allowed into people's lives at this profoundly vulnerable time: "I'm very aware of giving them their space, and also of the need to allow them to pick up and go on afterwards." She telephones bereaved families "maybe once or twice after the death", usually at major holiday times like Christmas, just to see how they are getting on. "They appreciate me getting in touch. We have a short chat. I don't want to encroach." She is constantly amazed at people's "resilience and insight" when they are facing death. "I find it hard to be with a young person who is dying. Some people are only in their 30s.

Most would be in their 50s and 60s. It is easier for the older ones, in their 70s. They've had a life." She notices a point in the patient when "resignation begins to dawn" and they are ready to accept whatever happens.

"God love them, they're great. I sit with them and listen if they want to talk, or just hold their hand. As Padre Pio said, nursing care without love is of no value."

The job can be very draining, says Mary, a night nurse in the Dublin area who prefers to remain anonymous as she feels the job is so private: "I'm not cold-hearted. I can get very involved and upset." She is able to switch off by going home to her own family and tuning back in to her own life: "I don't bring it back home with me."

She finds that family members, often in despair, will turn to her and pour out their worries: "People will tell me things they couldn't say to another family member. It's rewarding because you feel you have brought ease to the patient and their relatives." As for the patient's physical needs, "they need good pain and symptom control. They are usually getting morphine through a syringe driver, but they may need a top-up for breakthrough pain." Because most of the people she nurses are dying from lung cancer, they may have breathing difficulties: "If they are chesty I can give them a special injection to dry up the secretions. I keep talking to reassure them."

Just before the moment of death, the patient's respiration changes, and the pulse. "That's when I go and alert the family," says Mary. "It is a very private thing, to be with a family at the saddest point in their lives."

The ICS Help-line is at: 1800-200700

Tomorrow is Daffodil Day, an annual fund-raising drive for the Irish Cancer Society