A bed with a view, p.14
A Bed with a View, page 14
She didn’t see the years and people as they slowly trickled by
And left her sitting on her own, beneath the Church Street sky
To wait in heavy sadness for the day, the day to say goodbye
And it’s all right to pretend you don’t notice
And it’s all right to look the other way
And it’s all right to say you won’t listen
While she’s lying there,
She’s the one we just don’t see.
I’m pulled away from these thoughts by the Scouser, who is drifting my way without apparently noticing my presence. He picks a chocolate from the box on my window ledge, looks intently at the blue wrapping and drops it back in the box. He looks out the window.
“It’s fuckin’ high,” he says to himself. “No fuckin’ chance if you fell from here.”
He returns to his lair like a piece of flotsam swept unconsciously by the sea. He sleeps for a while, but then awakens again with the primeval scream: “No fuckin’ Weetabix! And my fuckin’ telly doesn’t work!”
The nurse says she will turn it on for him, but he is adamant: “That fuckin’ doesn’t work, nor the one by the next bed.”
He has been up during the night testing the tellies. He gets up again and is borne my way by some supernatural force and slumps in the chair next to my bed.
“Does your fuckin’ telly work?” he asks. “I’ve tried two and they’re fuckin’ useless. You have to pay for the fuckin’ thing. Can I watch yours?”
Still fearing for my wellbeing, I say, “Yes, of course. I’ll pay for it for you.”
So, I ring the number required and pay an exorbitant sum for 24 hours. Who profits from this?
I ask him his name.
“Lesley Malone,” he appears to remember. “My dad was a politician and me mum lives in a smart bungalow in Liverpool.”
I say that I come from Liverpool and ask him where he grew up.
“Bootle,” he replies, looking as if he might go to sleep in the chair.
“Amazing,” I say. “That is only a mile away from Litherland where I come from. How did you get your injury?” I ask, looking at his heavily bandaged arm and leg.
“Fight with the ex-missus,” he says, showing no sign of emotion or resentment.
“She must be very strong,” I say.
“She is with a fuckin’ machete,” he replies. “Special forces.”
“I’d stay clear of her,” I say sympathetically.
“Good advice, pal. How do I turn the fuckin’ telly on?”
I turn it on for him, and he moves the chair nearer the telly, puts on the headphones and goes to the cartoon channel. He looks strangely calm and contented. He watches attentively, except for the odd comment: “That duck is fuckin’ useless.”
“Run, you stupid fucker,” he shouts as the rabbit appears. “The mouse is an arsehole.”
After thirty minutes, he bends forward, puts his hands and head on his knees and goes to sleep.
Does he dream? I wonder. If so, about what? Perhaps about himself not as a brain-damaged drug addict but a young man with ambitions and energy.
He is woken by two physios who try to get him to walk on his crutches – without success. They are very patient with him and keep trying, but at one point, one of them asks him to try and get out of his chair and onto his crutches again.
“No fuckin’ way,” he says. “I’m fuckin’ knackered.”
They leave him, and he goes back to the cartoons. After one last comment, “That Goofy is too fuckin’ slow,” he goes back to sleep, curled up with his head on his knees, like a child would do. He appears to be at peace, and I wonder what will happen to him when he leaves. So, when he wakes up, I ask him where he will go.
“Back on the street,” he says. “I’ve fallen out with me probation officer since I gave me sister a slappin’”
“But there is a hostel where you can stay?” I ask.
“Fuckin’ useless,” he replies. “The fuckin’ drug dealers wait outside and take any cash you’ve got. If you don’t pay you get a good kickin’. I’ve had a couple.”
I reflect on what a pity it is that the recently admitted drug gang boss patient had not lost all of his head.
12.00pm
I am told my blood results show no infection so I can be disconnected from the IV cannula and go home.
I go to the desk to sign a form. A registrar is on the computer.
“Do you take American Express?” I say jokingly.
I am relieved to be leaving. I think for a moment that she is going to smile, but it turns out to be a yawn
I stay for lunch which is delivered by one of the usual catering staff.
“You are off,” he says.
“Yes, thank you for your service,” I reply, but he is gone before I have time to finish the sentence.
I use my stolen milk on the dry apple tart. I came in an honest man and leave a thief. Good job I retired as a solicitor, or I could be before the Solicitors Disciplinary Panel.
Day 10 – Saturday 10th November, 2018
Home
I am exhausted when I get home and sleep for 12 hours. My own bed! How I have missed you! I have a relaxing morning reading the paper and finding a hospital story. They appear to be reported more regularly, or did I just miss them before because of lack of interest? The headline reads: MOTHER AND DAUGHTER LIVE ON AN NHS WARD FOR 15 MONTHS.
Apparently, they were waiting for a council house. It cost the NHS £150,000, and 100 patients could have used the bed. The daughter was admitted in July 2017 and the mother slept next to her daughter in a room on a general ward. Doctors said the daughter could be discharged after five weeks, but a new tenant had moved into their flat in Grimsby. Joyce Robins, who is the co-founder of the group Patients Concern, said their job is to make people better and not offer a free B&B.
Over the following week, I am very tired but also begin to feel re-infected. Go to see Picasso who confirms that this is the case and admits me immediately to a private hospital to have more IV treatment. After five days, I feel better and go home.
A couple of weeks later, I am re-infected and am admitted back into a private hospital. After a further week of IV, it is decided that I need to stay on the IV for six weeks. I have a minor operation performed by a radiologist to insert a PICC Line: a peripherally inserted central catheter. It is a cannula that enters the body through the skin in the arm, into a vein which is then pushed up to a point near the heart. Painless and miraculous, because it means a patient can go home and have the IV treatment there rather than having to stay in the hospital for weeks.
However, I discover that I have to go back to the NHS hospital.
“When life gets hard, try to remember that the life you complain about may only be a dream for the homeless and drug addicts.”
Anonymous
17
Return to Hospital…
and Carol Singers
Return to hospital and I am back in my old ward, but this time I am in a single room. Same bed, light, curtains but less noise. For some reason, all the surfaces in the room slope forwards rather than at right angles to the wall, so you cannot put anything on them as it slides straight off. I ask the doctors and nurses why, but nobody knows.
11.30pm
I am self-medicating. Have they forgotten the protocol? Or have they just decided not to engage with the “difficult old bastard”?
My nurse is Italian. We chat about Italy and our love for the country and people for about five minutes. Ten minutes later, I pass him in the corridor without any sign that he might have seen me before.
12.00am
A nurse arrives to check my drugs without any fuss.
Discuss with the pharmacist that I am running out of my specialist drugs. I have taken my last tablet.
Another sleepless night. I am depressed although I know I shouldn’t be as there are many in the hospital in much worse condition than me. But I am. I try to raise my spirits by remembering that my medical odyssey began not in the UK but in the Ukraine.
I went to Odessa on business. I had travelled abroad a lot, and there was nothing unusual about this particular trip. In fact, the city was quite beautiful with a significant history and my business associates, who were Ukrainian, were hospitable and friendly. I had a translator. The hotel was modern and, by Ukrainian standards, well-equipped, except that to have a shower you had to step over the surround of the sauna which was about two feet high. In those days, when involved in business here or abroad, I would wake without an alarm at about 6.30am, shower, have breakfast and get on with the business of the day, which I enjoyed.
However, I was dreaming. I was surrounded by people in white coats and under a bright light. I was lying on a trolley being wheeled along a corridor. But it was not a dream. I was actually in hospital, and it was in the late evening. I subsequently discovered that I had, by good fortune, been discovered on the bathroom floor of my hotel room around lunchtime, unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. I had been taken to the only private hospital in Odessa.
I remember trying to speak but finding it difficult. I was placed in a room with another patient in the bed opposite. My translator arrived and told me what had happened, but nobody knew how I had sustained the injury. I was told sometime later by my neurologist in Oxford that it is known as an “unexplained incident” and I suspect that, in my attempt to get out of the shower and jump over the surrounding sauna, I had slipped, fallen and hit my head against some object during my fall.
The initial reaction in the hospital was that I had had a heart attack, but from a CT scan it was apparent that I had in fact suffered a severe head injury and had been unconscious for many hours with concussion. Although I knew what I wanted to say, I found it difficult to form the sentences or to find the correct words. I was told not to lose consciousness again and would be woken if I tried to go to sleep.
The following day, I became more aware of my surroundings. The man in the bed opposite was surrounded by a group who, I discovered, was his family and who were feeding him. In the Ukrainian hospital at that time, you only got the bed and the medical staff, and family members had to buy any drugs prescribed and feed you. My translator brought me some food and said his “connections” would arrange for the patient opposite to be moved so I would have the room to myself, but it would cost money to bribe the hospital administrator. At about 11am, the neurologist arrived. I had discovered in previous visits to the country that, under the Soviet system, young pupils with special talent – whether intellectual or physical -were identified and fast-tracked at special institutes to develop their potential. Of the intellectual students, those who eventually graduated from the top universities were not given any choice as to which vocation they would pursue. The most able men were assigned to “the party” or the army, and the most talented women were moved into teaching and medicine. Some, from both sexes, who had studied law were directed into the prosecutor’s department where they would learn the art of accepting bribes to discontinue proceedings against those rich enough to afford this privilege. Thus it was that in the hospital all the senior staff were women.
My neurologist appeared with a group of serious-minded young students. My translator told me that she started the consultation by addressing the students. She informed them that the man lying in bed in front of them was “a western capitalist pig who had come to steal Ukrainian assets and could not even stand up without falling over.” This produced a wave of nodding assent and some mirth among the students. She then turned to me. She was aged about 60, slight of build, her grey hair in an untidy bun, she used no cosmetics to enhance her appearance and wore a dark woollen dress and dark brown stockings which reminded me of what women in Liverpool wore in the 1950s. Her expression was void of any empathy, compassion or concern. I suddenly thought of Rosa Klebb, the ruthless KGB agent in the James Bond film, From Russia with Love, and, looking down, I noticed apprehensively that she wore the same type of brogues. She had a way of speaking without apparently opening her mouth or moving her lips. My translator rendered her words as following: “You should be dead.”,
She announced this with an air of disappointment, and continued, “You have severe concussion of the brain, and you must remain here. Now, put one of your fingers onto your nose.” Time to show you what a western capitalist is capable of, I thought. But, try as I might and aware that national pride was at stake, I couldn’t do it, or even get close. My finger went, strangely, to my ear, eye, chin or any other part of my face but my nose. She turned to her acolytes, said something and they all burst into laughter.
This procedure was repeated twice daily. Other than a rather unpleasant headache and heavy bruising down one side of my right leg, I was not too uncomfortable, thanks to my translator’s “connections”. Thanks to them I was well fed and reasonably snug with my bedding of “superior quality”.
We had contacted a neurologist in Oxford who recommended that I return to the UK as soon as possible as the treatment I was receiving may not have been of the highest international standard. In his outstanding memoir, “Do No Harm”, Henry Marsh tells of his experience of going to the Ukraine to help the development of their neurological skills which he found sadly deficient. We contacted my travel insurers who agreed that I could indeed head back to the UK, but required a medical report from my local consultant (Rosa Klebb) confirming that I was fit to travel.
So, during our morning consultation, which normally contained her mantra, “Why you didn’t die I don’t know,” delivered to nods of approval from her back-up group, my translator asked her to provide the report.
She replied, “Under no circumstances,” without any explanation, and left.
“Why won’t she do it?” I enquired.
“Simple,” my translator replied. “With what you are paying, you are the goose that is laying the golden eggs. They will keep you here forever.”
“But what am I going to do?”
“Bribe her,” he responded impassively, as if it was as obvious as the sun rising in the morning.
So, during her afternoon visit, I offered a bottle of the best vodka which she accepted without comment or physical reaction, and my translator (as he told me) offered her $250 to help fund any research project in which she was involved. She went berserk, telling her attendants that the “western capitalist pig” whose life she had saved thought he could simply buy her favours – she, one of the leading neurologists in the Ukraine!
“He is mad as well as bad,” she cried, and left.
This isn’t going to work, I thought. The next morning, my gift of a carton of her favourite cigarettes was received as unemotionally as the vodka the previous day, and an increased offer of $500 was met with an even more hysterical response, causing her underlings to move back slightly as if she might assault somebody – anybody – within striking distance. I kept my eyes on those shoes, waiting for the blades to appear.
The next day she appeared alone, and as expressionless as ever. After accepting my gift of a bunch of flowers – Ukrainians love flowers – she accepted US$1000 in return for the report which was duly translated for and approved by my insurers. I never saw her again, paid the exorbitant bill for my hospital stay (presumably a special rate for “western capitalist pigs”), and flew home via Vienna, where a business partner had arranged for a doctor to check me over before my onward flight.
I duly went to Oxford to see a brilliant and charming young neurologist who immediately arranged an MRI which had not been available in Ukraine.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” he said, in a tone of relief and sympathy. “Not only do you have bruising of the brain but also bleeding which complicates the matter, and I am afraid that your recovery will not be fast.”
It wasn’t. It took about two years, and for the first year I couldn’t drive or indeed do much at all. My business career was over. I had to find a new vocation. This turned out to be, in part at least, making my body a sacrificial offering to the medical profession for the past 15 years and ending up here at 3am in bed 28c in the specialist surgery inpatient ward with nothing to do but remember.
6.00am
IV. Little sleep because of the bed and the light.
8.00am
Ask about the drugs I requested last evening.
1.00pm
Ask about the drugs again.
7.00pm
Ask about the drugs again.
8.00pm
Ask about the drugs again.
9.00pm
Ask about the drugs again.
12.30am
Very angry and get annoyed with the nurse who has spent all evening telling me they are coming from the pharmacy, which is in another building.
2.00am
The drugs arrive, but I am too annoyed to sleep.
Whether it is the drugs, environment or more probably the lack of sleep, but I am losing my ability to remember things, e.g. pieces of poetry that I have learnt or facts that I know well. An example is the poetry of Wilfred Owen, much of which I have learned over the last 30 years. I was introduced to his work through the outstanding biography Wilfred Owen, by Jon Stallworthy. I found the poetry affected me profoundly in a way one cannot rationally understand. Why does a novel, a painting, a piece of music or a poem cause in us such a deep, primeval emotion? I wanted to read Owen’s poetry and to know more about his life and tragically early death. I read everything that had been written about him, including extant letters. I always carry with me a copy of his poems.
