hospital

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Island Blog – Isolation, Connection, Brave

When I talk with people, initiate the conversation via some made up nonsense such as ‘Do you know where the loo is, or where the tea bags are, or Is this Radiotherapy treatment room E?’ Even though I have all the answers anyroad, there’s a sort of lock and load thing that happens, eye contact, a connection. I do this wherever I go, for myself, for my own elevation from isolation……(I can sense too many ‘tions arising here) but, also because my biggest love is of people, all people, any people and everywhere or anywhere. I know about isolation, or the feeling of it, the cut and hollow and dark of it, and not because I am alone, but because I know how it feels to be lonely. I used to think it was just me, that everyone else in their colourful clothing, their smart car, the pretty picture they painted as a completely happy couple, family, friendship et lala, meant that I was the weirdo who just fell short of the mark. I know differently now, now that I talk to people anywhere and everywhere. Not one of us lives the dream we dreamed, or very few.

In Waiting room E for Radiotherapy, I find astonishment at a cancer diagnosis. This person went for an ordinary eye test, another for a check up for a persistent sore throat, yet another for a cough, a sore back, a limpy leg. Not one of us could catch the cancer word and bring it in to ourselves. Some are still reeling, the process of such an acceptance, a long one. But each person can still chuckle, can still be who they were before and with a story. Both in the waiting room and in the Maggie’s centre, I have learned about others lives, and these connections, this eye contact, this sharing, has lifted us both, in each encounter.

We all walk in isolation, at times in our lives. I remember doing just that when my husband was alive. What is important, is to find someone who is on the same path at the same time. Of course, paths divide and one goes this way and the other, that, but just for a moment in time, we can meet and say, without words, hallo. I see you, and you see me, and isolation just became connection.

But first, we must brave up and talk.

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Island Blog – I Still Am

Well, who would have thought this? Not me. How can one day feel like a funeral march and the next as a beautiful thing, a day awakening after a long sleep. Nothing has changed, the circumstances are just the same, the day just another dawning. I still face surgery, a lumpectomy, a full mastectomy, I don’t know. And, yet, not the same at all.

I woke once in the night, ignored the dog bounce, chances are, at my peril, and re-awoke at 6.45. A lie in for me. And the day just kept her colour, her bright shining. I just flowed free, happy, light and full of ideas. I will knit. Who said that? Not me. I have wools, I have paints and texture ideas for a canvas. I have wires for stringing beads, I have the wisdom of a textural artist. Well, I did, ten years ago. I looked around me. The birds, the sparrows, flutter like gorgeous all around my feeders. They have learned, even with their fat beaks, to grab nuts from the feeder, and I do help them a bit with seed in a carefully placed place, limiting (no offence) the dives of sparrowhawk and goshawk. I just want to watch them, not offer them as prey. It has taken me years to work out the best location for feeders.

I wander through my day. I found Radio 4 Extra, plays and series. I listen as I knit nothing, just knit. I watch the New Moon finally give way to the Ordinary, that space between Tricksy New and then the even more so Full Moon, when the tides are slow to lift, slow to rise, kind of flat a lot. The big ass full is coming, but we, up here, the fishermen, the island women, and some of the men, enjoy a reprieve in that ‘slow’. I walk my small four legs twice around the short loop. We have ‘The loop’ one most people walk without thought. I used to do that. The weakness from being nearly dead has changed that for me. I know my footing here. I love it, the every step of it. I never thought about my steps before. Now I do, so I walk the short, twice a day. I am not afraid.

When i leave my beloved home, dog, island, on Monday to go to Edinburgh and then to the Western General for my consultation, for the decisions on surgery, on the next bit, I feel some fear, of course I do, but the NHS up here is fantastic and the things they have learned and perfected over just the last ten years is so encouraging. i don’t have the mind that knows everything about everything, nor about anything much, but I know I am supported by those who do, family included.

I remember a day in Barcelona, my tiny granddaughter fearful because her mum left her to go for a pee. She clung to me. She is now ten and quite the thing. But I remember that moment and how valuable I was in the moment.

And still am.

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Island Blog – Forward into Life

It feels like ages since I last wrote a blog, and it is, ages. So where have I been? Into a strange world, one I have never visited before, one I cannot locate on a map, a whole new country.

Perhaps I should start at the beginning.

Two, or more, weeks ago, I felt weary and lethargic, two feelings alien to me, two that begged investigation and not by me alone. I was aching and sore, my arms unable to reach for anything without a wince of pain. I was un-hungry and found it hard to get comfortable in bed. A friend drove me to my doctor’s appointment and within minutes she called the local hospital to admit me. As a thankfully healthy woman with little experience of hospitals beyond the birthing of babies, I was surprised but acquiescent, feeling as unwell as I did. Once there, the doctor checked me out, focussing on an insect bite on my back, around which was a raised pink swelling. Two days later I was moved to the mainland, to a bigger hospital.

Over the next 4 hours the red spread and I was pretty much out of it. Pumped full of super strong antibiotics, drip fed, and trying to get comfortable, the days and nights passed in a blur, interrupted only by regular checks on my state of health and the nightly delivery of other souls into a hospital bed. These women, frightened, most of whom had fallen, all who lived alone, were quieted eventually by the excellent and compassionate nursing team.

After five days, I came back to life, having no idea how seriously ill I had been. Everything escalated so fast, too fast for me to comprehend but not beyond the understanding and medical intelligence of the doctors in charge. I remember walking to the window to see the pretty garden beneath, the trees, the flowering shrubs, the wheel and scatter of swifts and house martins cutting the sky in half as the bugs rose from hiding and becoming lunch. I remember feeling upright and not so sore, the joy of it, the thankfulness rising in me, a mother hug. I remember hot porridge for breakfast, the excellent meals served daily. I remember the cleaners, their smiles as they washed down the ward eveery day. I remember the can-do attitude of the nurses (lordy what a job!) and the bright light laughter from each nursing shift that skittered along the corridors, spilling into each ward to make the vulnerable smile. I remember talking to other inmates, hearing their stories, holding hands that had held so many other hands over so many years. I remember the sadness and joy of visitors around beds, the muffled conversations, the concern etched on family faces. I remember quiet conversations with a night nurse, waking me yet again for a health check, the administration of yet another drip. I remember the smiles, the reasurrances, the gentle touch of a confident hand on my own wobbly one. All will be well, the hand said, in the end. Keep fighting. Gradually, I became mobile again, walking around the hospital carpark, up to the helipad, seeing goldfinches feeding on grass seeds, their unique chatter like champagne bubbles in my ears. Everything felt new, as if I was a newborn and seeing all this life for the first time. I suspect anyone who has faced down death will know what I mean, even though I couldn’t, and still can’t, really believe it to be true for me. Severe cellulitis is dangerous. And all, it seems, from an insect bite on my back. That tiny creature, that random bite nearly did for me. And, yet, I thank it. How else could I know what it is to be newborn at 70? T’is a rare and beautiful gift indeed.

Now, as I recuperate with family, resting, building new strength into momentarily wasted muscles, while I move around the sun dappled garden, watching the dogs play and hearing the laughter of happy girls on holiday, all I feel is a daily upwelling of gratitude, for life herself, for the medical care and affection, for my family’s support and love. When I am home again among the beloved hills of the island, watching the tidal dance, hearing the sea-birds call as the fish rush in, I will remember this time, all of it, all the tiny details of such a strange journey. From nearly dead to very much alive, a moving forward into life, a new one, a gift, a second chance.

It will take me sometime to process and a forever to forget.

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Island Blog – This and That

Sitting here, this evening, I reflect on the past couple of days, the content, or imagined content of which halted my footsteps for many days before. I had found a breast lump. Bad timing even for a positive woman, fettered as I felt by my long isolation from the world ‘out there’. In fact, I haven’t been out there for over a year now, cocooned within a leather protective casing of caring for a very vulnerable old dude. It suited me, if I am honest, the not going out there thingy. I am, by nature, happy being isolated, solitary, independent with more work required, individual, content with my own company. I have barely been to the local shop since last March and my everything is delivered either by the post or by hand to my door. One could get lazy inside this. I know that.

Anyway, there I was facing a ferry trip, masked like a bandit, humphing a rucksack of overnight-ness and stringing a small Poppy dog alongside. How will she behave? Will she pee on the ferry carpet? (she never would) Will I find a close encounter too close? Will my house fall down whilst I’m away; will that old tree fall on the garage roof; will floods come and wash my home away; did I turn off the lights, lock the doors? All that hoo-ha. Never mind what you call it and how you chortle, it is still real, still clusters beneath a person’s panic button all ready to burst forth once pushed, especially, and I have clocked this, when that person has been cocooned for so many months, apart from the rush and bustle of the out-there world. After all, it could be unrecognisable to me. People could be walking around in pandemic suits for all I know, slow stepping, avoiding each other by miles and breathing stored air in order to avoid breathing in the real stuff, the air that is ever changing, morphing, floating over oceans and over lands and continents with all sorts of names, full of all sorts of stories and holding within its gasp a potential lethal. Shopping bags might be obsolete. Maybe the out there folk have to pull on their pandemic suits for a shopping trip that can only be as successful as the hold of their arms.

So, off I go. Two sons, two strong men, two young men, two sons, gather me up and the rucksack and the non-peeing-on-ferry-carpets dog and we head onto the mainland. The ferry is all masks and the two metre rule. Good for Scotland, I remember whispering to myself, thus muffing up my glasses and rendering me momentarily blind. Scotland is getting this right. I work out how to talk to myself by holding my fingers over my nose and breathing down, like a puff. Now I can see. But, there is nobody. There are 3 passengers on this massive ship capable of carrying many hundreds. I have been aboard with those many hundreds and watched them, the families, the dogs, the way the children burst upstairs to see, to see from the ‘flight’ deck, or the way the exhausted parents find their way to the outer deck to drink in the astonishing beauty of the passing hills and their sharp defines as the sky comes down and says Stop Right There. This time the ferry is empty, like a ghost ship. I feel a bit foolish behind my puffing blue spectacle-clouding mask, but nobody is laughing at me. I arrive on the mainland and off-loading is barely that. Three people don’t take much off-loading.

I am driven the almost 3 hours the the hospital the following morning through mizzle and cloud. He knows what he is doing, strong, calm, googled. He will mind the non-peeing dog. Go Mum. I follow the signs to Clinic 3, very clearly marked. There is almost nobody here either. Nurses, come and go, masked and chirpy, friendly, welcoming. I burst into a waiting room. The chairs are wide apart, tape markings on the floor. There are a few other women waiting, nervous, as we all are. One jiggles her foot, one taps her fingers on her knee, another is busy on her phone. They guide me to Reception and I clock in from behind a big barrier. I have to repeat my name as she is behind bullet proof glass and this big barrier and I am thankful she is of good hearing. I take my seat. We are all quiet beyond the jiggling. Someone opens the doors to the almost outside, for air flow and we have no shared body warmth to soften the push of cold air over bare ankles, old skin and the generally accepted loathing of draughts. We hold. For an hour, for more. Every name called by one of the bright buttoned nurses is one we wish we owned. The relief of being named, of our own name being called into touch is a whole body/mind thing. If that name belongs to another, we wish them well from behind our masks and our fear. We don’t need to ask what these women are here for. We know. We feel their tension as we feel our own.

First the doctor, then the mammogram. Not one of us will avoid this. Some of us know it well and for others it’s a first. There are young women here, skinny teenagers and I wonder of their stories. Some partners or mothers try to be here, but a very kindly nurse tells them Only Patients Here, I’m Sorry. I can feel the bereft as they unwillingly leave. Text me, they say, or mime. The woman remains, legs crossed, jiggling, telling herself to be strong, saying I can do this, I am not afraid, and then spending the next hour working on convincing herself of that.

Mammogram. I am an old hand at this. I cast a backward glance at the young woman who smiled at me, who connected. Your turn soon my lovely girl, I say from my eyes. The process moves on. The nurses at every stop and turn, every confusion, every arrival are more than magnificent. They are Grace and Humour. We are undignified to say the least within this place. How trained they are. How emotionally intelligent they are meeting our diminished but ferociously determined woman strength as they strip our clothing and pull across the rather attractive curtain, through which our boots poke. So, here we are, unclothed and yet booted, as if we just know we can do this, whatever comes of the pummelling and the indignity.

For me it was a lucky escape. I have the all clear. There is nothing to report. I wonder of the rest. I can see their anxious faces now, still, and will for a while. Their Glasgow humour is remarkable. These are women who do not live as I do; who do not have it easy; who live lives I will never experience. And, yet, within that chilly blast, that fear, that doubt and worry, they could banter and laugh and pick up the nurse’s joke and take it on and in doing that I learn from them. They have known tough, and may yet know it again, as I never have.

As I left them behind, still waiting, their eyes asked me. I smiled an ok. They were happy for me. What they face right now, I cannot know. But, we met in that place. I came home to warmth and safety and an all -clear.

Did they?

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Island Blog 62 – Saying Yes

Island Blog 62

There are two of us leaving the island tomorrow.  One is me heading to Edinburgh for a book signing day in quite a few goodly bookshops and then on to Glasgow for my interview with Sally Magnusson on Friday for her programme ‘Sunday Morning’ which will air at 7.05 am on Sunday June 2nd.

Note for diary.

And the other is my little red laptop because she has decided to air her rebellious female side and has taken the initiative to add extra letters to the words my fingers ping out on her shiny black keyboard.  Although I do like a rebellious woman, am one myself and recognise the song of another in a crowd of hundreds, to this behaviour I have to say NO.

Now don’t get all ‘aw’ about it.  She is my tool and I need her to stay in line.  When I am writing a song, a blog a tweet or a piece for a monthly (is that why they are known as ‘periodicals’ one wonders……?) I must know that what I decide to lay down as a word smith, is what is laid down.  I cannot have random violations of that rule, any more than a pianist can have a sixth finger ping out a discord right in the flow of some enigmatic cadenza.  It just wouldn’t win the audience.

So, my lady in red is off to Germany for the second time.  As you may remember from her last ‘collapse’ into depravity, I diddled about for ages in the worldwide web to find the Laptop Hospital.  This time I knew my way and answered all the questions correctly.  I know this because that rather handsome delivery man is coming to collect her in the morning and I have the Collection Number.

I thought me a bit about saying No.  I think we women find it hard.  I know we do.  It’s something to do with our mother’s mother’s mothers who rarely said no to anything, just to keep the country going.  I honour their way, but it doesn’t work today, and it may not have worked for them, but they were way too good at stepping back into the wallpaper without a murmur and giving their lives as a gift for just about anyone who stepped into their space.

Not us girls.  I say ‘girls’ and laugh at myself with all my wrinkle potions, but you know what I mean.  Saying no is still hard.  Oh, I can be so very wise with someone else’s No dilemma.  I can advise them into a very tight corner, where all they can do is nod because the rest of them is pinned down by my Wise Words.  It doesn’t change them, even if they recognise the wisdom and hope they can walk it out into their own lives, but when they leave thinking how remarkable I am, I think for a moment about how well I manage to say NO at times in my own life when I am scared of rejection and judgement.

The answer is that I am full of wind (as they say up here) and the work I need to do on myself is still there.

But, what I can tell them, all these women, young and old, who fight to say NO to something, someone and to rise beyond the fear of rejection and judgement, is this:

Try it.  Just once.  And taste it.  The freedom of it.  The wild crazy headiness of it.  Ok, the person you said No to didn’t like it.  Of course they didn’t.  Would you?  But they coped with it and they reset their internal picture of you and they left feeling weird but really rather intrigued.  They might have said…….wow, good for her!

Because, what I do know, is that when you say No to someone else, actually say it, gently, without anger or blame (recognising that you have fed this all along) and with love in your heart for them, for yourself……..

You say YES to you.