Looking into Holes Part Two

 So this guy is going on holiday and asks his mate to keep an eye on the house and feed the cat. When he returns he asks his mate

 “everything  OK?

 “Your cat’s  dead” he replied.

.“ Good grief man you could have been less brutal”

“What do you mean?” 

“Well you could have said it was a lovely day and bounty was sunning herself on the roof and chased a bird, losing her footing and falling to the ground. She passed quietly doing what she loved”

“Got it”

“So how’s everything else been?”

“Well your mum was on the roof”

My phone battery was running out in tandem with my voice. I had blood cancer and someone had said they would call my wife but I didn’t know when. Only a message or two left “I have a lot of white cells”. My wife replied “what does that mean”. I think She knew what that meant. The battery on my phone died.

The next few hours was about me getting assigned a bed and begging for a charger. Ten hours after arriving at the hospital I found myself in a private room. I managed to find some temporary charge and was then joined by a doctor who said she needed to take  a  bone marrow sample. Now I know this is going to be painful but I never realised how painful. I have no idea what instrument was used but this was brutal. I heard bones cracking and  tears rolled down my cheeks. I heard myself saying “no, no, please, no”. 

“ you’re doing really well Steve, just a little more” then it stopped

“We can’t get the fluid we’ll have to go again”

I became a child just so terrified but unable to respond other than sob and pray for its end.

“It’s no good, we’ll just have to take blood”

Thank God! I thought but it was premature. I think the trainee doctor was offered the chance to get some experience but the needle went in hard and he couldn’t find the vein because my veins were too narrow. The more he struggled the more he went in and it felt more like a knife attack. These damn tiny veins weren’t going to beat him. 

“You’re dong well Steve”he said. 

“You’re not” I whimpered quietly under my breath. I begged them to stop and it ended with both scuttling out the door muttering about a nurse coming back to take my bloods. If this was how it was going to be, I thought, then end this hell now.

Over the next few hours messages to home were exchanged, I still had no voice, in every way even though I’d been signing paperwork constantly to give permission for various procedures. I would have signed anything to be honest, just to get through this “squid game”. I asked for items to be brought in and my son was going to be dropping them off. Because of covid no visitors were allowed. Then I heard his voice on the ward, his signature laugh. When he entered the room in full mask and apron and gloves I don’t think I’d ever felt so emotional. The nurse left us and I started blurting out my day in hell. Then the emotion became too much and we both cried. Messenger, phone, even zoom are not the same as looking straight at each other in the same room and feeling the rawness, the shock and pain. 

After an hour clinicians started coming in and procedures started so my son left. A visit from the main consultant confirmed that I wasn’t currently on his ward because they wanted to treat my infection first. Essentially I have Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. It was a random event, a rogue white cell that had broken out of my bone marrow and recruited a fast growing gang of maniac cells. Treatment would have to start soon or there wouldn’t be anyone left to treat. I was to start an aggressive chemotherapy course designed to destroy all my blood cells and then replace them with healthy blood cells through transfusion. In the meantime I was susceptible to infection and would continue to be so until the red count was back up. 

My impression was that this was an incredibly tightly controlled and monitored process. There was a sense of ordinariness and “been there, done that”. As for me I had nothing to do but be there and do as I was told. Happy with that. I think I was beginning to relax.

Looking back I realise I handled pretty much everything very badly. I’m noted for my lousy messenger management but I don’t think anyone can be ready for a change this sudden and dramatic. The team treating me is massive and buzzing around and driving on. My family have clearly been devastated but have rallied around and made things happen on that side. I’m just a fixed point around which everything is happening but I do nothing. What I did do was mess up the communication which is ironic for someone who spent 20 yrs in communication sales. Still!There’s no playbook, you just have to make the mistakes and move on and try an do better. So I hope I will.