It’s natural to be nervous
on the eve of a ten
hour operation.
I could adopt cool
unconcern,
but I wouldn’t want to deny my nature.
7 June
Apparently my heart rate of 45
indicates a possible
problem
or an elite athlete.
I think I’ll join
the elite.
7 June
All has been done
according to plan
irrespective of my heart.
And I’m coherent
enough to count my eight tubes.
9 June
Death appears
in the first line of
37 poems
by Emily Dickinson.
I might just leave
it there.
Irrationally, perhaps
I especially hated the prospect of a stoma -
so I’m pleased to sport the purple spot
marking where that might have been.
9 June
I was going to ask nice Nurse Alice
what she did for fun
apart from washing old men’s arses,
but she was called away before she got to mine.
10 June
The tubes are reducing
The nasogastric, in particular, has gone.
I think I could be happy here
if only I could sleep.
12 June
The first food in five days
need not be spectacular.
I've never been so grateful
for tomato soup.
Second time around post-op
I feel I've had a lot of this before
when once may very well
have been sufficient.
13 June
Of course it's a convention
to say that doctors do wonders
and nurses are wonderful
but conventions can be founded on truth.
13 June
Time
is the best doctor,
though only
if it’s kept you alive.
14 June
I wouldn’t say I had a problem
with the daily needle,
but when a trainee spent ten minutes scratching around
I started to see why I might.
To be pulled by the catheter
is pretty much the same thing as being led by the cock:
you need to be sure you’re going the same way -
even though it might not be the right one.
15 June
When, come to that,
Are my sexual urges going to return?
And, if not at all,
how much of a blessing would that be?
15 June
Surgical stockings
have proved be
the least predictable fashion trend
ever not seen on the High Street.
16 June
‘This won’t hurt’
says the nurse, removing my catheter,
‘but you may feel a strange sensation’.
Turns out that’s what penises call ‘pain’.
16 June
Mr West says
I'm cancer-free!
I'll have to think of something else to die from.
No hurry, though: it may come back...
If life has no meaning -
as I accept
at the philosophical level –
how come I’m pleased that it's carrying on?
19 June
Should I become a royalist
given how bleak my
prospects seemed
between the queen’s
funeral
and the king’s
coronation?
19 June
That's a bit much
I’ve
scarcely – never! –
used the
excuse of terminal cancer
before
I'm told I can't.
19 June
Staying in hospital
one day for each hour that I was out cold
doesn’t seem too long.
Now I am the other sort of out!
21 June
From death concerns
to life decisions:
should I keep the beard that hospital
grew without apparent effort?
I don't like the thought
of car
crashes now:
it isn't
the death,
it's the irony.
24 June
I’m abandoning the plan
to call my last sequence
‘The Extension of Life’
in the hope of posthumous publication.
25 June
I’m not shy
of heavy labour, but needs must:
the doctor said that lifting more than five kilos
might give me a hernia.
Anything could be a symptom I guess
Frequent urination,
spilling drinks,
forgetting names,
acting insensitively…
But I seem to be as usual.
27 June
Seriously, I’m lucky
to have my senses
about me
and a wonderful wife
to help.
How’s all this for
those who don’t?
27 June
Do we need a new carpet
now that my
preferred response –
‘Can’t it wait until
I’m dead?’ –
may not cut the
mustard?
28 June
Now, of course
I’m stupid for
experience.
Is that why existing
might be considered
something for fools?
Death in death?
I’m not expecting
otherwise.
Death in life?
That's what to
avoid.
1 July
After weeks
of wound-and-tube-enforced
body-wipes –
the washing
equivalent of sleeping rough –
it’s nice to get
into a shower.
5 July
I’m sleeping like a newborn baby -
on and off, never
more
than two hours at a go.
Isn’t it time the adult returned?
If convalescence
is going to make my
illness worthwhile,
it’s time
I got a few things
done.
I’ve also had
many warm wishes and
plenty of gifts
to go with the
complementary prospect
of the time to enjoy
them.
8 July
People tell me
to ‘take it easy’
but that’s what I
find
particularly difficult.
8 July
I’d sooner be healthy than rich
but the combination
of the NHS
with inability to travel
actually means I
save by being ill.
9 July
Not hearing Bach again
would
have been a blow:
obviously,
they play him in heaven
but
denying its existence was bound to exclude me.
9 July
Woo-hoo!
Six o’clock! I’m
tempted to say
‘I slept like a
baby’
but the point is
that I didn’t.
10 July
Now that 2023’s less likely
I wonder when
I should look
towards
to feel the rush of
death…
12 July
Next up
is the problem of
happiness
writing annoyingly
white.
Should I hope for
less favourable news?
14 July
Or maybe I should try
being miserable?
The state of the
world
makes the strategy all too feasible.
14 July
Now I can shift
my
questioning on…
How long
would be too long?
How much
would be asking too much?
15 July
No-one is surprised
that my letter of thanks to the hospital
also proposes a series of reforms
to sleep management, ward induction and coordination.
17 July
A week in my home town
with the provider of
my home womb
makes for an
alternative
form of full circle.
28 July
A first post-operative
London trip:
apparently I have a
smile
as wide as my scar
is long.
I wish I could remember
what Freud meant by
the death drive
so I could check I
haven’t
picked it up in not passing.
5 Aug
Cheers!
The liver surgeon
told me
to wait a month, a
month ago,
before I ventured
alcohol…
5 Aug
The same old same old
carries right on.
Life seems to be all
I’m going to
experience.
7 Aug
I'm told I have a twinkle in my eye
‘Of course!’ you might say,
but here’s my claim:
I never lost it.
7 Aug
With a busy period coming up
more chemotherapy’s
not what the doctor ordered
only it is.
9 Aug
The oncologist says
the additional round
is purely precautionary.
Suddenly, I’m circumspect.
9 Aug
40% of me wants to be brave,
to refuse to slow down the return to full life.
But 60% thinks how
stupid I’ll look
if the 40% of me’s
wrong…
10 Aug
Pain in vein
is a feature of
chemo infusions.
I just hope
it's not pain in
vain.
12 Aug
They said I was better
Then came this treatment,
making me worse
to be sure.
14 Aug
Who put the ‘therapy’
into chemotherapy?
There being no bad stuff left,
it’s only attacking the good.
15 Aug
Welcome
to another chemo day.
The prospect of
doing almost nothing
seems enough to
exhaust me.
18 Aug
Steph’s very good
She accepts
that I’m useless
and puts out the
bins.
19 Aug
I dreamt that I could see myself
from far above
but couldn’t tell what I was thinking
in my uninhabited state.
I woke at 5.30
p.m.!
How fast was life
ebbing away!?
Then I woke again.
23 Aug
Chemo is Freud
I reached for my dream phone.
It wasn't mine. The
reason I've been feeling bad?
They've given me
someone else’s drugs!
24 Aug
A cat dropped by an eagle
told me not to interfere
but didn’t say in what.
Yes yes, I’ll keep taking the pills!
25 Aug
It must be the chemo
that causes illogical
dreams.
It’s attacking my
mind
as well as my body!
27 Aug
The check-ups to come
better not bring bad
news
else my readers will
get
terminally fed up…
1 Sept
That would require a fifth sequence
After ‘There May Be Some Delay’
will come the posthumously-published
deadpan conclusion ‘Or Not’.
1 Sept
Timeline:
Following further tests in April 2023, doctors indicated that it would be possible to operate simultaneously on my liver and peritoneum - a complicated ten hour procedure, but with chances of success. The operation took place on 8 June, and went well: I was told I was now cancer-free, albeit with a 50% chance of it returning. That’s a big improvement from the original picture, which might be summarised as: Stage 4 bowel cancer already spread substantially to the liver and peritoneum, usually inoperable, likely survival rate 5%. I was discharged from hospital on 20 June, follow-up appointments with Mr Arshad (liver surgeon) on 5 July and Mr West (coordinating surgeon) on 10 July.
I stayed in St Leonards-on-Sea - where I grew up - with my mother 28 July - 3 Aug. Steph and I met with Dr Rees (my oncologist) on 9 Aug. She recommended precautionary chemotherapy, which started the following week. There is a list of some 50 possible side-effects of chemotherapy: the actual ones seem to vary greatly. On this particular course I had some minor issues and observed some changes: there was 'vein pain' and tingling; I became tired, slept erratically, and (as recorded 22-27 August) remembered dreams when I awoke - which I rarely done have at other times.
By the beginning of September I was traveling widely, running, playing tennis and curating two exhibitions... It was plausible to think that this chronicle had finished. However, In October - just beyond the timescale of the poems - I was told that the cancer had returned.
'Mr West says': Mr West was the coordinating surgeon among the many medics involved in my case. Consultants are referred to as 'Mr' rather than 'Doctor'.
'No-one is surprised': that would be a little long for an endnote: I wrote 2,500 words.
‘A first post-operative’: according to the artist Marcelle Hanselaar.
References:
Sigmund Freud (‘I wish I could remember’) believed that pleasure-seeking drove most behaviours, but observed enough contrary action or re-enactment of distressing scenarios to posit a countervailing deathwish / drive toward death and destruction – expressed, for example, through aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness - Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920.
George Bernard Shaw (‘If convalescence’) - Back to Methuselah pt. 2 contains the line ‘I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worthwhile’, 1921.
Charles Bukowski (‘Death in death’) – ‘What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death. They don’t honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers’ – Death Wants More Death, 1961
Clarice Lispector (‘Now of course’) - her narrating character, Rodrigo S.M., opines that he wants ‘to accept my freedom without thinking what so many do, that existing is something for fools, a case of madness’ in Hour of the Star, 1977
Bruce Springsteen (‘Now I can shift’) – rather remote from it in the end, but started from 'Do you think what I'm askin's too much? / I just want something to hold on to / And a little of that human touch' – Human Touch, 1992
Richard Thompson: the dream of ‘I dreamed that I could see myself’ might, I suspect, have been subconsciously triggered by Uninhabited Man, 2002
Photographs:
I classify these as plants ‘against the odds’ of apparently hostile environments, as photographed during my daily ‘constitutional’ post-operative walks: wall clingers, fence pokers, kerb huggers, drain dwellers, crack weeds etc.