A week of multiple failures

A bad day on Wednesday with high fever and numbness in both hands. Next morning, we phoned the oncology nurse who said to come straight in via A&E. They ran a batch of tests and sent me to the oncology assessment ward awaiting their decision, then admitted me overnight. It seems I have AKF (acute kidney failure), so was given high volume fluids through a drip and started on antibiotics. My immunotherapy session, due this morning, was naturally cancelled, though there is vagueness about it being causative.

lip service again

don't tell me 

everything is going to be okay

because it is not,

don't patronise

or condescend

keep your platitudes

for your own grieving

I only need honest friends.

by Annie Elliott

I arrived on the ward without even a book, let alone clothing, toothbrush or pyjamas. The hospital still bans visitors for 48 hours (presumably they are magically safe after that period), and Edwin has a heavy cold, so kind Andre crept up to the ward door where I stood waiting, towing my drip stand behind me, to sneak it open and take a bag of things from him. Ann was not allowed to see me at all, after leaving me at the door of A&E. So often, the caring person is assumed to be alright and getting on with life, and gets too little sympathy. Ann has been through much recently, and lives in the dark shadow of more to come. It cannot be an easy burdon, so often bourne alone.

The oncology ward was crowded with nine beds in my bay, filled with men who looked older and more ill than I, and the nurses were kept busy. With age comes a degree of detachment and acceptance, almost resignation in many cases, to an inevitable outcome. Much harder must be nursing on the adjacent ward, which I noted was "Teenage oncology"; that and the paediatric oncology unit must be emotionally exceptionally draining, and take a special kind of nurse to deal with the emotive nature of those cancers. 

Mistletoe at Addenbrookes

For various reasons, MA is unable to see Ann on Mothering Sunday, but was going to take her for lunch yesterday as a treat. Unfortunately, Ann lost even this treat as she suddenly had to come to the hospital to pick me up. MA hopes to take her next Friday to make up, so hopefully all will go well. Waiting in the sun for Ann, I noticed a huge ball of mistletoe in one of the trees at the entrance to Addenbrookes, easily visible before the leaves of summer. I had noticed that mistletoe is very abundant now, possibly following two years of lockdowns and a lack of Christmas demand. In Druidic mythology it occurred in the Ritual of Oak and Mistletoe, and evidence from bog bodies suggests its Celtic use was medicinal. The Romans associated mistletoe with a way to the underworld, but also with peace, love and understanding and hung it over doorways to protect the household, and mistletoe continues to be associated with fertility and vitality. All in all, it is an appropriate if accidental symbol over Addenbrookes.

After many years' silence, my son Dan got in touch to suggest we meet up and try to repair an old rift. He suggested I visit London this weekend, but I am still too weak to go far, and will be unable to travel to or across London, so the reconciliation has been put on hold.

The world news grows daily more alarming, with Herr Putin rattling his nuclear sabres, and demented Biden managing to open his lips to tell us the US is prepared for a first nuclear strike. The MAD world (mutually assured destruction) has risen from seventy years of dormancy as a fresh spectre to haunt our dreams. Nowhere is safe from such lunacy. War creates nothing more than poets to lament the dead; only working together with mutual support ever generated peace and prosperity, and such mutual trust is rapidly dissipating. I believe no one appreciated how delicate the world's interconnectedness is, or how quickly it can be broken. At this rate, we all face utter devastation, with a real fall into impoverishment and loss of hope in the world not seen since events such as the great plague, or the Hundred Years' War.