Rag Doll Revisited

RAG DOLL REVISITED

ONE Time for a change

2009. If there has been any other year so fraught, I cannot imagine when it was. The global economy has gone into freefall, banks and corporations have collapsed, possibly it is too late to make much of a difference to climate change, and now my daughter has announced she is leaving her husband of 20-odd years and going to live with her new man on the other side of the valley. I feel abandoned.

I had a couple of strokes over a year ago that left me paralysed on the left side of my body.

It has been a struggle really, as each day I make very small improvements, but not so that anyone would really notice. One of the things I find hard to accept is not being able to dress well. I am one of those people who like to look attractive. It takes at least an hour in the morning to wash and dress, by which time I feel exhausted. Pulling up my pants is a major enterprise, (gone are the days when I can wear a control body stocking), and trying to put on my bra is another. I have to pull the part with the hooks to the front of my body to meet the eyes on the other half and then after trapping my fingers several times, I have to twist the whole thing around and squeeze my weak arm into the armhole, and navigate the other arm into the other armhole and pull it up.

I had a mastectomy a few years ago so I have a special bra that holds the prosthesis. You can imagine how heavy that is inside the cup, so the whole thing has to be hauled up and adjusted. I bought some specially designed mastectomy bras that are really very attractive but of course they are designed with both cups having a pocket. Consequently my remaining breast looks bundled up. Oh, I know I am an old lady now, but I still want to look good underneath my clothes. What I really need is a nice caring young man who will help me dress, and perhaps give me an encouraging stroke now and then.

My ankles swell up. This has been an ongoing problem for many years. For some reason it has never been resolved, except briefly in hospital when I was put on a powerful diuretic and a urine catheter. Something wrong with kidneys no doubt. When I was younger I used to like to wear smart and sexy shoes. The last time I bought some really gorgeous shoes was twenty years ago. I am almost 80 now but still want to wear nice shoes. Instead I have to wear practical lace ups or flat Velcro fastened clodhoppers that don’t go with summer skirts.

To stop my legs from swelling I have to wear support hose. You cannot imagine what a performance it is to take them off and even worse to put them on. I was already having

trouble putting on my pantyhose. My back does not bend easily so it was accompanied by lots of grunts and groans. My thumbs too would not grasp the feet properly and I would end up in a fit of laughter. I imagined I might be found days later by someone puzzling how I had got myself into such extreme contortions. Support socks are not much better. Even with a special sock pulling up device for disabled people, you still have to be able to fit the sock over the device. With only one working hand it is almost impossible.

Just after leaving hospital a year ago, I was visited by one of the numerous social workers who distribute wads of information booklets in the mistaken belief that it is a service. She took copious notes about my disability and assessed whether I could bathe adequately. It was agreed that I was unable to get into my bath, let alone get out again. Even before I had a stroke I found bathing difficult because I could not get up once sitting down and preferred to have a shower. What I really needed was my bath removed and replaced by a special shower unit for disabled people. I looked back wistfully to the days when a lover and I would shower together and wash each other’s hair. I could really do with that now.

It was exactly a year later that the Council agreed to a grant, and several months later when the contractors came to put in the shower. Meantime I had been forced to wash myself with a face cloth, using one hand. My left arm was still practically useless in spite of physiotherapy. I washed my hair in the sink, using the face cloth and rinsed it with a jug of water. It took practically the whole morning to do. Of course once washed it had to be dried. I used to set my hair with electric tongs, but with only one hand that was now a dream. I made an appointment with a hairdresser that provided a chair on the ground floor of the salon. It was coincidentally a barber’s shop as well. I do not think the men even noticed me. The girl was very proficient and because it was a men’s hair salon she was very careful to give a sculptured cut. My daughter thought it modern and chic.

I do not recognise the face that stares back at me from my mirror. I have to come to terms with the fact I am no longer the same person I was a year ago. Not only have I aged considerably but my clothes no longer fit my appearance. I need a make over!

After a mastectomy years ago and subsequent therapy, I lost my libido. I had given up the prospect of ever finding a really caring man that I resonated with. For one thing I have no idea how to respond to or even recognise male attention. I have no idea what love is as opposed to infatuation. I have had many relationships that lasted several years and then faded from lack of total commitment. I never lived with anyone else after my divorce 30 years ago, but obviously was not celibate. I have no idea how to develop my relationships into a commitment. My daughter happily went to live with her man as soon as he started to show an interest in her. Perhaps I am not brave enough, or just unable to read the signs. I mean, what happens after someone invites you out for coffee? What are the expectations now I am old? Do I really want a relationship with an old man?

I make the most incredibly embarrassing social gaffs. I must be the oldest and most socially inept person on the planet. Just recently I went up to the minister at my church to thank him for the sermon that I thought had been interesting and educational. It was not what he expected to hear, and then I froze, grabbing his arm for inspiration while I struggled with the right words to discuss what I really meant. Maybe I should have left it at that.

It would be nice to be made to feel beautiful. Something needs to change.

I cannot look after my cottage any more. I came here straight from New Zealand fourteen years ago. I was 66 and had left my sons and their families in the tender care of my ex husband and his wife, to help my daughter look after my grandchildren here. According to her they needed a grandma! Well of course they have all grown up, and my daughter no longer lives in this village so the reason for my being here has gone. So I have put my cottage up for sale, which is probably silly in a recession. Where I go afterwards is a mystery.

Well at least I have set the ball rolling.

TWO There is no hurry

Shortly after coming out of rehabilitation after my stroke, my daughter decided I should start looking for other accommodation. We looked at several places around town, ending up at a new development being created out of an old brewery. It looked exciting and the finishes in the apartments were top class. I was greatly tempted to put down a deposit.

“You could put down £1000 to reserve an apartment”. The sales person proffered a brochure and guided us towards the model of the finished project.

“There are two and one bedroom apartments on three floors, and several have gone already”. She eyed us hopefully.

The freefall of the money markets had just begun so I was a little cautious about investing in a building that might end up less than I paid for it in a year’s time. I decided to meet the developer to discuss his willingness to negotiate. He was happy to drop the asking price by £10,000 if I did not want a parking space. I had to put forward another £7000 as deposit when contracts were exchanged. This is where the scheme fell down.

I asked my sons in Australia and New Zealand if they were willing to lend me the money.

They were reticent, and they had better things to do with their money.

“Money is tight now Mum, but anything else we can do, don’t be afraid to ask”. Silly really, since I had not even put my place on the market yet.

We got quotes for my cottage, from three different estate agents, and I chose the highest estimated value. It appeared that two of the agents based their estimate on the cost of Stamp Duty on houses over a certain amount. I also had to get an energy evaluation to judge how environmentally friendly my cottage was. Photographs were taken of the outside of the cottage, the lounge with its inglenook fireplace, the kitchen diner, and the rather untidy winter garden. They were going into the glossy magazine sent out by the agent to far flung areas. I imagined a full page advertisement. Delightful character country hideaway with original 200 year old bread oven, and purpose made country style garden in rural Dorset................ In fact it was one of many stamp size pictures of properties available in Dorchester in the same price range.

I love this place. It has cuddled me through many traumas over the fourteen years since I arrived in England. I had fallen in love with it the first time I saw it, and in fact I am convinced my guardian angel had chosen it for me. I had nursed it from a run down

restored Georgian cottage into the creative and vibrant place it is now. The garden was a worn out strip of grass and now is a wild life haven, brimming with insects and birds, frogs and field mice, overflowing with flowers, weeds and fruit. I had furnished the cottage with recycled country style furniture I brought from New Zealand plus a few pieces from local shops. Everything seemed to have been made especially for this cottage. I hung my own paintings on the walls and placed New Zealand pottery collections on the shelves. How could I leave it now?

I often wondered why old people find it hard to leave their homes and move to something more suitable for their failing years. Part of it is not wanting to let go of the comfort that has been created over time, and part of it is in the logistics of down sizing.

Meanwhile I was having my bathroom renovated courtesy of a Council grant. I did not really want to advertise the fact I was thinking of selling. But it had taken so long to reach this point that I had given up hope of ever having a proper shower and wash my hair. Several officials had come and gone, assessing what needed doing and whether I was still disabled sufficiently to deserve it. The Occupational Therapist had put it down as of medium priority.

I thought the idea was to keep people in their own homes and not being able to wash properly was a health hazard. Apparently there was no hurry.

The men marched in like a military exercise. The job had been very well progressed and each sub-contractor was ready on time. The standard of work was excellent but the men would only do what was on the written schedule of works. Any adjustments were outside their remit. The job took three days, including replacement of the lavatory and hand basin that I paid for myself. The Clerk of Works came to view the job and agreed there were a few things that had to be “made good� before it could be signed off.

To say I was a little overwhelmed with the prospect of taking a shower in my new wet room is an understatement. My skin, after a whole year of inattention, had taken on the aspect of a lizard shedding its skin. It was dry and crinkled, and I longed to be able to oil it and rub body scrub into it. But I only had one working arm, so only one half of my body could be washed. I had to be content with sitting on the seat provided and bask in the gushing water.

I suggested to the agent of my choice that I did not want my cottage put up for sale before March this year. I wanted time to enjoy spring and early summer and adjust to the idea of having to leave for another place. There was a lot of decluttering to do as well and I asked my daughter to help. It is amazing how much paper one collects and old clothes stored away in cases gathering moths. I discovered my old Siberian pony fur coat that I had bought when I was 23 and kept all these years had been eaten over last summer by a nesting mouse. My daughter was saddened as she had hoped to inherit it in spite of fur being nonpc. I gave her the remains and the address of a furrier in case she wanted it remodelled into a throw.

Up until I was ten years old we moved house regularly, often at dead of night to avoid people my father owed money to. I married a restless man who liked to move as part of an upwardly mobile culture. We never stayed anywhere longer than five years, so I am quite used to the process. Inevitably something is always left behind. I have a feeling that this time it might be me.

THREE Look at the view!

My cottage is one of four in a terrace built in the late 18th century by Josiah Slade for his daughters to either live in or let. He was a yeoman farmer descended from a Saxon land owner, so the cottages had their own bread ovens. Mine was the only one intact, and one of only twelve left in Dorset. For some reason my cottage had never been listed, probably because of an extension of a bathroom and kitchen built of concrete blocks in the 1960’s.

The inglenook fireplace is the main feature of the sitting room, with its wood burner and heavy oak lintel, and space for storing logs. It is a perfect setting for cosy winter evenings.

The rafters are exposed elm where the original lathe and plaster has been stripped away. At some point in its history a porch was added and the scullery wall taken down to extend the living room. It is a perfect space for Christmas celebrations. One could imagine ladies dressed in clothes similar to those in Pride and Prejudice entertaining friends and playing party games.

There are three bedrooms upstairs, two single and one double, that have probably been made out of one large space divided by wood partitions some time in the past. The double bedroom has a tiny Georgian fireplace in it that most likely has never been used. The only time I lit it was a near disaster because some jackdaws had built a nest in the chimney. It caught fire with a terrible roaring sound and bundles of burning sticks came crashing down into the grate, sending sparks onto the carpet. The iron surround became red hot with the paint bubbling on the surface. I never lit it again.

The view from the bathroom is idyllic, looking across water meadows to the ridgeway, with a hillside horse paddock, and the Cerne River meandering through the valley. My garden backs onto a smallholding where a small flock of Dorset Down sheep munch happily on the meadow grass, and ducks jostle with hens for supremacy. The shrubs and trees I planted have matured, so that it is almost entirely secluded from the other neighbours.

The kitchen/diner looks out through French doors onto the cottage garden, and I sit eating my breakfast or lunch gazing at the rural paradise. Sometimes I venture into the garden to eat at the patio table or lie on the lounger under the trees and watch the hover flies and swifts weaving in the sky above.

Since putting my cottage on the market, prices have dropped considerably so I think anyone buying it will have a bargain. However I am always amazed at the extraordinary behaviour of some people when they come to view. One woman with a two year old child, firmly grasped by the hand, tip-toed as if she was in church, while her friend soaked in the atmosphere of the cottage. They wandered down the garden path not sure where it was

leading and thanked me for allowing them to visit my beautiful home as if they were tourists on a country house trip. Others barged through the porch and into the sitting room as if it was the entrance to a much larger house, forged their way through to the kitchen and out into the garden. One couple came in and whirled around as if they did not know what they were supposed to be looking at. Another woman obviously hating everything, said that the road was a problem. A man came with his wife, looked at the inglenook, said he had been in the other cottages some time ago and wondered what mine was like. He did not bother to look further than that. His wife admired the garden and said that it was certainly a selling point. With the profusion of daffodils, bluebells and apple blossom it looked like a woodland glen.

Sitting one day in my wicker chair watching a white egret flying across the water meadows, I sank into a reverie and was surprised to find myself surrounded by swirling smoke. I cried out in alarm, thinking something must be on fire. I have a fire alarm in the kitchen, but as soon as I moved, the smoke disappeared. There was no smell of smoke, nor any indication of anything burning. I tried to rationalise what had happened. Perhaps smoke from nextdoor chimney had blown into my flue. I did sometimes smell cooking from their house or when they lit their fire. Perhaps there was a hole between our chimneys that smoke leaked through. There was an uncanny explanation too of some foreboding, since one of the previous owners had been horridly burnt, when her clothing caught fire as she tried to clear the ashes from the fireplace. Was it a warning of things to come?

This phenomenon occurred several times again, and my daughter-in-law who is an opthalomist declared that the cause was due to a cataract or macular degeneration. I have both! Apparently it causes all kinds of hallucinations, and as things were to unfold all kinds of strange events were to occur, hastening the continuation of the Ragdoll for Christmas story about my experiences with having a stroke.

FOUR “We’ll send in the ghost busters!”

It began on the 23rd February 2009. I had been watching television until ten at night, and was placing my cellular phone back in its cradle when I felt myself falling. Oh God! Not again! I crashed past my wicker chair, tried to grab hold of it, just missed the glass table, thumped my head on the floor and knocked myself out. Once on my back on the floor there was no way that I could get myself up again. I was like a cast sheep waving its legs ineffectively in the air. Amazingly I still had the telephone in my hand so I called a dear neighbour to whom I had given my front door key for just such an occasion.

“Help, I’m on the floor and I can’t get up!” I said in a weak voice.

There was silence on the other end of the phone, then “Who is that?”

“It’s Angela. I have fallen on the floor and I can’t get up!” More silence. What’s the matter with the man?

There was a lot of heavy breathing then he said “I am in bed”.

I told him I was unable to get off the floor and I needed him to lift me up. He finally agreed to put on a dressing gown and slippers and come to my aid. He arrived fully dressed.

“Oh God, Angela! What have you done?”

My friend attempted to pull me up by my arms but was not strong enough to get me upright.

“Lift me at my back” I yelled. He yanked me up and we stood there feeling slightly silly as I explained what had happened. Thank goodness for a good friend.

A few days later as I was climbing the stairs I suddenly felt weak with a very loud humming noise in my right ear. I heard a noise like the white noise on television when it closes down, and someone shouted something in my left ear. I felt as if I was being tossed around in a surfing wave, and a numbing on the right side of my head crept across my skull like a grey veil being drawn over it. I woke up wondering where I was and discovered I was lying face down on the stair carpet. It took a while to remember what I had been intending to do, but eventually I got up and continued upstairs as if nothing had happened.

These strange events occurred at least once a week, each one different and apparently randomly. It would happen when I sat in my chair to watch television, or when I lay down in bed. On one occasion I saw a very bright light and someone shouted an incomprehensible word at me. I began to hallucinate and one night I woke up to find two men with shining hair standing by my bed. I was terrified and wondered how on earth they had got in. Had I left the front door open? They both leaned over me and shouted something, then disappeared. What were they trying to tell me?

My doctor looked concerned as he viewed my notes on his computer.

“I think perhaps you may have epilepsy”, he said with conviction.

“Who was your stroke consultant?” There were several in the retinue, all with different theories as I remember. He rang Dr. W. who prescribed Epilim.

“We’ll see if that helps, and come back again in a few weeks time”.

I made another appointment and went away confident that the medication would ease the attacks. It did not, and the hallucinations became even more bizarre. When I told my eldest son in New Zealand about the two men with shining hair and how scary the whole event was, he said that it was possible to banish it by simply telling it to go away.

“Angels usually come in pairs and they may have had a message, but since it was incomprehensible you need to suggest that the message is made clearer”.

Although there is a scientific explanation for hallucinations that is connected with failing eyesight, once I had banished the manifestations, they did not occur with such frequency.

Sitting once again in my doctor’s surgery, he looked long and hard at the computer, trying to figure out the next strategy.

“I think I will refer you to the Elderly Care clinic”. Hey wait a minute, old people go to that don’t they? Have I really reached that stage? When did that happen?

Through the long winded process of making hospital appointments I eventually found myself in the outpatients waiting corridor to discover that my consultant was none other than the delightful German Dr.P. Dr.P is the sort of man that makes elderly ladies and even younger ones go weak at the knees, and stumble over words as if they were mute! Something about his courtly manner and personal concern, his Continental charm and wit maybe, sends the blood racing! My elderly library ladies who bring me books think he is lovely!

“It’s a long while since I saw you!” I said.

Dr .P got up from his chair and extended his hand.

“So very nice to see you again. What is the matter now? I see your doctor has referred you to me because of possible epilepsy”.

He looked at me intently as I handed him some notes I had made explaining the various events.

I had looked up “epilepsy” on the internet and it was recommended that a story should be written to aid the consultant to determine if the attacks were brain malfunctions or heart problems. Dr.P read my “story”.

“It reads a bit like a paranormal novel!” I said.

Dr.P looked serious.

“Now give me the symptoms without all the poetry!”

Do you realise how impossible it is for me to avoid making it sound as if I am crazy. We laughed while I tried to describe in detail what I had experienced.

“Well” he said “we will have several tests done, but I don’t think its epilepsy and if all else fails, we will send in the ghost busters!”

As I was leaving I told him that I had written a book about my experiences with having a stroke and he said he would like to read it. I called it Ragdoll for Christmas.

“Please do send it to me”.

I was not sure if he was being polite, but I sent him a memory stick of Rag Doll for Christmas that he read with great interest. So the plot thickens ....

FIVE “It will be a shiner”

May and June are beautiful months in my cottage garden, with bluebells and apple blossom.

It is like a walk through a woodland glade. The sun was beginning to rise in the true East, and it was time to oil the teak picnic table and dust off the seats in the shed that had collected a weave of spiders’ webs over the winter.

I sat in the sunlight pouring through the sitting room window, drifting into a reverie when suddenly a man coughed behind me and a whole lot of dust, smoke and cinders shot past me. Alarmed I sat bolt upright, but there was nothing there. Although I was still taking medication designed to stop these events happening, it seemed to have little effect. I told it to go away!

My youngest son in Australia was going to visit with his family early July and I was trying to get the garden nice for their visit. Once again, walking into the kitchen I could feel my head being gripped by the humming and loss of vision associated with passing out. I tried to control it, hoping to get to a chair before I fell. I woke to find myself lying on the floor in a pool of blood. This time I was wearing my Care Line button so I pressed it and the woman on the other end of the line summoned an ambulance and phoned my neighbour to let the medics in the front door.

“Stay where you are and don’t attempt to get up” she warned. Not that I can get up anyway once I am on the floor! This is ridiculous!

My neighbour arrived almost the same time as the ambulance and tried to sit me up.

“No, leave me where I am” I shouted.

Once again a couple of cheery men bounced through the front door and lifted me gently into a sitting position after judging that I had not done any serious damage by falling on the floor.

“What medication are you taking?” I tried to remember them all but could only recall Warfarin.

“Oh! We were going to patch you up here. You have a nasty gash over your eye, but you will have to go to hospital now to check you out and have some antibiotics. We can’t treat you when you are taking Warfarin”.

I was expecting my son in a few days time and did not want to be in hospital when he arrived.

“Oh no, you will only be kept overnight!” they said confidently.

I was strapped into the ambulance stretcher, and noticed a little crowd of onlookers had gathered outside one of the terrace cottages. My neighbour was flapping around like a distressed mother hen, promising to visit to see how I was getting on. In no time at all I was transported to hospital with the medics taking heart readings, blood pressure, and putting a catheter into my arm ready for blood tests and injections. An oxygen mask was put over my face and I leaned back and relaxed into the procedure. I was an old hand.

The curtains in the emergency unit were made from blue recycled paper and made a far neater partition than the old cotton ones. In fact the whole place appeared to have had a makeover since last time I was admitted. The cubicles were made into small rooms with the nurse in charge like a queen bee in the centre. I was given a thorough check and my wound sealed with special glue, and then sent up to the ward where I was to spend the night and most of the next day.

I was used to the hospital routine with continual checks, blood pressure readings, oxygen levels and blood tests. I tried to explain what had happened, but since most of the nurses were dealing with mentally disturbed old people anyway, I suppose I counted as just another poor old thing. Dr.W came into my room and asked if he had met me before.

“Yes on the Stroke ward about eighteen months ago!” He rushed over and sat on my bed and held my hand reassuringly.

“It sounds like a heart problem” he said. “A Pacemaker will deal with that”.

I caught sight of Dr.P through the ward window chatting up one of the entourage that followed him around. He was describing the beautiful symmetry of chemical equations.

Hanging on his every word, she gazed into his eyes and twirled her hair with her palm facing outwards, a classic come on sign, so it was no surprise to hear him ask her what time she came off duty!

I was dismayed when the male nurse came to give me breakfast and said “You have the makings of a real shiner there!”

My eye had swollen considerably and was really painful, but the bruise was slowly spreading down onto my cheek. What was my son going to make of it, and how was I going to cover it up? I think I may have a pan stick at home somewhere that covers up blemishes.

But this was only the beginning of a much more serious episode and a complete change in lifestyle so sudden that I hardly had time to take a breath and take it all in.

SIX “You are seriously ill”

My son had decided to spend a week in Dorset visiting me and his sister, bringing his wife and children with him. They would stay with my daughter and spend time with me. The weather was perfect and we picnicked in the garden, enjoying the ambience of a summer day. One of my older grand daughters and her boyfriend joined us and we were all having a great time when a friend arrived to ask if I was coming to the embroidery club I belong to. I had forgotten about it, but my son said they were going into town anyway so why not go along and they would see me later.

I was climbing the narrow cottage stairs and had got three quarters of the way up when I started to get passing out sensations. No, not now, I must try to control it. I thought that if possible I must sit down on the stairs. I blacked out, and then I heard people calling my name. I tried to focus on them but it was like looking up through deep water. I could see syllables floating in the water but could not piece them together. I heard myself making weird noises, and realised I was lying on the sitting room carpet with my feet up on the stairs. My back and neck were very painful. Someone was calling for an ambulance, while my grand daughter’s boyfriend put his hands on my head in a healing gesture. My little grand children were asking questions and were told to go and play in the garden. My friend had gone and later she told me that I had fallen backwards down the stairs. My son said I was convulsing, and he was obviously very worried and scared by the whole experience.

Once more the medics arrived and blocked the road with the ambulance. This time I was strapped onto a crash pad, and a neck brace and head stabiliser put on in case I had broken my back or neck. Unfortunately the straps were the wrong size so that every time we went around a bend I slid all over the place on the board. The same procedure of ECG, oxygen mask, insertion of catheter for blood tests and drip, identity bracelet and tests for possible brain damage were carried out. My son sat beside me holding my hand while I moaned in pain and shock.

I was once more in the Emergency Ward and the usual procedures were done by the book.

Then I was taken still strapped up to have an X-ray of my back. A plate was put behind my body and I was asked to open my mouth as wide as I could so that the top of my backbone could be made visible on the X-ray. All the time I could hear myself groaning in pain. I was then moved to a cubicle on a cardiac ward where my son was pacing the corridor and demanding answers to questions.

“You are seriously ill. Why has nothing been done about it sooner? You have been ill since February. What has your G.P. done about it?”

My son continued to demand answers in a loud voice until Dr.W appeared and asked me if it was alright if he discussed my case with him. I agreed and the heated exchange continued with my son saying that having a group of consultants looking at my case was all very well, but that someone had to take the responsibility of doing something about it. He said he would tear a strip off my G.P who should be co-ordinating my case instead of just leaving it to the hospital doctors to take action.

Dr. W defended himself by saying what happened next was really up to the patient.

“Your mother has to decide where she wants to go!”

I felt he was not getting to the point and was talking about where I decided to go after I was discharged.

“It is not safe for her in her cottage, but what are you doing about her passing out attacks?”

Dr.W looked at a loss. It obviously was not in his power to make any major decisions that involved costs and surgical time. The head consultants had to meet to make critical decisions of who lived and died and after all I was almost eighty. Although I had recovered well from a severe stroke eighteen months before, I was obviously suffering from a critical illness. No one really knew what was causing it.

“Of course we all want the best for our mothers and I understand your concern” he said.

My son went away feeling frustrated and went to see my G.P. He insisted that he take action, co-ordinate procedure and made sure action was taken. This was the beginning of another long hospital stay and life changing decisions that were so drastic it was like being whirled up in a tornado and plonked on another planet.

SEVEN Broken ribs

My son and his family were returning home the following day and they all came to see me in hospital. I had been moved up to a cardiac ward where various women suffering from dizzy spells had been placed. Some were waiting for heart operations. Most were aged and deaf.

Conversation was impossible.

“You have two broken ribs” my son confided.

I was still very bruised and my chest felt as if it had a flaming sword stuck in it, just below my throat. My black eye had developed into varying shades of orange and purple. It was not a pretty sight. I had been taken off my medication because it had not yet been recommended by the hospital doctors and my support socks had been removed. I felt decidedly very unwell.

“You cannot go back to live in your cottage. It is too dangerous” my son said. The cottage is not dangerous. It’s just that I keep passing out. Once that is fixed it will be okay.

After a quick farewell the family left. They were here for such a short time. My heart breaks every time I have to say goodbye. So many families are split up around the world, it seems so unfair.

Soon the Nigerian nurse came to get me out of bed.

“Sit up” she demanded. I could not.

“There is nothing to hold on to”, I replied. The side railing had not been lifted up so that I could hold onto it.

“Sit up”.

“I can’t”, “Sit up”.

This went on for a while and then in frustration she swung my legs out of bed. A terrible searing pain shot through my chest and I screamed a horrible gurgling sound like a dog being run over. A gaggle of doctors peered down at me. One of them pressed down on my sternum and I let out a yelp. He looked very concerned but did not say anything. One of his contingent said that the x-ray had shown two broken ribs. He moved on to another patient.

Dr. W came to tell me I had been taken off Warfarin for a while and would be put on something else. It sounded like a good sign. Perhaps they were going to do something at last.

The usual hospital routines clicked into place with bedpans, heart monitors, oxygen masks, measurements for this and that. The Nigerian nurses were brutal, and had no empathy at all. They did not understand that my left shoulder needed support when I got in or out of bed and they resolutely refused to put up the sides of the bed so that I could hold onto the railings to drag myself up. It took a long while for them to realise that I had a weak left side from my stroke. I tried to explain that my “dizzy spells” were more serious than that and that I lost consciousness.

“Well you haven’t had one here”.

“I can’t have them to order. They are random events”.

“We can’t keep you here on the off chance that you might have an event. You will have to go home and release the bed for more urgent cases”.

I felt abandoned.

EIGHT Where is everyone?

The ward was not so much the inner pod of a space ship as a page out of a nihilist novel.

Women with varying degrees of mental ability and hearing loss snored or moaned in their sleep. The woman opposite farted with enormous exhalations, her stomach in constant battle with the elements. I was reminded of the grotesque creature in Star Wars, fat and belching, with the Princess tethered to him while he ate struggling little animals. This woman stuffed her body with fizzy drinks and cream cakes brought in by doting relatives.

Next to her was a poor woman who was obviously very mentally handicapped but whose family could not see it. She was terrified of them when they came to visit and refused to go to bed at night, backing away slowly, defying all entreaties to do so. It seemed that her only mode of mobility was to walk slowly backwards. She resisted any attempts to walk forwards or to wear her very stylish lingerie. As soon as she was forcibly dressed, she took off the clothes and stood almost naked, walking backwards to goodness knows where.

The nurses tried to manhandle her into bed, by standing behind her and urging her forward.

They closed the curtains around her bed in the hope that she could not escape, but incredibly she found a chink and once more proceeded backwards into the corridor. She was discovered still walking backwards outside the ward.

She was unable to talk and had soiled herself, making terrible gestures of distress. No one knew or seemed to care what she was trying to say, and walked around her while she tried to get rid of her soiled pants. Eventually someone gathered she needed to go to the toilet by the terrible smell. She was persuaded to sit on a commode, and change her clothing, but she was soon trying to take off her clothing and walk backwards away from the ward.

Her husband and daughter came and remonstrated with the doctors that she was a lot sicker than when she had first come into the ward. Their treatment of her was not working.

It was politely suggested that perhaps a cardiac ward was not a suitable place for the sort of illness she was displaying. The family did not accept the obvious diagnosis that everyone else could see but agreed that she would be better off somewhere else.

One or two of the nurses sweetly appealed to her to get into bed, peering at her to make eye contact, making reassuring noises and telling her how well she was doing, to no avail.

She was determined to walk backwards away from her bed. I suggested they turned her around to face the other way. My voice was lost in the cacophony of bleeps and digital noises from the high tech equipment and electric air beds surrounding every patient on the ward. I gave up bothering. I had my own problems to deal with.

Some time in the night I heard a man shouting in the corridor.

“Where am I? Why don’t you answer me? Where is everyone? Am I alone in here? Talk to me”.

The night nurse refused to engage with him and continued to work on her computer.

“What sort of place is this? Am I a prisoner? That’s it, isn’t it? Where is everybody?”

“They are all in bed asleep”.

“But where are they? I can’t see anyone”.

“No! They are all asleep. You should be too”.

His voice became more and more strident. He was panicking.

“Where is everyone? Why is no one here? Look at me”.

I got up and went out to the toilet to find a little old man sitting up in his bed drawn up beside the nurse’s station.

“Will it be all right if I talk to him?” I asked.

“Yes, go ahead”.

He looked up at me mischievously. “You have woken me up!” I said.

“Yes I wanted to. Where is everyone?”

“Everyone is in bed asleep and you have woken me up!”

He demanded to be shown, and was told that the night staff would be handing over to the morning staff and breakfast would follow soon. He seemed pacified.

The following day was the beginning of another adventure in the saga of the Ragdoll, even more dreamlike than before. I felt like Dorothy in Over the Rainbow caught up in a tornado, or some kind of machine with cogs and wheels that turns everything in the known world upside down and rearranges it facing in another direction to see what the victim can do with it. It was more like a Comedy of Errors than a Carry On skit. I tried to see the humour in it, but all I could see was tragedy. All the poetry had gone.

NINE “What are you doing here?”

The Nigerian nurses had finally realised that I needed help getting out of bed but were reluctant to physically assist me. It was something to do with new regulations about handling patients. However disabled they were, nurses were not allowed to use the old methods of lifting or “fireman’s” arm holds, where the patient uses the nurse’s upper arm as a lever to pull themselves up. I required someone at my back to hold my left shoulder steady while I pulled on the bed rail, and failing that, use a willing nurse to give me a “fireman’s” hold. I discovered that if I crossed my left arm in front of me it would stop my sternum from moving too much.

No one quite knew what to do with me. I did not fit in with the usual heart problems, or with the women with dizzy spells. Besides which I had broken bones, and had no obvious symptoms of passing out.

“You can’t stay here while others need your bed!” I have nowhere else to go!

“You have not passed out since you have been here!” Shall I fake a turn then?

“I thought you said you had these events regularly, at least once a week!” Is it me, or is it them?

I tried to explain the events were real and that they were not dizzy spells. I lost consciousness and fitted. They were random and could not be summoned to order. I was not making it up. If so, how could my black eye and my broken bones be explained.

It was decided that I be sent to Yetman Intermediate Care in Sherborne while a bed was found for me in Maiden Castle House Rehab unit. I was strapped into an ambulance wheelchair, and whisked down winding country lanes in an old ambulance. Under ordinary circumstances the picturesque countryside would have been a delight, but every bump and bend in the road was an agony. There was almost no springing in the suspension of the vehicle so that it felt more like being transported in an old tumbrel than by an ambulance. I was greatly relieved when we arrived at a gabled stone building set into the hillside.

My hospital notes were handed over to the staff as I was wheeled into my ward where my case was dumped on the bed for me to unpack. What a welcome! Don’t they realise what a struggle everything is? I want to be cuddled and told everything is okay. Where was the humour in this?

After the shock of being sent to yet another institution, I was aware that there were five other women sharing my ward, in varying states of mental awareness. There appeared to be

one doctor who sat at the reception desk and chatted animatedly to the staff. It was more like a country hotel than an intermediate hospital. There must have been other wards since there was an occasional male wandering the corridor, but I did not find evidence of it.

There appeared to be something going on with the staff who, it turned out, were having their work assessed. Judging by ”she said” and “he said” complaints, patients needs were the last thing on their minds. Most of the nurses were even less anxious to help disabled patients and the poor woman opposite was supposed to be able to get herself out of bed unaided and find her way to the toilet. She was 97 and could just about stand up.

Once again I found it difficult to make anyone understand that I needed assistance to get in and out of bed. Begrudgingly two nurses were persuaded to hold my shoulder steady while I took hold of a nurse’s upper arm as a lever. One nurse aid accused me of bruising her arm.

“Oh dear, poor you!”

“Well you have bruised me grabbing hold like that!”

“I am covered in bruises. Have you ever fallen down stairs?”

“No!” “Well I have and it is much worse. Then you would really have something to complain about!”

I heard her recounting the story to other people in the corridor and each telling of it got more and more lurid as time went on. I was approached by the staff nurse who explained that there was a new policy for patient handling and that they were not allowed to have physical contact. However after searingly painful episodes when my unhealed chest bones grated against each other, they relented.

The other women in the ward were impossible to communicate with. At the far end near the window was a woman who smiled inanely at me and said “Nice day”. It was her entire vocabulary. She had come from Bridport hospital where she had been recovering well, but now was refusing to get up. Even though a physiotherapist came to treat her, she still would not move. Much to the staff nurse’s annoyance, she would rather soil herself than be persuaded to leave the security of her bed.

The lady next to me was seriously ill, having had a cancer operation that had become infected. She wore a colostomy bag that had to be emptied regularly. She was very adept at doing it herself and at changing the bag when it overflowed. There was a minor crisis when It became apparent that Yetman stores did not stock the right type of bag, and a special order had to be sent to the hospital. As it was the weekend, when there was a skeleton staff, they had to make do with an inadequate alternative until someone could be spared to

make the trip into Dorchester. Inevitably the bag either split open or overflowed. The accompanying stink was repulsive.

This lady was fairly articulate though somewhat deaf, so we were able to have some sort of conversation. She was very pleased to discover we were both going to the Maiden Castle Rehab, and she hoped I would be in a room close to hers. Her elderly husband would have preferred her to come home so that he could look after her, but it was thought he was too frail to manage if she fell over. It appeared that she would be stopping in the Unit for respite care rather than for rehabilitation.

I had not had a shower since coming into hospital. There was a shower room and toilet attached to our ward, and another smaller one down the corridor. One of the nurses said I could use the one in the Hospice suite where she would help me wash my hair. This was a very luxurious and well fitted suite of rooms with accommodation for family members and doors opening out onto a terrace. A sweep of lawns ending in a copse of willow trees dipped down to a seating area under the drooping branches of the trees. It was an incredibly peaceful place in which to end one’s life. I decided that I would explore the gardens at the earliest opportunity.

Sitting in my ward one day, who should rush past me to fetch a spare chair but Dr.P. “What are you doing here?” he asked with surprise. “Is it to do with...?” I nodded.

Catching sight of my black eye he looked very concerned. “Haven’t they done anything about it yet?”

“No, they don’t know what’s causing it!”

I told him the sad story of me falling backwards down my cottage stairs.

“Who is dealing with it?”

I listed the consultants who were continually discussing treatments and contradicting each other in the process.

“Leave it with me! It sounds as if you have everyone who matters looking at your case.

Perhaps we had better not interfere. Oh, I have read part of your story. Are you going to have it published? I think you should!” Dr.P. pressed my hand and left.

TEN “She won’t take her feet off the bed”

My family and various friends visited every day. The pastor at my church came several times, with great empathy and concern. The congregation was praying for my recovery he said. I felt disembodied especially as the hospital staff were waiting for me to have a “turn” so that they could record exactly what went on. It was some days before it occurred and everyone was in a panic wondering what to do about it.

“Lie her flat!”

“No, sit her up in recovery position!”

“She can’t breathe!”

“Give her oxygen!”

My body shook and I was unable to speak, the syllables floating in the deep water that was covering my head. I tried to tell them not to touch me and the spell would end on its own.

Don’t lie me down, it will hurt my chest. Leave me alone! Oh, just leave me be!

My chest hurt and my breath was coming in short bursts. I was having palpitations, and losing consciousness. If I can control it, perhaps I will not pass out completely.

The ward doctor came rushing in.

“You probably have never been asked this question before, but if you have a massive heart attack, do you want to be resuscitated?”

I looked at him in alarm. Was this in fact a likelihood? Was it an immediate possibility?

“No, I don’t think I would want to be brought back again!”

He looked satisfied and left. What did he know that everyone else seemed unable to identify? Were my attacks heart related? It would take several more weeks before the conclusion was reached.

The paved garden was reached through French doors in the community lounge that was filled with various designs of reclining chairs facing a television set. A long dining table surrounded with uncomfortable plastic chairs blocked the doors and a short flight of stairs was squashed between the table and a bookcase at the far end of the table. In spite of the

beauty of the garden, no apparent attempt had been made to encourage inmates into the fresh air.

A bed of lavender and one or two forlorn bumblebees beckoned me. In spite of the fact that I was liable to pass out, no one was assigned to accompany me into the garden. I had told the nurse at the desk and that was enough. July this year was hot and tranquil, and I sat under a bower of roses and honeysuckle, watching ants carrying important parcels to and from unseen holes in the paving. I gloried in the healing warmth of the sun and decided to explore the grassed area opposite the Hospice. I was discovered by my daughter and grandson, bearing gifts of chocolate and cake, sitting on the wood benches beneath the weeping willows. The breeze moved the trailing branches like long tresses of hair, making whispering sounds like the soft caresses of a lover. The peace was overwhelming.

Returning to the ward, I told the other women about the paved garden and that they should try to get someone to take them out there. My legs were very swollen so because I had no stool I sat in my chair and put my feet up on the bed. It was a struggle, but once my feet were up on the bed I could not lift my left leg to get down again. That is, not without damaging my chest.

A couple of large blonde women dressed in white uniforms came into the ward, stridently issuing orders left, right and centre. One of them saw me with my feet on the bed.

“Take your shoes off the bed! You would not do that at home!” Actually, yes, I would.

“Take your feet down!” she shouted. I would if I could.

“Can’t you hear me? Take your feet off the bed!” she came menacingly at me.

“She refuses to take her feet off the bed. Write that down in the report!”

The woman came over and took hold of my feet and thumped them down on the floor with such force that my chest bones grated and I let out a howl of anguish. She tried to comfort me.

“Don’t touch me. Leave me alone!” I yelled. Go away! She went.

A few days later I was told that the woman in the bed next to me was going to Maiden Castle Rehab and I was to follow a couple of days later. Oh joy!

ELEVEN “I want to get to know you better!”

Once again I was whirled down the country lanes from Sherborne to Dorchester, in a hospital car. I held on to my chest in a feverish attempt to stop the bones grating together, longing for the journey to end. One of the carers at the Maiden Castle Rehab unit whom I had known before was there to greet me.

“How lovely to see you again! Here let me take your things!”

She took my case and the green plastic bag containing my hospital notes and escorted me to my room. I felt truly welcome and several of the other women and male Occupational Therapists dropped by to say “hello”. It was like coming home. It seemed there had been quite a lot of changes since I was last in the place, and many of the old staff had been upgraded. A rugged man designated as a Social Support Officer was assigned to me, to help me adjust and encourage me to rehabilitate ready to return home. He had a number of other patients, but appeared to concentrate his time in my direction.

“I want to get to know you better!” M. said almost to himself. I thought it sounded as if he was making a pass. What kind of “come on” is this? I am old enough to be his mother!

Looking at me through half closed eyes he said “What can I say about you?” Well what do you want to say?

“You are a truly amazing lady, charming and courageous!” I looked at him amazed. What sort of chat up line was this?

We found we had a lot to talk about and share with each other. He said he was a Preacher in the Methodist church but was working in the care home as part of his social calling with old people. As time went on and with apparently careful grooming on his part, we became very close on an intellectual level as well as a spiritual level. He seemed to want me to be part of his “family”, always referring to his lovely wife whom he adored.

“She is a cook! I’d really like it if you meet her. I think she would like you and perhaps you could go shopping together!” He seemed to have some hidden agenda.

“I have to take you for a walk” he said, escorting me out of the building and down the path to the main road.

We talked all the way, stopping occasionally for a rest. Standing by a hedge and picking pieces off it, we discussed various Bible references. Suddenly he linked his two little fingers together, implying that we had “clicked”.

“Together for the rest of our lives. Would that make you happy?”

“Yes, it would!”

For some unfathomable reason I felt safe and warmly protected with this simple and sincere man by my side.

“Here, can I take your hand?” he said, reaching out for my hand as we walked back to the care home.

One of the men at my dinner table had said that this fellow was really taken with me.

“You are very attractive to men” he said “And you know it!”

“No, I don’t know it. It seems incredible to me!” I had never known it, believing I was very unattractive and in any case I would not recognise it even if it was true. I remembered being told a long while ago that I could have any man I wanted. It seemed a ridiculous fantasy.

“He would do anything for you, and so would I”.

It sounded more like the ravings of an old man. I will need to be very careful then that I don’t unwittingly encourage this person so that people get hurt.

My eldest son visited and M. and he immediately found they had a lot in common, debating salient points of the preacher’s role. It was almost as if M. was part of my family. He was my third son! My son was about to return to New Zealand having packed up my cottage in huge boxes ready to take to my new apartment when I found one that was suitable. I was taken back to the cottage by two Occupational Therapists to see if it was suitable for me to go home, and had to climb the stairs and accept their advice and equipment. I knew I would not be returning to the cottage but it ticked the boxes for them and they were happy to have done their job.

My daughter visited often and I introduced M. to her. “He is my third son” I said. They laughed together, pleased at the closeness. She thanked him for looking after me.

I was encouraged to help with the washing up and setting the tables. I was expected to make my bed and tidy my room. M. was always by my side giving encouragement, and I started to notice he said the same leading phrases to other women. One day I heard him say “I have been dreaming about you!” to a new lady at our table.

“Where did that come from?” she said, looking at him suspiciously.

He looked in my direction to see if I had noticed. It appeared that he thought he was being attentive and supportive, when it was a big “lead on” and part of a game he was playing.

With careful play acting he had every woman in his hands, and when he brought his keyboard out to play for a woman’s birthday, everyone was at his feet. He had been an entertainer since he was a boy. “Music is my life!” he said.

With all the activity I started to have passing out sensations. M. rushed to my side, knelt at my feet and held my hands until the shaking passed. The District Nurse said “M is here!”, as if she knew his vital energy was important to me. He was always careful to observe the protocol that there was to be no physical contact, though I sensed he wanted to hold me close.

“When you are discharged and I visit you, that will be a whole new ball game!” he said. “For the rest of our lives! I’m convinced of it. And if God is in it, and I believe He is, nothing will get in the way!”

Something unusual and very special was happening at a very deep level that only occurs once in a lifetime. It was worth staying alive for.

TWELVE “You can’t stay here!”

The well dressed lady from Social Services visited with the usual letter written on County Council paper, that I was able to stay in the Rehab unit free of charge for six weeks. After that I would be charged the full rate and my means would be assessed for any rebate due.

My son and daughter took me out to view a new luxury apartment building for people over sixty they had found in a purpose built village just up the road from my cottage. At the same time a man from the West Country had viewed my cottage, fallen in love with it and could not wait to get into it. He offered two thousand pounds less than the asking price and was accepted. He was a cash buyer, so there was no chain to get in the way. Everything was falling into place again.

Staff were anxious to discover if contracts had been signed yet, and if I had found somewhere to live.

“You can’t stay here indefinitely. It is not a bed and breakfast establishment. We are not responsible for you if you are homeless!” the rather officious woman said.

“I am not homeless, I still own my cottage. Contracts have not been signed yet!”

Meanwhile I was told that every time I felt an “event” coming on I was to call for help. They seemed to happen fairly regularly and M. was always there to help me through it. My legs had swollen so much that they were beginning to weep and red blotches were showing up on my skin. My stomach had swollen to such an extent that I looked pregnant. It was as stiff as a drum. My G.P was called in to look at me, blood pressure checks were made and oxygen levels noted.

I was weighed and was astounded to find I was eleven stone instead of the normal ten stone I had been before coming into hospital. It was discovered that I should have been wearing full length support hose since the middle of July, with a change of hose every day. It was not recommended that I have an increase in diuretics as that would create too much pressure on my kidneys and I could become dehydrated. However, it was obvious water retention was severe. An appointment was made with a cardiac consultant I had not seen before. Dr. P said he was the head honcho so “better not interfere”. Another very important neurologist was also called in to discover if my symptoms were brain dysfunction. All systems were “go”!

The lady I had been in Yetman Intermediate with had been delighted that I came to Maiden Castle Rehab and we spent some interesting social times together until she became very ill and had to return to hospital. I do not know whether she survived. Most of the other inmates were deaf and difficult to talk to. Three women spent most of the time watching soap operas on television. I had little in common with them and spent most of my time in my room, listening to my radio, or reading a book. The patients came and went, until in the latter part of my stay there was a contingent of people from Charminster where I used to live. With loud Dorsetshire accents, they dominated any conversation and talked mostly about their aches and pains.

One lady sitting at my table had very poor eyesight and M. took her under his wing, helping to write letters for her and doing things to cheer her up. She could be heard talking to her daughter on the phone telling her of M’s charms. Her daughter said that she could not take him home with her! I think she was as enamoured as the rest of us. M. did his job very well, making old ladies happy!

The husband of a lady I knew from the Women’s Institute had apparently broken his hip in a fall, but curiously could not remember doing so. He claimed it did not hurt and did not understand why he was being detained. He was most anxious to return home, but was told that his wife was not strong enough to look after him. He suffered from short term memory loss and found it difficult to understand what sort of place he was living in. On one or two nights he slept in a chair in the community lounge because he could not remember where his room was.

When I was last in Maiden Castle Rehab I had suggested that a table be set up so that patients could do jigsaw puzzles. I was very pleased to find that it was still there, and proceeded to assemble a puzzle. Soon lots of people were contributing, especially the night staff. It provided a welcome change from my room, and M. came to chat whenever he had a spare moment.

I was also pleased to find that the hairdresser was still operating her salon just down the corridor from my room. She always made my hair look attractive, so I began to feel more like my old self. Incredibly the staff were now anxious that I did not exert myself too much and encouraged M. to spend more time with me. They could see that there was a special chemistry between us, and we enjoyed each other’s company. I felt cosseted and cared for.

“We are good for each other!” he told his wife, and wanted us to meet when she came into Dorchester to shop. She resolutely sat in their car and would not venture into the building, even though he had said that she was coming to meet us all. I guessed she was probably overwhelmed at the prospect of meeting all his patients.

M. went on holiday with his wife to Bulgaria. He had come home from work and she had booked a cheap last minute flight, saying she was fed up and needed a change of scene. I

was surprised to find how much I missed him, and that he was annoyingly in my head.

Meanwhile my daughter was arranging a wonderful 80th birthday party for me. My eldest son originally had come to England from New Zealand for the event and had planned it for two years, little realising that I would be in hospital or that he would be required to pack up my cottage. I bought a lovely summer outfit for the party, and was excited by the extraordinary way events were being shaped around me.

THIRTEEN “You have a short circuit!”

My son, daughter and her partner had worked incredibly hard to make a wonderfully memorable day for my 80th birthday. All my reminiscences and writings had been gone through, old photographs enlarged and my paintings put on display. Friends from far and wide had been invited, and my cousin and his family and grandchildren were there. My son was delighted to discover such beautiful people were part of his extended family and their spiritual values were the same. He became very emotional about it all, and the realisation that he was so far away on the other side of the world, in a completely different culture.

My daughter had decorated the house with balloons, flowers and candles, and provided a marvellous buffet of my favourite foods. People brought cards and presents and an abundance of orchid plants. I had always wanted an orchid plant but here were at least five beautiful varieties. I was overwhelmed with the amount of love being showered. My son in Australia broadcast on SKYPE and was on the computer screen for the whole of the party, taking part as if he was there with us.

I was having to be careful not to move too quickly. I felt decidedly silly having to rest every few steps. Going to the bathroom up stairs was a major enterprise, and holding onto the banister rail coming down the stairs sideways equally hazardous. I was also very conscious of my distended stomach and lank, flattened hair. Photographs show a bloated old lady with a crooked smile and a walking stick. Looking at the photos of me just a year ago, I hardly recognised myself.

My daughter had taken a selection of photographs of my cottage, and together with photos of my life from when I was six months old to now and the ones of the party, made up a cameo snapshot of 80 years. They were put together on a digital screen by my son, for me to share and add to.

I left most of the presents with my daughter but I took back a selection of the cards and the sugar flower from the cake to the care home. There was no room for all the wonderful flowers that my daughter had provided, but I did bring back the orchids that gave a touch of luxury to my room.

Arriving late at night I was greeted at the door by the night staff anxious to lock up. I tumbled into bed, totally exhausted but happy.

Friends came to visit, and a neighbour who always seemed to come just as I had left or was at a doctor’s appointment finally caught up with me and left a huge block of chocolate.

There was a lot of whispering in the corridor.

“He’s back and he wants it to be a surprise!”

I had a feeling it might be for my benefit.

“Guess who it is!”

M. stood there beaming, looking gorgeously tanned!

“You are beautiful!” I said.

“Gizzakiss!” he came over and kissed me on the lips. “Missed me?”

“Yes!” He told me all about the holiday and how wonderful it had been lying in the warm water next to his lovely wife. I felt warmed by his devotion to her after thirteen years of marriage.

She was a very lucky woman, though he was quick to say that she looked after him very well.

I shared with him the digital photos that my daughter had taken and he was duly impressed especially with the old photos of me when I was younger.

“You must have been a sweetheart!” All I remember is feeling very inadequate and lacking confidence. Like a lot of young people nowadays, I did not like my body. I felt ugly. I feel even uglier now.

“I have an appointment with Dr.E. who is a heart specialist!”

M. looked concerned and held my hand and kissed it.

“I will be here for you, you know that!”

I believed him.

A hospital car was arranged for me to take me to the appointment. Dr.E looked at me over the copious notes from my previous stays in hospital over two years. How he found what he was looking for I don’t know.

“We have been talking together about what the best procedure might be!”

“Yes, that has been ongoing ever since I had my two strokes. No one seemed to know how to make a diagnosis. I have always maintained that if you got my heart stabilised then everything else would be got under control!”

“You have a short circuit! We think that a biventricular implantable cardioverter defibrillator might be the answer. Of course we cannot guarantee that you wont have passing out

events, but at least it will get your heart working properly. Do you agree to the procedure taking place?”

“Yes!” “Good, Dr.P will be very pleased. It is a very high tech. piece of equipment, very costly and you are probably one of a very few people who will be fitted with it. A box will be placed in your chest under the skin with a battery in it, and wires connected to the electrical nodes in the ventricles of your heart to regulate the beat and blood flow. There will be three wires and the operation is very tricky. I will make an appointment with our nurse who will explain it all more fully. You will be monitored for the rest of your life wherever you are.” That all sounds reassuring. Big Brother here I come!

FOURTEEN Space age technology

The Arrythmia Nurse Specialist smiled warmly at me.

“I am sure I have seen you somewhere before!” she said.

We went through all the likely places and thought that it might have been in a past life.

After taking down the usual details, she showed me the replica of the inside of a normal heart.

“But unfortunately your heart does not work normally!” Tell me something I don’t know!

“You have an abnormal heart rhythm due to an electrical problem that causes your heart to beat too fast and leads to your heart not being able to pump blood around your body. The CRT ICD will make your heart beat in synchronisation, and the electrical signals will make the left ventricle beat at the same time as the right”. I have said from the beginning that if they got my heart under control, I would be alright.

“You also have what is known as ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation. There is evidence of heart enlargement and bleeding!” it’s a wonder I am still alive.

“The passing out is most likely caused by your heart beating too fast. The procedure takes anything up to four hours and is not without risk. The first wire is fed through the vein to the bottom chamber of your heart to the right ventricle. The second lead will be placed in the coronary sinus vein, from the inside of your heart. The third lead will be placed into the top chamber of your heart, the right atrium.”

She showed me the size of the box that was going to be inserted under my skin and pushed into a pouch under the muscle just beneath my collar bone. The wires were covered in plastic and were about the size of a Biro refill. They had hooks on the ends where they affixed to the nodes. She described how the procedure would be done under local anaesthetic but that I would be sedated during the most exacting manipulation. The ICD would be tested by stopping my heart to see if the electrical impulse would start it up again.

“Do you want to ask me any questions?” I am still digesting what you have told me!

“We will make an appointment for the procedure to take place and I will see you in theatre.”

My son came in to say goodbye. It was always a sad time because it was impossible to say when I would see him again. We hugged each other and wept. All these partings had broken my heart. I had always had to be strong for my family, but now I had no more to give, who was going to be strong for me?

A week before I was due to have the procedure done M. and I went through the list of things I needed in preparation for the operation. There were instructions about when I should stop taking Warfarin and restricting water intake. I had to have a shower on the day of the operation and it was suggested that I bring a CD of music I liked that would be played in theatre to help me relax. M. lent me a Mozart recording from his collection.

“I would like to come down to theatre with you, but I can’t leave my position here. I will be here for you when you come back”.

M. took my hands and prayed with me kissing me tenderly as he left. I felt calm and relaxed, drifting into a meditative state to await the next instalment of the Ragdoll story.

FIFTEEN Inside mother ship

The Social Services lady wafted into the ward while we were eating dinner. She squatted beside my chair.

“You have already been here for longer than five weeks and five days, so you will have to pay for the extra two weeks you have been here. What I will do is start you up again on the six week cycle from when you go into hospital for your operation. That is the only way I can do it!” That sounds okay!

She gave me a form to sign that agreed with her decision to charge me for the extra two weeks.

“The amount you pay will be assessed based on your income! It’s all a matter of finance you know. I told the consultants that we could not keep you here indefinitely while they decided whether to operate or not. Did they want to be responsible for your death? Who was going to pay for your care?” Yes, I can see it was a difficult choice!

“So I am delighted that they have come to a definite conclusion, and that you can stay here for rehabilitation after your operation. Have you got anywhere to live yet? And by the way your Attendance Allowance has been stopped!” Bother!

The extra money for attendance was going to pay my rent, but I could not gather my thoughts around it all and lifted it all up to the Universe to sort out. Besides I needed all my emotional strength to deal with the immediate event that would, hopefully, cure my ill health.

On my day of admission I was not to have anything to eat for six hours before the procedure. I could drink some water two hours before and regular medication could be taken. However, Warfarin was stopped four days previously. I showered myself and washed my hair unaided for the first time since coming into Rehab.

I was transported to the hospital in a taxi, carrying an overnight bag, and reported to the Cardiology reception desk where the Day Ward team met me and escorted me to a large open room where a couple of beds were set up, surrounded by curtains. A bed was made available for me on a main ward and I was asked to change into a hospital gown.

It all seemed very leisurely. My grand daughter had chosen some new jazzy pyjamas for the event, and some fluffy leisure slippers in a shocking pink that looked like duck’s feet as I walked along. They would not stay on my feet!

I had my blood pressure taken and an electrocardiogram recorded to trace my pulse and heart rate. The skin around my chest where the defibrillator would be inserted was cleaned with an antiseptic fluid. A needle was put into a vein in my arm to give me an antibiotic injection. Before I signed the consent form, the nurse once again told me about the procedure and the risks and benefits of the operation.

I waited for a long while screened by the curtains around my cot. I could hear people talking and a breezy person came into the room saying “I have just had a session with your H-----!”

I pricked up my ears at the mention of Dr. P’s first name. This person was obviously talking to his wife. I tried to peer around the curtains to see who it was but to no avail.

“He is quite a dish. Tell him that if he is ever at a loose end, I am always available!”

“If he ever took advantage of the offer, I would kill him! And then I would kill you!”

They laughed and then discussed the ways that wives and husbands murdered their unfaithful spouses.

“Yes it is often the spouse who gets murdered isn’t it! Such a waste!”

I would have liked to see what Dr. P’s wife looked like. I heard that she was a Dorset lass and they had met in a London hospital.

I was escorted to a special X-ray room that looked like an operating theatre and was expected to climb up onto a very narrow trolley. I lay down trying to balance, carefully favouring my broken chest. Finally some extra “wings” were fitted onto the trolley to hold my arms securely. Above me was an array of lamps and screens, and I could hear the ticking and whirring of computer consoles.

A team of doctors, a Cardiac Physiologist, Radiographer, and a number of nurses including the Arrhythmia Nurse Specialist I had met before, introduced themselves. The doctor who was going to do the procedure was the same man who had done the cardio angiogram previously when I had a stroke. I remembered him as particularly non-empathetic. He was expressionless and without humour, but an expert in his field. I rather think there were several other people observing for teaching purposes but I was beyond caring.

The Mozart CD was gently playing in the background and I tried to relax on my perch.

My chest was cleaned again with lashings of iodine tincture, and sterile towels were draped over me. What appeared to be a Perspex sheeting was draped over my face so that I could not see what was going on. Two pads were placed either side of my chest in case, if my heart stopped beating, I needed an electric shock. A sedative was injected into my arm through the needle so that I would feel sleepy and a local anaesthetic was injected just under my collarbone. This felt as if I was being sliced in small pieces and it was extremely painful.

“This is the worst part! The part I do not like!” the doctor said as he proceeded to stick the needle along my collar bone.

It took a long while for the anaesthetic to work but finally he was able to make a small cut to create a pocket under the skin and muscle where the bivent ICD would be placed. All I could feel was the doctor pushing down on my chest as he manipulated the cigarette packet sized battery into place. I could hear various people talking in technical terms about my metabolism, and the rushing noise of the equipment.

“I am guiding the first lead into the right atrium!”

Technicians were talking to each other as the procedure was recorded on the X-ray equipment. In order to find the coronary vein a special dye was injected to show up on the X-ray.

“That seems to be attached nicely. I will stitch it into place”.

I was beginning to drift into semi-consciousness, not unlike that induced by morphine with the peculiar sensation of everything slipping downwards.

The third lead was guided successfully to the right ventricle and then the second lead was placed in the coronary sinus vein. This vein lies on the outside surface of the heart but the lead enters it from inside the heart. This was the trickiest part of the whole operation since the lead had to circle around the back of the heart in order to reach inside. It seemed to take a long while.

“I wont push it too much to guide it through!”

I could hear the Physiologist making technical suggestions as the doctor patiently allowed the lead to find the pathway through to the top chamber of my heart. I drifted into a deeper altered state of awareness. I do not know when they stopped my heart but the Physiologist was pleased with the result. I noticed that the Mozart CD had long since finished playing.

The leads were secured into position and the device placed in the pocket made earlier under my skin and muscle. Then the area was stitched up and a clear dressing put over the wound.

“That’s it then! All done!”

“Very satisfactory!”

I was wheeled up to the Day Ward for a short while before being taken up to the main ward.

It was expected I would stay over night and most of the following day.

I arrived in a semi-conscious state, still suffering the effects of the sedation. It was apparently dinner time, judging by the frantic activity and clinking of plates in the ward.

“Sit up and drink some water!” I could not even see the jug, let alone pour water out of it.

There was apparently a new regimen insisting that all patients drink pints of water at regular intervals.

“Sit up and drink some water!” I cannot move!

The nurse poured water into a glass, slopping it onto me. What happened to the gentle period of recovery after an operation? I thought I was supposed to remain in bed for at least a couple of hours depending on how sleepy I was. And believe me I was very sleepy.

A plate of food was put on the bed table and pushed up to my head. I tried to spoon some of it into my mouth but it tasted like cardboard. Someone had the brilliant idea of trying to raise the back of my bed, but all it did was bend my abdomen around my ribs.

“Drink some water!”

I collapsed back into semi-consciousness.

SIXTEEN “You cannot use your left arm”

I was taken down to the Cardiac Physiologist and given an Xray to make sure the leads were in the right place. He checked the bivent ICD, and looked at the settings on a monitor, making sure everything was working properly. I was given an option to have a bedside monitor at home that would be linked up to the hospital computer via my phone line. It could be operated anywhere in the world where there was a facility to do so. I said I was a Cyborg linked to a satellite! In fact the only thing keeping me alive was a battery implanted in my chest.

“You must be careful not to lift your left arm above shoulder level for at least one month.

This is because there is a small risk that the leads can move out of position or movement would cause bleeding or bruising!” I can’t lift my arm that high anyway!

Ever since my strokes I had not gained proper use of my left arm, not being able to lift it beyond shoulder height, in spite of physiotherapy. Now I had to devise a way of getting dressed that would not involve having to stretch my arm to get into or out of my garments.

I would not be able to wear a bra for a while, nor a vest that would take any kind of strain to get them on and off. I chose baggy blouses and button up pyjamas. Not being able to stretch down to put on my support stockings meant alerting carers to help me. They were not always pleased to do so, since it nearly always coincided with hand over times, or serving breakfast.

I was welcomed back into Rehab like a long lost family member. M was waiting to greet me and had been told to go through the do’s and don’ts of post-op. procedure. He sat on my bed while I recited them back to him. I showed him my bloody scar that had to be checked to make sure it was not oozing.

“I have to make an appointment with the District Nurse to have the stitches removed seven days from now!”

M. made sympathetic noises, and kissed my hands.

“The ICD will have to be checked regularly for life, and the first check will be four weeks from now!”

“You are no longer my patient, so I wont be able to see you so much, but I will make time to come and chat. I really enjoy your company. I like your intellect, your spirituality and your amazingly positive attitude. You make me feel happy!” M. beamed at me.

“You have a beautiful head. It’s symmetrical!” All inhibitions seemed to have faded with this man. “You are beautiful!” I said. “One day when I get to know you better I will paint your portrait!”

M. rushed into the bathroom to admire himself in the mirror, making me laugh.

“When you leave we will keep in touch!” M. looked deeply into my eyes.

“Yes!” We had exchanged phone numbers previously and he said his wife had put mine in his diary.

“She looks after me!” he said.

“I don’t know yet where I will be living, but as soon as I do, I will let you know! The phone number might have changed as well, but I will keep in touch!”

“Perhaps you could come and visit me and my wife?” M. looked wistful. “I am sure she would like you! She is coming to visit the unit tomorrow and you could meet then!”

“I look forward to it!”

M. had been chatting up some new ladies on my table while I was away, and causing a lot of laughter with double entendre’s with the woman who was nearly blind. He told them that his wife was coming to visit and they all looked forward to meeting this woman who M. showered with such devotion. He rushed to the window when she arrived in the car park and tried to encourage her to come in. She sat in the car refusing to move. I knew he wanted her to meet me.

“I will go out to see her. I think she will prefer it that way!” I said.

M. walked with me towards his car and his wife stepped out to meet me. I don’t know what I was expecting. I thought being a cook she would be warm and plump. Instead she was the opposite, smelling of cigarettes, with tired eyes and a lined sun scarred face, she spoke with a London accent. Her hair was squashed under some sort of bandeau. She livened up a bit as we chatted about all kinds of things.

M seemed delighted, “It is as if you are old friends” he said.

“I’ll walk Angela back to the unit!” M. took my arm.

“Alright love, I’ll see you later!” his wife climbed back into the safety of his car.

“Good, she seems to like you! That’s good!” M. seemed relieved. Apparently it was important that she did like me.

“Now we can go forward!” M. smiled down at me, pleased with the encounter.

The ladies at the table were puzzled as to why M’s wife had not come in to meet them.

“I think perhaps she was overwhelmed with the idea. Besides I think she had come to meet me because M. tells her such a lot about me! Because she seemed so reluctant I thought it best to go out and see her!�

The ladies seemed disgruntled, but did not say anything more.

SEVENTEEN A completely new lifestyle

My daughter made arrangements to rent the luxury apartment in the new block of flats for elderly residents that we had looked at before. The apartment was on the second floor facing West, catching the afternoon sun. A grove of tall beech and chestnut trees hugged the building and the glorious canopy swayed languidly in the summer breeze. My balcony hung like a ship’s deck over the tossing branches, where rooks and jackdaws conversed in long throaty voices. Incredibly the building had been empty for over a year, and only six other occupants had bought or rented their apartments.

The entrance hall to the building was like a high class hotel foyer, with luxurious carpets, marble floors and a tasteful hanging bronze sculpture of a curled leaf that spanned two levels. Long green striped curtains draped the entrance windows and kidney shaped black glass tables were placed between a couple of long black leather couches. Striped green and black velveteen covered bucket chairs completed the welcome hall. It was the sort of entrance you either hated or liked. I liked it.

“Come on Mum, we are going to IKEA to choose some furniture for your flat!”

I was still a bit dozey and shocked by my experiences, as I was whisked down highways and byways to Southampton to the huge furniture warehouse to choose modern furniture in place of the cottage stuff that no longer fitted my proposed lifestyle. I decided to keep the Sheraton style bedroom suite that I had brought with me from New Zealand fourteen years previously. I also kept the genuine Colonial four poster bed, but decided it was in need of a new mattress. I had lived in NZ for over thirty five years, emigrating there in 1960 with my ex-husband and two year old daughter. My daughter had written saying her children needed a grandmother and when my sons had their own mothers-in-law, I decided to return to Dorset. I never regretted it.

We spent all day deciding what I liked, what fitted the space available and discarding others.

At each bend in the winding paths through the displays, I saw something even better than the last. I finally chose a two seater couch in a black and white floral pattern, a beautiful brown bent wood leather covered chair, and a large wall unit, a glass door china cabinet, a large desk and a dining table and chairs all in white wood. It was all in “flat pack” and my daughter’s partner fitted it all in his works van. I also bought a couple of woollen throws and some picture frames for my own paintings that I knew would suit the flat. It was all remarkably cheap, and I was able to pay for it out of what was saved from my pension.

Both my daughter and her partner worked like Trojans putting it all together for when I was discharged from Rehab. The contracts had not yet been signed and completion had not taken place on my cottage, but it was expected any day now. I felt as if I was being whirled around in a tornado, and totally disoriented.

M. was interested in where I was finally ending up.

“I am not returning to my cottage. I had hoped that you would visit there!”

I put my hands on his shoulders, while he crossed his arms in front of him.

“You will visit me wont you?”

“Of course!”

We exchanged addresses, and promised to keep in touch.

A few days before I was discharged I was seen by the neurologist, and an electroencephalogram was carried out. A cap consisting of electrodes was fixed with glue to my scalp, and the readings recorded on a computer screen. I had to thoroughly relax and I tried to go into “Alpha”, a semi trance state. The whole event took about an hour during which time I was told to unclench my teeth so that my brain scan could be recorded properly.

M. was helping to serve our dinner the evening before I was due to leave. I felt very sad that I would not see him again for a long while. He made some funny remarks and sat on the floor and made out he was weeping uncontrollably. The ladies at the table wondered what he was making all that noise for and I said it was because I was leaving. They looked bewildered. I don’t remember what else he had said but I got up and said that it was unkind to lead people on only to dump them. It was not funny. I ran to my room feeling completely abandoned. We seemed to have formed a very deep relationship that was difficult to define. I felt that God had brought us together in a special way. Now it seemed M. was making light of it.

“Only doing my job! I love everyone!”

He followed me into my room and took my hands in his.

“I wanted to thank you for all the love and support you have given me” I said, close to tears.

“It has been truly wonderful getting to know you” he said. “I will miss you! You have been the longest resident in rehab ever and it was a privilege to be in your company! You will be long gone by the time I get to work tomorrow, so this is goodbye”.

He rushed off down the corridor on his way home. I watched him through my bedroom window and he turned and waved as he drove away. I felt desolate.

EIGHTEEN “Come home with us!”

The Occupational Therapists were suitably impressed with my new home. They were particularly pleased with the modern bathroom and shower unit with a non-slip wet room floor, flush with the marble tiles in the bathroom. The sitting room, facing the wall to ceiling windows, encompassed the magnificent view of mature trees and brought them into the room.

“Wow! I want one!” they said.

I asked them if M. would visit, and they said that he definitely would. It apparently was expected.

My family visited and one or two friends called in. There were huge boxes piled up in the bedroom and in the sitting room. My daughter came to unpack books and a few art objects.

I had been given a new phone number but I was dismayed to find that my mobile phone did not connect. I was not connected to the Internet either, so I felt very isolated. It was as if I had been plonked in a strange land and left.

I plucked up my courage to phone M. my heart beating wildly, wondering whether he would be pleased to hear from me. I thought I would tell him my new phone number so that he could ring me if he wanted to. His wife answered the phone.

“Hello!” she said roughly.

“Hi, this is Angela! Is M. available?”

“Oh, sorry! I thought you were a person selling windows. No, he is out!”

“Oh!” I laughed. “I thought I would let him know my new phone number. Perhaps he will call me later?”

“Well actually he has gone to bed. He said he had a busy day and felt really tired. I would like to visit you in your new place. I don’t do very much apart from going to work and just rattling around in the house on my own!”

She sounded very lonely.

“That would be very nice. I look forward to it!”

M. phoned the next day.

“Got your message!”

“Your wife says she would like to visit me!”

“Oh!” M. paused briefly. “Well the thing is this, we sometimes go up to Sherborne and I suppose we could swing by briefly to call in on you. It would only be for ten minutes or so”.

I had drawn him a map previously of where the apartment building was located so he did not have any excuse not to visit.

“You must also realise that once I am at home, that’s it. It would take an awful lot to get me out again!”

I thought that surely I was a big enough reason for him to get out of his house, especially if his wife wanted to visit.

“What about next Sunday afternoon?”

“Just a minute I’ll ask the wife!”

I could hear murmurings in the background discussing how long it would take from Weymouth to Dorchester and then to my village.

“Yes, that’s alright, but only for a brief visit! We will be there about three o’clock!”

“Fine, see you Sunday then!”

I visualised a nice afternoon tea and a chat about all kinds of subjects. I had lots of friends, including males that were interesting to talk to, but nothing remotely as close as M. had become. I went to the local convenience store and bought cake ready for Sunday tea.

They were late arriving, having gone another route and missed the turning. They looked flustered, M. trying to explain how he had read the map wrongly and his wife commenting on how posh it all was. She dashed into the living room.

“Bleedin’ posh!” she exclaimed rushing to the window to look at the view.

M. was still trying to make head and tail of the map I had drawn for him. She snatched it from him.

“Did you see that?” he exclaimed.

“Well you have come to see Angela. I know you! You would be spending the whole time peering at the map!”

M’s wife crumpled up the piece of paper and put it in her pocket.

“We wont stay long!” he said, sitting on the couch next to me. His wife sat on the leather chair that I always thought was a man’s chair. I served tea and cake but M. preferred to have a couple of beers that I had bought in case he did not want tea.

“Do you mind if I nosey around?”

M’s wife pounced on the books in my wall unit, and was enthralled with the art and craft books. She wondered where I got my style from. Who had influenced me? I guessed that it was my own style, I said. She looked through the glass cabinet and peered at the collections I had made.

“I am really interested in culture. I always go to see the historic places when we go on holiday. We have been all over the place. Egypt, Bulgaria all over the place. I bet you have travelled far and wide and seen far more than we have. We lead such ordinary lives.”

“No we don’t!”

M. sprang from the couch. I suggested they looked at the rest of the flat. They were duly impressed with the bathroom and shower, and I said they could lie on my four poster bed.

“It’s like lying in a tent!” I said.

They bounced up and down on it.

Going back to sit on the couch M’s wife suddenly said “She wants to touch your leg!”

M. was wearing shorts and his leg was very close to mine. I was looking at it, thinking it was nice and shapely.

“Fancy bringing all that flesh to my couch!” I said joking.

M. suddenly got up and said in a plaintive voice “I want to go home!”

His wife ignored him and carried on talking. What had been a few minutes had turned into an hour. They gathered their things and as they were leaving M’s wife said “You two are very close!”

“Yes” I said. “It is not often in one’s life that you meet someone special. You have to grab it while you can!”

M. leaned forward. “Come home with us now! You can stay the night!”

“We don’t have a spare bed!” M’s wife stated emphatically.

They left with M. dragging his heels.

The congregation in my church had been praying for my recovery. I stood at the front thanking everyone for their prayers and that I stood as witness to God’s grace and healing power and the wonderful technology that made it possible. Praise God! Several people thanked me afterwards, and apparently it had made an impression on many who sought healing.

NINETEEN The Red Team

The contracts were signed on my cottage with completion with vacant possession the following week. My daughter and her partner were faced with a terribly rushed job to clear my cottage and clean it up ready for the new owner to move in. She co-opted some friends and my grand children to help, and they worked far into the night to get everything finished.

There were bags of recycling stuff, bags for the Charity shops and bags for the rubbish tip.

Garden furniture was sorted, as well as potted house plants and garden pots for my balcony. I had already decided that most of the furniture that came from New Zealand should be given away. The grand children chose what they wanted and the rest was stored in my daughter’s partner’s workshop.

M. had said they needed a spare bed so I arranged with my daughter to deliver one of my single pine beds to their house in Weymouth, next time they were down there. M’s wife was delighted and M. came to pick up the bedding to go with it. He had spent the day with me cleaning my windows and taking rubbish down and when he left I gave him a big hug. He became very flustered and did not know how to take it. I said it was just a hug, nothing more. Our family does a lot of hugging, and our church people do as well, so what was the big deal?

“I am a preacher and I can’t stand up in front of my congregation if I have ungodly thoughts” he said. “And I am married. I love my wife very much. She looks after me!”

He looked away, confused then said, “Now we have a spare bed you can come and stay. It is the school holidays soon and I have a week off. You could stay for the whole week and I will introduce you to my mentor. I would really like you to come and hear me giving a sermon.

It’s a very important message that should be shared with the whole world”.

“That sounds lovely. I would like that! And you could come to my church as well. I know that your wife would enjoy the wonderful feeling of care and friendship the congregation displays to one another!”

M. was very enthusiastic with the suggestion and said he would wait and see what his wife wanted to do. It seemed she was not keen on going to church, which appeared strange since he was a preacher on the circuit. He also played the organ in some of the village churches. I left it at that.

The Red Team that everyone in Rehab thought of as the ultimate in care, had visited me previously after I came back home from having my strokes. Their sole task then had been to

wash and cream my legs and change my support socks. Although they had been trained to use a special device designed to stretch the socks over the patient’s foot, I had shown them the way that the manufacturers had suggested that was far less uncomfortable and a lot easier to put on. I was pleased that the O.T’s who visited me now had remembered how to put my socks on. In fact, the Team consisted of individual O.T’s that regularly attended us in Rehab. They took it in turns to visit.

My hip high support stockings had been replaced with white knee high support socks. It was now expected that I would be able to get them on and off myself. Their job was to observe me doing it. I had instructed M. on how to change my socks in Rehab, even though it was not in his remit to do so. There was often no one else to do it, and it may come in useful one day.

“Oh, wow!” The jolly O.T bounced into my living room and gaped at the view.

“What a fab place!”

I told her that all the furniture came from IKEA. She was duly impressed.

“I will have to go there. I definitely want some of this. How much is the rent?”

I told her.

“My rent is much more and my flat is not as swish as this!”

“You have to be over 60 to live here!”

She sat on the couch and discussed how I was coping and what else she could do to help. I looked longingly at the boxes piled high behind the couch. Apart from washing up, there was nothing else that needed doing. I did not imagine they would do vacuuming or ironing.

She got up to leave and I reminded her that she had not filled in her report.

“The others will be falling over themselves to see this place!” she said.

Over the next week a member of the Red Team came to visit. One woman sat on my couch and talked about her unsatisfactory relationship with her partner. I felt like a counsellor rather than a patient. M. had confided all kinds of personal details, so perhaps that was my role. It was not because I was old, because people always seemed to tell me their life stories right from when I was very young. Perhaps it was because I listened. I suggested she needed something real to think about instead of concentrating on personal relationships. Why not do a study of some kind? I had found studying for a degree invaluable. “Something to get your teeth into!”

A very self controlled and reserved young man visited. He had been one of the team in Rehab and seemed to avoid doing any work by trailing ineffectually behind everyone else.

He came to sign me off from the Red Team books. He seemed to have been upgraded but

still avoided doing too much work by walking about holding a clipboard. I teased him about it. Surprised, he took my hand in his and said that it had been lovely to know me and hoped that I would not have to come back to Rehab again in the near future. He left in a flurry of embarrassment.

M. and I exchanged phone calls almost every day and talked about themes for his sermons, and points of discussion in analysis of a bible text, general happenings and feelings, and the coming event of my visit. He was tremendously excited by it. His wife was apparently decorating the room I was to sleep in, and it was to be a surprise. Would I please bring one of my paintings to go in the room? It had to have a green background.

I had overheard someone say it was his birthday soon so I sent him a card. He was 49, a couple of years older than my first son. I had told people that he was like my third son. I visited for a day and he showed me the card in pride of place on a shelf in their bedroom.

His wife was very creative and had made a wonderfully artistic and comfortable home. He showed me his book collections in his study that was now being made into a spare bedroom. He played me a disc he had made of him singing ballads at the height of his career as an entertainer. His wife gave me one of her collection of colourful jackets that she bought from the market. We sat in the sun in the paved garden and talked, with his wife fussing about elsewhere. She was a Martha to my Mary. She did everything for him as if he was the child she had never had. He could do nothing without her approval and she watched over him like a mother hen. A typical, old fashioned, working class wife that every man longs for.

Meanwhile, the business of setting up home again was taking priority. I staggered around the flat trying to unpack boxes and find places to put things. I kept receiving reminders for water rates, electricity and gas that I had never used. My mind was still in a whirl from all the events over the last few months. It was difficult to grasp. My daughter was now busy trying to clear her own house ready for sale, so did not have time nor inclination to help. My diary was full of reminders for one thing and another, interspersed with phone calls to and from M. My daughter came to help me measure up for curtains and we went to a local store to choose ready made curtains for the bedroom, order a specially made recliner chair and a new mattress for my four poster bed. I also chose new percale duvet covers and sheets, forgetting that I could not iron anything now. They were a disaster of creases and crinkles that only crisp cotton can contort into at high speed spin in a washing machine. The janitor put up the curtains for me. I was always having problems with the central heating, and the property manager kindly came to my rescue, always very quick to please.

Things were slowly falling into place again and I enjoyed the peace of my flat sitting in the afternoon sun on the balcony, listening to the wind in the autumn trees and the flute-like conversations of rooks clicking to each other in the top branches.

TWENTY Won’t be seeing you again!

The neurologist surveyed me behind his desk and told me that because he did not have my notes to hand, he could not reach any positive conclusions regarding my condition.

However, the EEG did not show anything unusual apart from some vascular damage from my strokes.

“Who are your consultants?”

I listed all the doctors assigned to me and he declared there were far too many. He would discharge me, and would not see me again.

An appointment was made with the Cardiac Specialist Nurse who would monitor my medication, and I was expected to come into the hospital for regular blood tests to determine the level of Warfarin in my blood. Because of my bedside ICD monitor I would not need to come in to the clinic for another six months at least. The battery would need to be changed in about four years time when another operation would be necessary to replace it.

I also had an appointment with Dr.P that had been made some time ago. I looked forward to seeing him again. He looked delighted to see me in the reception area and waved to me.

“How nice to see you again! How are you feeling? You look well, warm and profusing!”

I did not tell him that I was on my way to stay with M. and his wife.

“Have you published your book yet? I think you should. Would you mind if I presented it to the Stroke Association for publication? Have I got your permission?”

I agreed.

“Sadly I wont be seeing you again!” Dr.P paused hoping I would respond. “Perhaps we will meet around the town?”

“I am writing a sequel to Ragdoll for Christmas called Ragdoll Revisited. I will send it to you!”

“Oh yes, please do!”

In another time and space and if I was bold enough I would have suggested lunch somewhere, but perhaps it would have been inappropriate. I have never understood social niceties. Dr.P escorted me to the door, shook hands and said goodbye.

I sat in M’s car while he took me around the scenic route to Weymouth.

“It is so exciting! It depends on what happens now as to what happens in the future.”

I was not sure what he was hoping would happen, but supposed it was whether his wife and I got on together. He had dreams that we could perhaps be a threesome, in a loving relationship, sharing an intellectual and spiritual life together. My stay was wonderful, and full of new discoveries. M. played music for me on his big keyboard that he had not played for over a year. He dragged it out from under the stairs and as he played goose bumps came up on his arms. He fingered the music with great feeling and cried when he played an old Platters song. He read the words to his wife, who did not understand his passion for them but stared at him thinking he was being foolish.

Strangely she refused to sit at the dinner table with us and had her meals elsewhere. She insisted that M. spent all the time with me, and either went into the garden or lay on their couch. She obviously did not want to be sociable with one of his patients. It would be like bringing your work home from the office!

Suddenly my stay brought out a deep seated dissatisfaction M’s wife had for their marriage.

She harangued him mercilessly and he just sat there taking it all without a murmur. I began to wonder just what had been the purpose of my visit. M’s wife had said that because M. and I were so close, she wanted to provide a home from home for me because my daughter was busy and did not have enough time for me.

M. drove back with a puzzled look on his face.

“I have a feeling that this might be the end. But its not is it?”

He looked at me, searching my face.

M. and his wife came to my church and I introduced them to those that mattered. I told my friends that he was my adopted third son and they were warmly welcomed into the fold.

They were amazed to discover several people they knew in the congregation and mingled with them afterwards. As they left M. kissed the top of my head. He had wanted to spend more time with me, but his wife wanted to go home.

“I’ll ring you!” he said. “Will you accept that the future will have to be whatever unfolds?

There is always the wider picture and things will turn out even better than before. I am convinced of it. Be patient and wait!”

Some days later he phoned to say his wife was very upset. “I have to think of my wife first!”

She was frightened I was becoming too dependent on him. He was spending all his free time with me and she felt excluded. It all sounded very neurotic and totally unreal. In fact we had only met three times and she was always there with us. What is she on?

With all of what had happened over the last two years, I was plunged into deep despair. I could not stop crying. My daughter thought I was behaving like a grumpy old woman and

ignored me. I wanted to crawl under a hedge and cover the soil over my head. Nothing seemed relevant any more.

This village is like a virtual village with wooden tops for people taking dogs for walks or occasionally going in and out of the convenience store avoiding other people’s eyes. There are plenty of parked cars but no other signs of life. Men with ladders paint windows like dolls house characters, and houses with no lights in them line the streets. The place is devoid of life. I have tried to enter the social life of the place, helping out with a church outreach for children, and I go to my own church and take part in activities there. I have also gone back to the embroidery group I belonged to before. There are lots of projects that I started a few months ago, so I am kept busy. But I still wonder what it is all for. None of it has any meaning . I wanted to be able to be a witness not just to God’s healing power but also to His love that could radiate throughout the whole of our community. It had a lot to do with the special friendship I had made with M. that was now on hold.

I framed some of my paintings that I had put away in a drawer and the property manager put them up for me. He was very impressed with my work and asked if I still painted. I said I did not because there was nowhere to do it. I used to have my own studio in New Zealand and people used to buy my pictures before they were finished.

“Yes there is!” he said. “You can use all the open spaces in the building. There is the atrium and the community lounge, and when you have built up a collection you can have an exhibition here and I will invite the whole of the village to view it!”

Maybe if I can be bothered I will take him up on it. Perhaps there is something to stay alive for after all.

The Cardiac Nurse Specialist has increased my beta blocker drug that protects the muscles in my heart, until eventually the ICD takes over the function completely. My own heart rhythm will be bypassed, which is quite scary because if anything interrupts the electrical pulses, that will be it. So if I want to make the most of the time I have left, I had better get on with it. The problem seems to be that no one else can see the urgency, and waiting for other people to make up their minds is no longer an option. I guess I have to do it on my own. So what else is new?

Angela Mumford, 2009

98 year old woman Crabbed old creature Brown skin overlapping Bent frame.

Hard to tell If it is male or female Under brown sacking.

Head shrouded With white spun hair Wound into top knot.

Voice crackling Between thin lips Gnarled hands Clutching head In despair.

Does not want to be In this place “Leave me alone!�

Nigerian nurses Far from home, the Nigerian nurses Try to feel empathy for their wards Try not to remember Colonial injustices Try to keep to hospital rules That prevent them from giving close care.

Far from home, the Nigerian nurses Talk to each other in their own language Talk about their patients Talk about their personal lives Anything that prevents giving close care.

The Nigerian nurses are far from home.

The carer He stands with his legs apart This caring man who loves the world Gathering his patients into his arms Like a large cuddly bear.

With loud grunts and chuckles He entertains with small talk, Shares his Christian beliefs With anyone who listens.

He is beautiful this man A middle aged paunch showing Beneath his shirt, betraying A comfortable disposition.

A perfectly symmetrical head And an expressive face Shows every emotion possible Laid bare for all to see.

I love this man who has given me A reason to live.

He delights me with his grace His love of music and lilting voice.

Without his care I am nothing An empty shell cast up on a beach A lemon sucked dry, discarded And thrown on a heap.

Love “I love you” you said “For the rest of our lives” “I could not bear it If you died before me.

Promise that you will Stay alive!”

I know I love.

I love my children and I love you as much, if not more And I would give them up Walk out on all I have Just to be with you.

Love is patient, Love is kind Love is not jealous Nor seeks to undermine Love lifts the soul Replenishes the mind Nurtures the spirit and warms the blood.

Dearest, do not spoil this precious gift of love, With false accusations Misunderstood intentions and Outdated self righteousness.

It may never pass your way again And you may regret its passing all your life.

Hospice garden If I were to end my life In a place such as this I would not complain.

Yet knowing how life gives Birth to death Perhaps it would not matter much Where I died.

This garden languishing in summer heat, Entices drowsy bumble bees Dwindled by disease, Finding solace in ragged lavender Along the paved white stone paths Outside the Hospice bedroom.

Far distant, like a promised dream A group of swaying willow trees beckon Beneath the flowing branches Like a mother’s hair, bending low Providing safe shelter Cuddled from the world.

If I were to end my life In a place such as this I would not complain.

The new regime The new regime Does not allow Close contact With the patient.

No lifting, touching Or assistance Beyond the mechanical kind Robots are provided.

The patient Must be encouraged To be self motivated Sufficient to themselves Autonomous Or go into Care.

Failing which Robots are provided.

We believe The patient Is better off In their own home.

Better to get them Used to being left alone To cope as best they can Robots not provided.

Ultimate choice If you should have a massive heart attack Lose consciousness and become inert Would you wish to be resuscitated?

What kind of choice is this?

Do I want to continue with this silly life Where all I truly love is taken away?

Not really!

The final loss is complete anyway.

The choice is not mine But God’s alone.

Sacrifice “I would not die for you!” you said But I would gladly die for you.

My family have others Willingly giving up their lives To protect and nurture them, While I no longer am required.

Only one man in the whole world Gave his life for me And that was two thousand years ago.

I cannot ask for more.

Rooks and jackdaws Rooks and jackdaws gather at dusk In quarrelsome congregations Vying for position in the top most branches Beside vast community nests.

Fledglings from last year’s matings Remember the comfort food of summer And squawk and crane their necks Hoping for one more morsel Before the winter sets in.

Primary pairs engage in private conversations With clicks and clocks and long neck chortles Hooting high whistles, murmers deep in throats.

I join in, imitating sounds I think I hear They regard me with suspicion, stretch their necks, Spread wings and take flight .

Was it something I said?

Comfort chair Celebrity sits in squashy delight Blossoming, blooming pillows Pushing, pulsing button powered.

Positions pre-programmed Lift feet up high or Back lowered level bed-like Dreaming.

Crane lift up and over No need to struggle To gain height and With a final thrust Celebrity tips you out.

These poems were written after my sojourn. Curiously I had no inspiration to write whilst incarcerated, since my emotions were scattered elsewhere. Angela Mumford, 2009.