There could be some
karma
in using a gut health product’s pot
as a spittoon
for my regurgitated bile.
Six times a day
then no poo for seventy hours!
Even as a boy I wasn’t thrilled
by roller coasters.
The three poo-free days had preceded my admission to hospital, after which an enema released a
matching seven on the 22nd.
Acute Oncology
is on Level C. No reason not,
but did it have to be
quite such a big C?
Who knows
why they fed a tube
in up my nose?
I only know I didn’t like it!
I was told that the main purpose was nasal feeding, rather than – as I had first thought – to extract vomit or bile directly from the stomach via the tube – then told later that nasal extraction was indeed the purpose! Either way, the insertion of a tube, as I recalled clearly from 2022, is an unpleasant process. Don't put me on the volunteer list of people on whom students practice their technique!
The infusion pump beeps
to say there is 15 minutes to go
before it beeps to say it's done -
to tell me at two I’ll be woken again at quarter past!
It's lucky I'm not a gourmand
as I haven't been fed for three days.
Still,
even non-gourmands get hungry!
The pain some people
endure in here!
Fancy me allowing a modest backache
to keep me awake…
In the ward the
patients come and go
without much talk of Michelangelo.
Come day three,
I’m the veteran of Acute Oncology.
‘In the room the women
come and go / Talking of Michelangelo.’ T.S. Eliot: ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, 1915. The image is of my water jug.
Ah, the clink of china!
Yet it’s hard to look
forward to breakfast
when you won’t be getting any.
The butterfly needle
is my friend as,
compared with the bigger cannula needle,
it does not sting much like a bee.
Muhammad Ali first explained his style in his most famous way in 1964:’Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, his hands can't hit what his eyes can't see’.
Modernity is here!
I find myself assuming
that the medical procedures
will follow suit.
Suppose that, on
death
my memories pass into another body.
Would I
still be no more?
What if that other
body
remembers more than I do?
Would that mean
that I’d be more
alive than now?
Cannula coverage for daywear
And if I knew that other body
was going to suffer
some horrible harm,
would it be for me to worry?
Cannula coverage to take a shower
I’m hungry enough
after five days of not eating
not to be keen on the doctor’s assurance
that up to two weeks is no problem.
It might look like a car park
from the outside, to you:
to me, though,
it’s a view.
The view being from the quieter non-acute oncology ward to which
I was moved. Not many wards have a view out.
This is the time to park!
You don’t even have
to pretend to be disabled.
Yet no one takes advantage…
This morning’s carousel contains
a record line-up of infusions to
come.
The fun never stops!
Except for when it will…
Now they want to measure
my urine production
as well as my blood pressure,
temperature, and aspirated bile.
You'll have to trust me: those cardboard tubes contains my wee
When I sense my main tumour
through the pain in my back,
my own sense of tumour
comes under a small attack.
Ribbons on Emily's uniform
Here’s a quirk to
contemplate
I used to be woken twice a night by 'hunger pang' sensations.
Now I’m not – although
I haven’t eaten for a week.
I do have a constant
grumble of emptiness, but it doesn’t seem enough to wake me. That’s little
loss, though: back pain, blood pressure readings, medication times, bleeping infusers
and general ward noise have stepped into the role.
When I run short
of fortitude
the slack’s picked up
by having zero choice.
Goodbye chicken curry, liquorice
coffee, blackcurrants and
cauliflower curds!
I’m sorry not to say farewell
through taste,
rather than through words.
I was nil by mouth for the week prior to being told that a permanent jejunostomy was likely to be needed: I would never eat or drink again, just receive everything through a stomach tube. That genuine list of eccentric favourites touches on the fact that curds are the dense, edible white head of the cauliflower plant, which actually consist of a massive cluster of immature, undeveloped flower buds and thick stem tissue. Not that I refer the ‘curds’ all that often when I don’t fancy a rhyme! In fact, the day after I had written this - the worst news I had yet received - the diagnosis moved on: a non-tube solution was possible after all.
Liane tells me ‘jejune’ was a cool word in the sixties
(What would she know? She was an unborn German)
so a jejunostomy must be a cool op.
Thanks for trying, Liane!
Artist Liane Lang visited, leading me to break the privacy rule of not showing other people in these photos...I'm still not showing NHS staff so fully without agreement, or other patients at all.
Eight days of taking nothing in
has seen me drop by just eight pounds.
Dieting must be pretty hard
when it's done with food!
From 74.5 Kg (11 st 8 lbs) on admission to 70.5 kilos (11 st 0 lbs) on 26 Aug. Nurse Kim has an impressive collection of pens but shows no sign of using them to note my weight. Indeed, I was surprised that that among the battery of regular tests and measurements (temperature, blood pressure, pulse, blood sugar levels, blood make-up, oxygen levels, urine flow etc) I was not weighed at all. I only have the data because, curious about it, I asked to be weighed.
That said, Steph likes
me
to be eleven stone dead.
I don’t think she said
‘Eleven stone, dead’.
Is this bed lying here
illegitimately? Perhaps it’s just resting.
Who can expect even a bed
to be absolute give and no take?
The chicken pie, vegetable lasagne
and macaroni cheese are all off today!
I take the disaster calmly,
having been ineligible for any of them…
I'm not yet sure what the hospital veggie lasagne looks like, but in my current starved fantasy, something like this online depiction...
Prince is from Ghana
He asks me about British politics.
I explain that Nigel Farage
doesn't want him to help me get better.
If you took immigrants and foreign workers out of the NHS, the system would be unviable.
1.30 a.m. is the time to write this
while the back pain’s back to keep me awake
but I haven’t got through the four hours required
before another Oramorph.
Oramorph is a brand name for morphine sulphate oral solution, a fast-acting liquid opioid
painkiller served in a disposable purple syringe. It deals with my back pain (caused
by tumour pressure) in about twenty minutes, then I can get to sleep again. My
prescription allows it only every four hours.
Karen knocks over the urine container
I’d put in a stupid place.
Ah, the glamorous side of nursing!
Yet she still smiles...
I am still collecting urine for measurement - the aim to check that inputs from the constant drips are in balance with the flows out.
Will I recognise the time
when I’ve become ‘the deadest thing
alive enough to have strength to die’
and know what I should say?
Thomas Hardy: 'Neutral Tones', 1867: ‘The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing / Alive enough to have strength to die’. That's a night view with Sean's light on next door.
Pleased as I am for
them
it doesn’t help much after ten days nil by mouth
to hear the other patients praise
the unexpectedly good catering.
Who knew that GOO
stood for a ‘gastric outlet obstruction’,
here 'in the setting of metastatic colorectal carcinoma’.
I already have the T-shirt!
Those quotes are from my medical record. Sonic Youth’s album ‘GOO’ (1990) is a favourite of mine. The
title refers to one of the songs – ‘My friend Goo’ which
I took to be a play on yucky stuff and God and good as well as referring to lyric writer Kim
Gordon’s cool-sounding friend. The surgical interpretation had not occurred to
me! The cover features artwork by Raymond Pettibon, and I have owned a T-shirt
version of that for years – the photo shows
me in 2024, when it seemed neat to wear a 'Sonic Youth' T-shirt to the opening of my 'Advanced Contemporaries' exhibition of artists over 60. I still have the (bypassed) obstruction, so now I can be GOO both
inside and out!
I can't die yet
Not until I've written enough poems about death
to make people see
that they're all about life.
Written three hours
pre-op on 28 Aug 2026. There’s always the chance with a total anaesthetic that
you won’t come round afterwards. Only later did it occur to me that I might
already have written enough such poems, making it a risky argument!
What to do when
awaiting surgery?
I search online for what may be my last new word:
the patslide is ‘a smooth, rigid plastic board or sheet
used to transfer patients safely between a bed and a
trolley’.
The view is from the holding room just
before the operation. When the surgeon arrived I was given - for the first time - a choice of stent placements: a safe,
well-established but temporary measure; or a newer longer-lasting solution with
a 10% chance of life-threatening complications. Both would allow eating in the
usual way, if not with normal food – a big improvement on the stomach
tube that follow a jejunostomy. I took the 10% risk.
I was still wondering
as the anaesthetist went through
his well-tried routine of jokey distractions,
just what percentage might
have swayed me?
So, I
have a lumen-apposing metal stent
inserted between stomach and bowel,
the better to bypass a tumour blockage,
I believe this is good news.
That's the diagram in the gastroenterologist's notes through which he described my choice of options, but with my colour additions. I had arrived in theatre believing there were three options, as confirmed by the oncology team the day before: bypass surgery, a stent cutting through the blockage, or a stomach tube. Not at all, said Dr Tehami now, there were only two: a stent (red outline in the diagram) through the obstruction (blue) or a separately-placed lumen-apposing metal stent (LAMS - green) by cutting a path between stomach and jejunum. That latter was my choice: an Endoscopic Ultrasound guided gastrojejunostomy.
.webp)
On the other hand, ‘Rats!’
Just when I’d spent long enough online
to bore my acquaintance with the ins and outs of a jejunostomy,
I find I’ve merely added to my stock of pointless knowledge.
Diagram online of how a jejunostomy would have worked.
‘Quite a day’
Steph texts me, ‘for a body!’ -
pretending to mistype
her playful coding of me as ‘a boy’.
Typing also goes on in the ward, too: Mandy's on admin.
.
One bound - well, maybe later…
One stagger to the loo and I’m free!
A night without tubes,
and I’m allowed a mug of tea!
‘How do you cope’
asks Peter in Bed 4,
‘two weeks without food?’
‘I let my shorts fall down’.
I wish to complain
that I’ve nothing to complain about.
Where’s the provocation fun in that?
Even the food looks as if it’s going to be good.
Leaflets on the ward
Small puzzles of the
world
No. 8,484.
Why do NHS shower curtains
not reach to the floor?
The consequence is that
you have to be very careful where to stack your clothes. Hang on a mo, perhaps that's a complaint. It looks to me as if the designated puzzle number refers to both the rhyming slang / bingo call ‘84, curtains door’ and
the commonest standard length of curtains, 84 inches.
Anaesthetists
like their cannulas big and branched.
I’m told this is an ‘octopus’ style –
though it looks no more than troctopus to me.
Lunch has arrived!
I am extremely pleased,
even if
it won’t look much to you.
By Day 10 of nil-by-mouth
I was down to 69.4 Kg / 10 st 9 lbs, but then a liquid menu was introduced - clear soup and jelly or yoghurt.
Looks like I was given
an EEG while under
The sticker is hard to pull off from the hairs,
but I tell myself to man up in empathy
for all that women tolerate by wax!
It can seem that Steph thinks
she knows better than the nurses what is good for me.
My instinct’s to resist that,
only she's probably right.
I see I may be
‘overwhelmed by thoughts’.
Yes please,
bring them on!
'From the moment you're diagnosed, you may be overwhelmed by the amount of thoughts and questions you have about cancer' - Macmillan Cancer
Support Leaflet: ‘Why me? What now? Who can help?’, as stocked in the ward. It lies on my rather stylish 'summer dressing gown', given to me three years by a friend whose own husband succumbed to cancer before he got to use it. Thank you, Helen - it has done me considerable service!
I have progressed to
the puréed menu!
Better than a stomach pump,
yet ‘tempting’ would be to go too far:
even the photographs are unappetising.
Not yet enough to stop my weight falling further - to 68 k / 10 st 5 lb by Sun 30 Aug
This I like!
Were I stronger I’d be inclined
to make a fake-slip-down
in the banana’s honour.
Walking out to the main hospital concourse to get a paper
There is no pain I am
receiving -
Oramorph has got my back -
and no obvious reason I should be receding
quicker than the tumours do their stuff.
Now that the stent links the stomach to the duodenum, the medical emphasis switches back to my wider collection
of tumours: their growth or spread will be what determines how soon I die – that’s
the only obvious reason ‘I should be receding’. Except this quatrain started when
the words of Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’ came to me wrongly, as per the
title. ‘There is no pain, you are receding’ is correct. Appropriately enough, the
song does refer, literally, to numbness caused by an overdose of tranquillisers
- albeit the more metaphorical anatomisation of societal numbness is its point in
the structure of ‘The Wall’ (1979).
Come the 32nd
anniversaries could get too predictable.
I know! Let's have one
in hospital!
27 August was the date. Cards remained at my bedside.
This won’t stay this neat
for long
but I claim it’s not my fault:
Hospital blankets tend to fall off
because they are designed that way.
Hospital blankets are made from smooth, lightweight, and low-friction cotton / synthetic weaves. They feature small holes that trap warm body air inside the fibres to balance thermal retention with comfort across varying room temperatures and patient conditions., and are also designed to withstand frequent industrial laundering. But they slip easily if not tucked in with oppressive 'hospital corner' tightness.
At first I thought
the yellow pointer meant
the only way was up…
but maybe not?
Technology changes
at furious speed.
All the same, I'm sceptical.
How exactly is this going to fly?
That’s a bit of a tease.
I understand the Air Ambulance van’s main functions to be providing backup when the helicopter
is grounded (it carries the same kit), assisting with post-landing transport and
taking part in community outreach events.
Rob says he’s bored
silly
as ‘you can’t do nothing here’.
Should I be feeling guilty
about struggling to get everything done?
Rob was opposite me - most of the time in D12 the other three beds in my room were occupied by the friendly Rob, Sean and Peter. My hospital plan is appended at the end!
Henry’s an
experienced maker of beds
He must have passed
the 100,000 mark.
I expect to be impressed!
Henry has been working
in the same support role here for 25 years, and estimates he makes 18 beds per
day. A working year contains some 230 days, so 25 x 230 x 18 = some 103,500 beds before mine.
Was it Keats who
claimed
that truth was beauty
and beauty truth?
Well, we've got the truth…
It was Keats –
no prizes for that! ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on
earth, and all ye need to know.’ – ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, 1819
What might seem the most basic act
is getting rather complicated:
colour and volume must now be monitored,
as well as time, and frequency, and score on the Bristol Scale.
I reckon I’d need twenty lines
to set out all the future constraints
of my stent-and-cancer-adjusted diet.
Let’s stick with one: eat nothing that expands in the stomach.
The biggest impact of that dictate is: never again can I eat bread or bread products. The image shows dietician Zoë's breezily direct intervention in the standard booklet advising on 'Eating After a Duodenal Stent'
Let’s hope that Auden
and all who’ve gone already
to where they can’t be fed
will be OK with metaphorical bread.
W.H. Auden: ‘Art is
our chief means of breaking bread with the dead’: ‘Secondary Worlds’, 1968
Why should I be mortified
that I might soon be mort?
If I went completely French,
it couldn’t make much difference.
Triggered by a message from the artist Judith Burrows, who declared herself ‘mortified (forgive the pun)’ that she hadn’t replied to my email about ‘The Death Suite’ . The image is a Lithographic print made from her oil painting 'Lone Man Waiting (for someone or perhaps time)'. The word ‘mortify’ derives from the Latin ‘mortificare’ (to kill), which passed into Anglo-Norman as ‘mortifier’ (to cause to die) – consistent with the French word for death itself, ‘la mort’. 'Mort' is a English word, too, most relevantly for the note played on a hunting horn to announce that a deer has been killed.
Fear not!
This is the way out of the hospital,
not the exit that being here
was seeking to prevent.
Photo taken on the way to the discharge room, 1 September
Thanks / Notes
My wonderful wife, Steph, visited daily, hence several mentions.
Many thanks to all the NHS staff, who collectively sorted me, and were were always helpful and cheerful. They also answered my not infrequent questions about what was going on - practical and medical, but also as driven more by what I was writing!
Thanks also to my 'art network'. I was grateful to those who took the trouble to send me a thousand personalised messages of love and support (but I decided I couldn't add individual replies to all into the plan below!).
Hospital is a time-rich environment: no need to clean or cook (or even eat, in my case), water the garden, do the bins, iron, hoover etc. You can't play sport or go out on trips. Sleep is difficult, leaving more hours awake. And for some reason, I didn’t feel like playing online chess: another hour per day saved! So if you’re feeling OK – and, much of the time, I was – it’s worth planning to make the most of it. Which I did by monitoring myself against the following, assuming a two week stay was likely (in fact, it was only twelve days. It felt longer!). Yes, I am a bit nuts, but people are used to it...
PLAN FOR ESTIMATED TWO WEEK HOSPITAL STAY Yes or No
SAFE TO ASSUME WILL HAPPEN
Medical visits, tests, monitoring, procedures Y
Daily visits and discussions with Steph Y
Family visits Y
ESSENTIAL
Understand what doctors are saying, as assisted by Steph,
devise questions
ahead of meetings, and maintain medical records and notes Y
Pre-plan future changes to recording in response to
developments Y
Deal with family comms Y
Phone Mum daily Y
Celebrate 32nd Wedding Anniversary Y
DO IF POSSIBLE
Daft and implement activity plan Y
Maintain Instagram presence Y
Write and publish 2 x weekly FAD columns Y
Photos and texts for photo-poems covering the period Y
Set up artist visitors Y
Produce autobiographical article material in collaboration
with Emma Y
Take forward ‘Holes, positive’ show 50%
Respond to Bella re APT show N
NICE TO DO
Read daily paper, TLS, LRB 50%
Watch 1 x 'Nashville' TV episode daily Y
Watch 'Match of the Day' programmes Y
Expand musical range Y
Complete reading of James Schuyler biography in tandem with Collected
Poems Y
New York School wider poetry reading 25%
Read Knausgaard novel 100 / 660 pages
Proper consideration of Allen Jones's art via Mark Hudson’s book ‘Moves’ N
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