Sunflowers

Sunflowers

In badly weeded borders, bare with neglect,

we scattered seeds to brighten dismal autumn’s darkening day.

Birds flocked down, bright squawking, cheerful creatures,

glad to feast on the diet we had strewn.

That autumn, not a single flower showed ‘bove bare earth. 

But —high behind the fence, bright against a low sun — 

stands a burst of sunflowers: strong, brilliant, capped in gold, 

proclaiming our lives in gardens new.

Within the house, we live our ebbing lives,

once with hopeful promise sown: ending now.

Birds of time have winged away our dreams

and flowers of youth decayed to graveyard slime

midst borders choked with growth we did not seek.

Yet o’er the fence, the fresher voices cry: 

cheering sounds of song and happy dream,

carried on soft breezes, bringing joy 

from children delighting in flowers they did not plant.

JHM

For some weeks I have had bad diarrhoea, going up to five times through the night, and of a type I am reluctant to describe on white pages. Last week I managed to speak with a nurse who advised getting a stool sample to test, but this came back clear of nasty infection that might be treatable such as dysentery of typhoid. I tried to phone again this week, but could not speak even to a nurse, and they had no appointment slots, so I phoned the oncology nurses at Addenbrookes, who were magnificent. The consultant phoned back to discuss the case, and arranged for me to go onto the oncology day assessment unit in the morning. Yesterday therefore, I spent the day at Addenbrookes where they arranged an urgent scan, as it was overdue anyway. The young registrar came back to see me at about half-past-seven, to explain they had found some larger nodes on my lungs, and a new growing cyst within the liver, almost certainly a recurrence of the malignant melanoma. She advised me to continue with loperamide (Lomotil) to control the diarrhoea, and I finally got home at eight pm. However, she did add that the team will discuss my management next week, but whether they can offer palliative surgery or chemotherapy at this stage I do not know.

Sorrows come not as single spies but in battalions. Matthew remains very low with poorly controlled diabetes, and now poor Rosie has been taken into hospital. She had had pain in the side for some time, which grew worse at the beginning of the week. She was found to have a ureteric stenosis (severe narrowing of the tube from the kidney to the bladder) due to severe inflammation in the duct. She has had to have a nephrostomy tube inserted to drain the kidney to an external bag until the inflammation eases. She remains in hospital today, in great pain and worrying about keeping two small and active children from climbing on her and dislodging the bag. 

Ann's Sunflowers!

Ann loves her garden so this spring she sowed a mass of sunflower seeds in the beds round the edge. Finally they have come up, some eight feet tall and facing the sun in brilliant splendour. The only problem is, they're all next door! It looks as though the birds, so used to feasting in our garden, assumed the tasty seeds were for them, and ate the lot. They must have flown to the fence and dropped some there - there is a full display all along the neighbour's fence, but we do not have a single sunflower in our garden.

Addenbrooke's Honours EIIR