Here I was again in A & E one year later; I was inspected by six or seven medics and nurses, transferred from A to E since no one in A knew what it was. Finally a doctor, possibly the Consultant said he did know and that it could be removed by surgery but that it often returned and would I like to try the old-fashioned method of tying a piece of thread around it. Yes, I said, and sure enough, two days later it fell off. But no one thought to take a biopsy.

Meanwhile I noticed another strange growth just below the first. When it finally broke cover and became a suppurating, easily bleeding sore, I showed it to my GP who did, bless him, take a biopsy but immediately tried excising it with laser which , as it turned out, was not the wisest thing to do and only encouraged a frenzied period of growth. A few days later he called me in to the Surgery and said, “you have Kaposi Sarcoma and it’s a cancer – usually connected with HIV positive people.” I told him there was no way I could be HIV unless you could pick it up looking at someone across a carriage.

In about a week’s time I received 2 notices of appointments, one with a Plastic Surgeon at Queen Mary’s after a further wait of a week, and another to see a skin specialist in August! So that’s all right I thought: not exactly 999 country.

Meanwhile I was being urged by several friends to ‘go private’, not heed the cost and head for The Royal Marsden or a hospital specializing in cancer. I resisted these because I do believe that my GP has my interests at heart and being the senior doctor in the Practice, has access to the best people. l had to be very trusting because he did not at this stage explain that my Plastic Surgeon whom I had not yet even met, would have access to a team of specialists, including an Oncologist. I was very much left in the dark; no one phoned me nor was I given any advice on how to cope with an open tumour, a couple of centimetres in diameter. However in a way this turned out to be a blessing.

I decided to research cancer on the internet, as well as alternative approaches to treatment. These were fascinating and all involved altering one’s diet in order to make the body as alkaline as possible and to cut out all sugars, which are the preferred food of cancer cells. I also talked to friends who had combined the alternative approach with conventional treatment in mastering their own cancer. One contact led to another and soon I was inundated with help and advice. I decided to draw up a diet sheet and embarked on my new diet immediately. For the first week I felt certainly felt weak but then I began to recover my strength and vitality so much so that soon I felt better than I had for months. I also noticed that the tumour looked slightly better so I started photographing it at weekly intervals and the record makes interesting viewing. I got tired by the afternoon but then lay down and concentrated on relaxing and breathing properly. I made a record of the people who helped me on this new voyage and soon found that I had to avoid anyone, even close friends, if they clearly thought what I was doing was a waste of time. If someone cast doubt I felt lowered and diminished, whereas if they supported me wholeheartedly, I felt strengthened.

Very soon I noticed that my foot was less inflamed and that the open sore was less angry looking. By the time my appointment to see my Plastic Surgeon came up I was able to say to her that I had already changed for the better. She did not say anything to encourage me in what I was doing but neither did she try in any way to dissuade me and I felt encouraged by my first meeting with her. She radiated competence and even a little warmth, though I had the feeling she was keeping this strictly under wraps. I suppose it only helped that she was and is beautiful and vivacious. She also happens to be as black as a moonless night. I felt an instant rapport and confidence. The letter to my GP summed up our meeting in a masterly way with no mistakes.

15^th May 2011

Felt tired and a bit low. Nice walk in morning, rested before and after lunch, a couple of emails and collected all diet info and typed out daily menu and diet. Here it is:

PAGE 1                          DAVID WALSER -  SPECIAL DIET

BREAKFAST

1 litre juice made freshly from:
6 medium size carrots, beetroot, swede, parsnip, celery, fennel, ginger, lettuce, celeriac, cucumber, coconut water
dish of sprouted seeds and 6 soaked almonds mixed with boiled millet (egg-cup full when dry) mixed with a gluten free muesli and gluten free cereal
dessert spoon barley grass, ‘Milk Thistle plus’, flaxseed
green tea gluten free bread with ‘white almond spread’

ONE HOUR BEFORE LUNCH OR DINNER
Tsp bicarbonate of soda mixed tsp molasses

LUNCH
Mixed salad from garden, spoonful cider vinegar, garlic
Chives, parsley, coriander, sage etc
Seaweed flakesasparagus
Avocado, dash of Udo’s and cider vinegar
Lemon & fresh ginger tea with fresh peppermint

TREAT: 10p size piece of 100%black chocolate (Hotel du Chocolat, Ken Hi St)

DINNER

Soup of par-boiled and liquidized mixed veg: carrots, cabbage, lettuce, herbs, sprouted seeds, beetroot, garlic, ginger, tsp Miso, cooked tomato paste or juice PLUS tsp of turmeric
Plate of broccoli or sliced cabbage, broad beans, peas, courgettes, runner beans  plus
Seaweed flakes, Tofu/Whole rice/sourdough bread made from buckwheat and Quinoa and/or Soya   (All veg is organic or unsprayed from Kent farm )

OPTIONAL FOOD
Small piece steamed fish twice pw
White beans,  mushrooms, grilled and peeled red peppers, soy yoghourt, Quinoa pasta

SNACKS IF DESPERATE
Tahini, slice of sourdough bread with Japanese preserved ginger slices, rice ‘biscuits’
Rice ‘biscuits’ spread with almond butter, houmous

DAILY MEDICATION
Jane Water’s daily potion (Alternative Health Centre balances and supports the   weaknesses in the system) plus, Vit D 1 drop, Beta Carotene  25000 twice daily, Udo’s oil on salads, Milk Thistle complex, Magnesium Pantothenate, Prostease
Colloidal silver used as antiseptic spray for lesion. Cholestsafe .Vit D no longer nec after 2 months, nor Prostease, nor Cholestsafe

NHS medications: Aspirin, Amias -Candesartan, Lipitor-Atorvastatin,

Folk remedy
tsp of bicarb and tsp molasses one hour before lunch or dinner if forgotten

SUPPLIERS

Nutri Centre 0207637 8436  Access codeZZACC025
Rio Trading 01273570987
Bushwacker, King St . Hammersmith
Victoria Health 25a Broadwalk shopping Centre Edgeware Mddx 08003898195
Revital: 88454118   Beta Carotene, Udo’s 83 King’s Road
‘As Nature Intended’, Chiswick Hi Rd
Phone Dome and Compu Dome Attach to mabile phone and computer   02085168276

DAILY ACTION
Keep up supply of sprouted seeds
Exercise in moderation
Rest whenever tired
Allow sun and air to eruption on foot and bathe daily for 20/30 mins in Epsom salts
Apply clay pack

MEDITATION AND VISUALIZATION PRACTICE
30 minutes in Infra-red ‘sleeping bag’

ADVISORS, Healers, Surgeon and GP
Jonathan Botting -  GP
Miss Joy Odili -  Surgeon and Hospital Consultant
Dr Susan Lalondrelle – Oncologist@Royal Marsden, Sutton RMHNumber 589799 tel 02086613588
***Jane Waters – trained Naturopath and Nutritionist working with vibrational               MORA/electro acupuncture testing equipment  02073812298
Alex Johnson – osteopath and Cranial Osteopath, diet advisor , advised soaking foot in Epsom salts   tel 07946722777  (weekly treatment session)
Sunita, Chris, Richard et al at BUSHWACKER-organic supplies and supplements and nutrition help
Rhuna Martin – from C experience and successful outcome, Alexander /breathing techniques
Andreas Reyneke  – from C experience and successful outcome (weekly exercises)
Danka -  present Cancer experience and diet treatment
Tarisha Seligman – present Cancer experience and diet knowledge
Flavio Acerito – nutrition and mental approach – Visualization and Meditation
Heidi:  Fresh , unsprayed seasonal veg/ fruit from @ Perry Court Farm, Nr Maidstone, Kent, who sells at Farmers Markets, Barnes/Hammersmith, and 18 others 07031326850
Gabriel Kleinberg Get Fitt Ltd <gabriel@get-fitt.com> Far Infrared Cocoon System

SUPPORT
Love, encouragement, thoughts and prayers of friends

WEBSITEs http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/KaposiSarcoma/DetailedGuide/kaposi
http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Cancertypes/Kaposissarcoma/TreatingKaposissarcoma/Radiotherapy.aspx

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1bU6lt7hSuMJ:alternativecancer.us/diets_for_cancer.htm+Alternative+cancer+diets&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.

24^{th September}

Saw Alex for a ‘treatment ‘ He studied my diet and suggested removing the Hemp protein. He said I was getting enough protein with all the other things. Had a good night again: I’m feeling spoilt. Concentrating on breathing correctly all the time and not only when I lie down and rest, but I’m learning slowly. I’ve obviously breathed badly – very shallow – all my life. Alex was very keen that I should not allow surgery and told me about visualization. I began the next day to add it to my rest period

25^th

Heard confirmation today that I am Not – as I told the Consultant- HIV positive so it IS Classic Kaposi Sarcoma. -NOT the HIV related KS- Rather unusual and confined to people of Mediterranean and Eastern European descent. Hmm! Well I happened to remember my mother telling me 60 years ago that one of her mother’s sisters was very dusky, to the embarrassment of the family and was always plastering herself in make-up. Jeanne, mother’s sister, come to think of it, had a “wonderful sallow complexion that took so well to the sun”-, so I reckon Great grandmother, who came from humble farming stock in south of France was shipped over to Vermont after a roll in the hay with an Algerian or Sicilian worker (this cancer is prevalent in Sicily), when the dusky child appeared. No mention of Great grandfather in any of the histories so no doubt it was he who bought her the one-way ticket and stayed in France himself.
I think I am in reasonably good hands but can always get a second opinion before any radical action is taken if I’m in doubt. Meanwhile I have done a lot of research on the alternative route to curing cancer and also been enormously helped by therapists and friends, in particular Jane Waters at the Alternative Centre.
The good news is that I feel wonderful and have stopped losing weight after an initial drop of 9 kilos or so. Full body scan tomorrow so in early June I see my Consultant again.
When I spoke to the Plastic Surgeon Consultant, she said they were considering radiotherapy instead of surgery since such a large area would have to be removed. I told her I had read that radiotherapy was not effective with CKS and she replied, with great emphasis, “Well, that’s where you’re wrong!”
Listened to a rather dreadful Meditation tape on relaxation, dozed off and woke up in time to hear that I was now in an ‘ineffable state of love and at peace with the whole world.’ So that’s all right then.
I saw a veritable team of people on 1st July at St George’s, Tooting: 8 of them
jammed into a little room with me, semi-prostrate in order to have my foot on
display: my Consultant Plastic surgeon, an Oncologist from
The Royal Marsden, a Dermatologist, a chemo-specialist Doctor, two students and a couple of nurses.

The Dermatologist kicked off hardly looking at me, by saying, “This cancer returns and one doesn’t know where it will turn up but one can treat the appearances with surgery, chemo or radio-therapy”. Having delivered this jolly news, he left. The Plastic Surgeon who is the boss of my case and, I distinctly sense is not in the least antagonistic to what I am doing even though she has shown no overt approval, then said,
“You can have me at any time if surgery is what you choose.”
I replied, “I’d love to have you, but not for surgery!” This lightened up proceedings. The chemo Doctor then tried selling me his wares, which I said I didn’t want; he made another bid, then gave up and left.  The Oncologist, with a gleam of triumph in her eye, said, “so I’ll see you in about three weeks for radio-therapy”, to which I replied, “I’d love to see you in 3 or 4 weeks but don’t have the zapp machines ready to fire because I would first like to have an assessment and see what further progress I have made, if any. They really looked at my foot at last and agreed it was better than it had been, so I said, “If I can get rid of it altogether by changing my life-style and diet, wouldn’t that be more likely to suggest that the cancer would not return, than if you zapped it or excised it and I went on as before?” The Oncologist replied, “We are trained to cure cancer with surgery, Chemo-therapy or radio-therapy.”
So the excitement continues and as I pointed out, I feel terrific on my strange diet, my sleep is better than it has been for years and my spirits could not be better.
My ambition is now to disappoint the Oncologist from the Royal Marsden by
showing her in three weeks time it is safe to delay again. My foot
improves every day and my hope is that soon the cancer will
have left for greener pastures. If I can do it I want to show that I have
got rid of the cancer without surgery, chemo or radio therapy. If she gives me radio and it is ‘cured’ they will just claim that they did it.
A retired Neuro-Surgeon friend of mine is unsympathetic to what I am doing and just says, “you have to do what the expert says”. This lowers me: I am very sensitive to negative vibes. I told him that cancer is not like brain or knee surgery where most people would agree on a course of action. One is surrounded by different views, by non-support from the conventional world – not a word of encouragement, concern, advice on diet, advice on care for an open ulcer in the course of five weeks – only tests, scans and meetings with specialists, but masses of help from ‘the alternative brigade’. I have made up my own diet, refining it from time to time and I feel wonderful besides having lost over a stone of unnecessary weight round the hips and stomach.
The open, oozing and bleeding ulcer, is now a small, dry scab about an eighth of an inch in diameter; all the inflammation has gone as has the hardness of the surrounding area. Number two tumour, that had just broken cover and was quite small, has apparently gone and the third, fourth and fifth ones are still black spots under the skin. Perhaps they can’t decide what to do.
Incidentally, the CT scan showed that the cancer had not appeared anywhere else though the Dermatologist I met, and the articles I have read on the Internet suggest that it always does come out in more than one place at the same time.

added on 25th July

A few days ago I had the meeting with the Oncologist. My large tumor had completely disappeared, as had No 2. However the three black nodules were and are still clearly visible under the surface of the skin. The day before I had seen my GP who strongly advised having them removed by surgery (when the main ulcer was at it’s worst he tried to remove it by laser before he knew the results of the biopsy and later strongly recommended surgery). However the Oncologist, knowing my inclinations, agreed to wait for another three months. I asked her if she thought the improvement was anything to do with my diet, to which she replied, “No, it’s just natural remission.”
The next day I had a follow-up appointment with the Consultant Heart Physician who had been in charge of my two heart operations in 2010. When I told her about my interview with the Oncologist, she roared with laughter and said, “The trouble is, we Doctors are plagued by the business of using only proven methods. I personally believe that cancer IS closely connected with diet but I’m not (I seemed to hear a ‘yet’) convinced that diet can cure it.”
I shall continue with my diet, easing up a little here and there, for the next three months and see how things go.

1^st September

Three nodules have come much nearer the surface of the skin and one can feel the bumps quite clearly. A fourth very small one has appeared nearby. Alex says they look fine in that there is no inflammation and the area around them is soft and healthy looking. He is confident that the body will deal with them in its own time and that I should not worry. He says I am in very good shape and in the best state of mind and health to deal with it.

17^th October

I saw my Oncologist at the Royal Marsden again on the 13^th and as a result of the meeting she agreed to let me return in another 3 months’ time, with the warning that if the nodules changed radically in the meantime I should come to see her straight away. She thought –and I agreed – that the nodules were nearer the surface of the skin and she noticed that there were now two more nodules, making a total of five. She saw that the large tumours had completely disappeared. I said I thought the nodules, though nearer the surface, were less prominent than they had been and looked benign rather than angry. We again discussed the importance of diet which she was still dismissive about- although very charmingly. I offered to send her ‘The China Study’; she agreed and said she would send me some information in return. Although there are two more nodules that have now made an appearance, they are both very pale and in fact all five of them are hardly visible. I had hoped they would all disappear by the time I saw her on the 13^th but now I hope that they will all have gone by the time I next see her. That will be the first battle won and then the bigger battle will be to keep the cancer at bay, but first things first. Incidentally, I asked the Oncologist why she would prefer to treat the nodules with radio-therapy rather than do nothing to which she replied that they might suddenly get out of hand and be impossible to treat in that way: a chilling thought, but I feel reasonably confident that they will not get out of hand and mean to continue with the treatment I have chosen.

Last weekend I went up to Yorkshire for a wedding and had two dinners running that did not at all conform to what I have been allowing myself.  The first dinner in a country pub was by arrangement vegetarian but when it arrived everything was swimming in cheese. I was so hungry that I did my best to scraped off the cheese crust and ate the rest. The next evening at the wedding feast I left most of the first course, pushed the delicious looking bits of beef filet aside on the main course dish and just ate the few vegetables. The pudding was a cream concoction that I also left. The result was that by the time I returned to our rented cottage I was starving so I gobbled down a slice of tofu and a rice biscuit, spread with tahini and houmous. If you had told me only six months ago that I would find fare such as this delicious I would surely have looked at you in disbelief, but it is true and in fact at the dinner I did not really regret the filet of beef that much.

Apart from finding that I grew tired rather easily, my first real indication that something was amiss came about in Edinburgh. I had gone there for a weekend to attend a school gathering and was staying with friends in Colinton, some 6 miles away from the station and mainly uphill. I took my bicycle in order to be independent and on the way to their house I noticed a pain spreading down my arms. I went more slowly and the pain retreated.. Back in London I felt worse on the Monday and had to drag myself into Lowther Primary school where I teach poetry once a week on a Monday morning. When I had struggled back home I phoned the surgery and was given an appointment later in the day so I ‘phoned Paul  our friend and neighbour asking him to look after our dog in the event that I was kept in for tests ( Jan had gone to his retreat in the Isle of  Wight for the week). When he asked why I was going to see the doctor and I had explained he said, “you should be calling the ambulance, not waiting until your appointment in the afternoon.” A few minutes later he rang back: he had spoken to Ed, one of my Godsons and said Ed had gone ballistic. I let him call the ambulance and it arrived in less than ten minutes.

We spend our lives visiting friends in hospital
Car park, couple of quid, corridors and lifts,
Blythe Ward, fifth floor; is it East wing?
Hello! Take a chair, over there. Chap in that bed
Died last night. Would you like tea?
See you next week. Keep up the good work.
And then one day it’s 999 for you.
The ambulance, the wires, the trolleys, the tests
The peeps, the patients opposite, their relatives,
The friends, the fruit. Take a chair. Would you like tea?
I’m off to sleep
Ask Nurse not to wake me
I might not be here
But in Tintagel
To travel so far and so fast
Could prove fatal

“Hello! Hello!” The repeated cry comes from some distant ward on our floor. “Hello! Hello!” on a curved, descending, mournful note. In the night, making my way to the bathroom, I come across the man, stooped, white-faced,  eyes focussed on infinity, he shuffles past me, “Hello! Hello!” At close quarters, the voice is more urgent and has an air of desperation, like someone calling on a bad telephone line whose life depends upon being understood.

A nurse trots along behind, ” This way, this way, Mr Brown” as she tries to steer him around and back to his ward, but without success. “Hello! Hello! – Hello! Hello!” and the odd couple disappears around the corner.

Opposite me – it is a ward for four patients- two are men look to be of Asian origin and both overweight. The one on the right, in a turban, receives a visit from a daughter (there are two more daughters, he tells me later) and a son. The young man has thighs as thick as his sister’s torso. They bring fruit and Indian delicacies. After embracing their father they stand respectfully beside the bed while he holds forth and the son eats the delicacies. Papa has the distinction of a pater familias of some importance, a Managing Director perhaps. Later I ask him what business he has been in and he says proudly that he has been a mechanic all his life: “I have repaired every type of wehicle, and WITHOUT A PIT.”

The other man opposite me, but to the left, is more difficult to engage in conversation and for a long time would not meet my eye. At one point the Consultant swept in with his retinue to question him. The paper curtains were pulled around them but of course I could hear every word.
“Where do you get pain?”
No reply.
“Do you ever go up stairs?”
” Never!”
“Do you take exercise?”
“No!”
“Who does your shopping?”
“My wife.”
“You have a spray?”
“Yes!”
“You use it?”
“Yes!”
“It relieves the pain?”
“Yes!”
“What made you come here?”
“The pain spread to my back and numbness.”
“Any history of heart disease in your family?”
“Oh yes!”
“Is your father alive?”
“Oh no!”
“What did he die of?”
“Heart attack.”
Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“Yes!”
“Do any of them ever have angina?”
“Yes! All of them”
“What age is the youngest?”
“Forty six”

Next day I capture his attention. Where is he from, I ask. Sudan, he says.
I’ve only known one Sudanese in my life, I say, and he was a friend at school. He had his bed next to mine in our dormitory and I got to know him quite well, a charming boy called Ahmed el Mahdi. He was the grandson of the man who killed….
“General Gordon,” he completes my sentence, and continues, “His sister is married to my uncle. He is now a very important person in the Sudan: the leader of the Alauma party and the Imam of Alansar. I have his phone number if you would like to speak to him.”

Opposite was what seemed to me, from the deep voice, to be a young, rather small black lad with amazing curly hair. But it turned out not to be a boy; it was a woman and what is more, a grandmother and also a poet. She has written five hundred poems and been published. Her family comes to visit, but she is in pain and hardly speaks to them. The grandson about nine years old sits by the bed, as if he were elsewhere and plays on his game machine or whatever. I’m inspired to write a little poem which I hand to the boy and ask him to give it to Grandma, which he does and this elicits a sweet smile and a compliment:

Poetry is Grandma’s skill
More powerful than any pill
But now she’s had a stroke,
(We always told her not to smoke)
She’s in bed in Charing Cross
And for once she’s not the boss
But soon we’ll have her home again
Her poems will reflect her pain

An old man is wheeled in next to me. He begins talking away mostly to himself, occasionally apostrophising those opposite him, who pay no attention. A visitor arrives: it is his brother.
“Hey ladies!” he shouts at the two old men opposite, “This is my brother.”
Brother, gloomily: “They’re not ladies. They’re men.”

The night before my operation I was taken to a single ward: blissfully quiet until a nurse in the adjacent staff room started a telephone call at midnight. From the accent I would think she was Jamaican and from the loudness of her voice, talking to a friend  on the island. She never drew breath but occasionally the pitch rose to fortissimo, presumably to overcome the attempts of her correspondent to say something. At one o’clock I took my wires off, toddled next door and called through the door, “ Do you think you could talk a little less loudly, please.” There was not even a pause but the decibels reduced a little. After ten minutes, I shouted through the wall, ”Quiet please!” The voice stopped but then I couldn’t get to sleep anyway.

After four days of being tested in every possible way excluding an angiogram, I was taken to another hospital for that procedure which would enable them to see if I had a blockage. ‘No water or food from midnight’ I was told. ‘You will be woken at 6.00am. The ambulance will be here to collect you at 7.00.’ By 8.00 I am lying on a flat firm bed at the new hospital, dressed only in a reversed gown. It is the cardiac surgery unit and the doctors begin to arrive and change into their operating gear: blue pyjamas topped with what looks like a mediaeval jousting jacket and apron covered in  material that would look more at  home in a children’s playroom. One surgeon is a little hunched, one brisk, one hirsute and one laidback. Which will be mine I wonder? Beds with patients trundle past me into the theatre and some time later come out again. The bed is unyielding and my back begins to hurt. 9.00am, 10.00 am, 11am come and go. I begin to worry that they will be exhausted by the time they get to me. Suddenly the brisk one is at my side . He introduces himself and the questions begin. He disappears with the same briskness and new patients continue to trundle past me. 12.00 comes and goes. A stir. Someone of greater importance has appeared in the waiting area. He has an air of authority: the deference of the staff acknowledges this. He is being shown a list but I hear him say, “First I have to do this man”, and his finger points towards me. Moments later he has changed and is standing next to me. The questions begin again: he is reassuring and concentrated.

I am wheeled into theatre. Six people, two in a glass cage; a friendly word and then my gown is removed and I am at their mercy. The nurses and operatives gaze at me and the eye of the camera through me, The surgeon, a charming Palestinian Senior Registrar says he is going to inject me in the groin. “ You will feel a stinging sensation and a few minutes later you will feel the same again.” Hands massage my leg. The surgeon is talking to his assistants calling for what he needs like a dentist. My back is hurting worse and soon the pain has a companion in my chest. “You will feel a pain in your chest,” says the surgeon. I already do. Suddenly I hear him say, “Well, I can see the culprit: you have a 95% blockage of your RCA (Right coronary artery). Don’t worry, we’ll have you right in a jiffy!” Half an hour later he says,”you will feel a warm rush in the groin. I do and it is so comforting I think it must remind me of something that happened long ago, perhaps peeing in my nappies as a baby. “You will feel another hot rush now.” I do and don’t mind how many are still to come. ”The operation has gone swimmingly” says my surgeon. “We have given you a stent. Would you like to see the pictures?” Of course I would and there on a screen are two X-ray photographs, the first showing a meander that has dried up in a parched plain and the second a wide dark river that flows confidently towards the heart. ”You see, all clear now”, he adds  and I think of fishes and frogs and the new life force flowing down this torrent from the tributaries.  I was as right as I could be, though a bruise spread from my knee to my belly button. During the first night back in my ward, I bled almost a pint from the groin so I had to stay in another day before being allowed home.

They’re all so good, it’s hard to chose
But if I had to, Nurse Joyce
Would have to be my choice.
She saw me through the noisome night.
She stopped the flood, she staunched the blood
Her hands were silky soft but strong
And cool as water in a pool

MY 2ND OPERATION SEVEN WEEKS AFTER THE FIRST

Less than two months later I began to feel that I was back where I began, feeling out of breath and ropey. I made an appointment at my local surgery and this time they wanted to see me straight away, so I got on my bicycle and pushed myself a bit to see if the pain came down my arms as before: it did. When I arrived and told the doctor, she said,” In no way are you cycling home. An ambulance will be here in five minutes.” Fortunately a friend was in the waiting room and offered to take my bike home.

As I arrive at the ward a young Pole is leaving. He came in the night before in Handcuffs, with a policeman in attendance. He had escaped custody. Someone bailed him and he left in seven minutes.
The next person in the bed was a senior Inspector at Scotland Yard, a very polite and cultured Asian.
He was followed by a young postman who had gone down from his apartment on a council estate in Fulham to ask some rowdy youths to make less noise. One of them threw ammonia in his face and had blinded him permanently in one eye. The infection spread to his heart and he was in great pain. The offending youth of nineteen was known to the police and caught on camera five minutes after the incident, running from the scene, but they could do nothing as they had no forensic evidence.
The next occupant of the bed was a seemingly mad Irishman. He messed his bed three times in the first hour and swore without a pause at the kindly nurses who cleaned him up, without a word of complaint. When he could he grabbed their wrists until they cried out. He continued cursing most of the night and was violent when anyone tried to take his blood pressure. At one point I went around to the end of his bed and said, “hello Paul!”. He looked at me with his unusually large dark eyes and pinpoint pupils. After a long pause he said, “Fuck off!”
Opposite me was a twenty eight stone man who, when taken short, sat on the edge of his bed and pissed on the floor. A pool of urine would slowly spread towards me. He was so heavy that the nurses put him on the john in the ward, protected only by paper curtains. His favourite food was curry and the resulting smell so powerful that I tore off the wires that were attached all over my torso and fled down the passage. This set off the alarms by my bed and I watched from a safe distance as nurse after nurse approached the ward and then staggered backwards when the cloud hit them. The next day he was stronger and able to propel himself to the bathroom. He was a jolly man and endeared himself to all the nurses with his banter. He even spoke kindly of the Irishman and said that the man’s behaviour was entirely due to the pain he was suffering.
On one occasion I heard him saying to a nurse, “I’m worried about my wife.” The nurse asked if she were ill, to which I thought I heard him reply, “No, she’s dead.” I must have misheard this because the next day she turned up in a wheelchair, bulges of fat pushing out of all the gaps. Peter, her husband, had been a Trade Union representative and was now her full time paid carer and cook. She weighed only eighteen stone but could do nothing for herself. She looked exactly like Giles’s grandma from my viewpoint behind her. From home she phoned him frequently and asked again and again why he was not there caring for her. Peter had explained to us that there was an enormous industrial-size freezer in their apartment and he would cook up to twenty curries and apple pies at a go, so she was not in any danger of starving. On one occasion the lady doctor doing the morning rounds had just arrived at his bedside when his mobile rang. He answered it: it was his wife and they talked for some time before he said, “I must go darlin’.” Darlin’ however had other ideas and the talk dragged on. The doctor’s body language made it clear that she was growing impatient. He smiled at her with complicity while he closed the conversation, “Back soon, my love! Shags tomorrow! Got my dingle-dangle ready for yer: I know you like it, at least the dingle, not the dangle. Luv yer!”

As on the first occasion I was taken to another hospital by ambulance for the operation, after four days of tests. This time there were two surgeons, a Senior Registrar assisted by his boss, the Consultant. It was fascinating listening to their conversation: the to and fro of ideas, observations and the consultant’s advice – “We should use a No 3; the other one is too small.” When they had injected the fluid, the Registrar said to me, “the good news is that your first stent in the RCA is perfect and there is no new build-up of cholesterol. The bad news is that your other main artery, the LCA, is 95% blocked with plaque. But don’t worry, we’ll have you right in no time. In fact it was an hour and a half and increasingly painful both in my back and in my heart. “Out of ten what would you say your pain level was,” asked my surgeon. ”Well, I think it has been around 10/10 for some minutes now,” I replied and immediately I was given morphine that made it bearable. During the operation there was a period when I could not hear what was being said and I knew instinctively that all was not well. Later I was told that a stent had gone walk-about and they had to extract it and use another kind. In the end they had to use four of them, some inserted through the others, “the biggest procedure of this type that we do,” said the Registrar. An hour later I was taken back to my base hospital;  I was taken back to the same floor at the Charing Cross hospital, but put into a new post-operative ward where I spent the night after my operation.

An old woman called Pat from the World’s End in Chelsea is in the bed next to me; she is hidden behind the half-pulled curtain. Suddenly she says in a loud, tremulous voice, “I don’t know the name of the lady next to me.” I lean forward so that she can see me and say, “I’m David and I’m no lady!” She looks amazed: she did not know it was a mixed sex ward.

A young to middle-aged woman opposite me has her mouth wide open all the time so her expression never varies. There is a wide bandage round her throat. She types answers to any question on a device and hears everything that is said to her. From time to time I say something cheerful to her to which she gives an enthusiastic thumb-up sign, but makes no sound. This morning she suddenly held up a little furry white teddy bear. It has a pink ribbon round its neck. Later on I saw her combing it lovingly. Otherwise she just stares at me with the same fixed anxious look, which I try to avoid in order not to have to bob my head up and down all the time.

Next to her is a voluble Polish lady; her husband, who is English and two children come to visit and sit round her bed while she holds forth in a loud voice, with a strong Polish accent. No one can get a word in. On her bed are two large hand bags, which she grabs every now and then as if to make sure no one has run off with them. When the family leave and the lights are dimmed for the night, I see her heaving herself up and checking the bags are still where she left them. An hour later she is take off to another ward, clutching the bags.

This time, I had no bleeding from my wrist during the night, so I was allowed home the next morning. My Consultant knew that it was my birthday on this day so he had arranged for me to have my operation a day earlier than it would normally have been carried out: each hospital has its ‘operation days’ at the Hammersmith Hospital and he managed very thoughtfully to fit me in the day before.

When I popped back to my old ward to say good-bye to the 28 stone man I found that he was no longer going to receive a pacemaker. All operations were carried out in another hospital and someone had forgotten to book a special ambulance required for a person of his weight; it needed forty hours’ notice but he was giving up the battle with his wife and returning home to care for her.

Waiting in a corridor to collect my medications, I watched a middle-aged woman in a flower print dress and a sloppy cardigan, overweight and wobbling from one hideously swollen leg to the other. She was heading for the exit supported by a seriously tall and nattily dressed black orderly walking slowly by her side. As they reached the door she swung round and almost shouted, “God bless all the staff!”  and then added, sotto voce, as an afterthought, “and everyone else.” The orderly tried to persuade her to put on her threadbare coat but this was no easy matter: the sleeve lining had come out of one arm and she was trying to push it back with a fist. The orderly said, “You ought to get this repaired you know.” ”Get this repaired!” she bellowed, “ How could I afford to do that?”

The friend and neighbour who had originally called the ambulance kindly drove me around the village so that I could shop for my party that evening: I had never cancelled it. All I did during the day was to bake three loaves of bread. Most of the guests were the generation of my Godchildren so when they began to arrive they had no objection to being set to work preparing the food. One dug potatoes, another washed them, another picked the salad and arranged the smoked salmon. Jan had tidied the garden room, made it attractive and prepared the drink and glasses but he was very cross with me for insisting on going ahead with the party and no doubt he was right.  However I’m here to tell the tale.

I record the next incidents, not in a spirit of criticism, for I am only too aware of the debt I owe to the NHS, which gave me two life-saving operations and treated me with kindness and consideration. However when I left hospital I read about the number of mistakes and accidents that happened to people when being treated, some leading to death or injury. I ‘suffered’ two mistakes that, I understand, could have had serious results. The first one was on the night before my first operation. I had been given a blood-thinning pill every evening of the four days in hospital awaiting the operation. On this evening a nurse dressed in purple, in contrast to the usual blue, arrived in the ward and handed me a large pill. What was this, I asked. “It’s for your operation, David, to thin your blood”.
Ten minutes later my usual nurse dressed in blue arrived with my evening pill. What is this for, I asked. “Oh, it’s your blood-thinning pill,” she said. “Does the right hand know what the left hand is doing?”, I asked. “What do you mean?”, she said, so I explained that I had just been given a pill to thin the blood before the operation, by one of her colleagues who was dressed in purple. She left with a worried air and returned shortly to tell me that I ‘didn’t need to take the pill’. “And if I had taken it and something had gone wrong with the operation, as I’ve been told it might, could that have been serious?” “I’m afraid it could have,” she said .

The second incident was a week after my second and more serious operation. I received a letter to say that I was to come to the hospital for a treadmill test. Somewhat surprised, I turned up at 9.00 in the morning and was put on to the treadmill with two nurses or assistants controlling the procedure. The belt gradually got faster and steeper over a period of eight minutes. I felt at the end of my tether and said so. One of the operatives said, ”Oh can you just do thirty seconds more at the highest and fastest rate as we can really see then how your heart is behaving.” OK, I replied and began to count backwards from thirty down to one and then stopped. “Fine”, one of them said. `”Please wait a minute or two while we show this to your Consultant”. I sat down and a couple of minutes later I saw my Consultant running towards me down the corridor. He placed both his hands on my arms and said, ”You should never have had that test NOW. It was arranged relative to your FIRST operation. It’s something we do eight weeks after the op.”  Fine, except that I had had a further operation seven weeks later, and only a week before the treadmill test which ‘the system’ had forgotten to cancel.

He asked if I was doing anything at the weekend and when I said nothing in particular he told me to go home and take it easy!