There's Something I've Been Dying to Tell You (17 page)

13

HOLDING ON TO THE FESTIVE SPIRIT

Christmas 2013

So there I was in bed on the fourth floor of the London Clinic waking up in my corner room surrounded by tubes and a pain in my tummy. I had no idea how close I had come to death but was feeling very sorry for myself anyway. It was bad enough having to deal with cancer, but a major emergency operation was a step too far. Had Richard Cohen not arrived on the scene I think my insides would have covered the floor. I still had my colon which is the long tube that goes down through your body and my spleen which has something to do with the stomach. I am so ignorant of what went on and I apologise to anyone reading this for not giving you the detailed version of things. After all, it took me ages to work out that bowel cancer and colon cancer are the same thing!

While recovering from a major operation is sometimes torture, there are moments of humour too. That first day of consciousness in one’s bed is a revelation. The nurses were all so jolly and matter of fact and made everything seem perfectly normal as they emptied a catheter while chatting about their night out. All day long the patient gets snippets of the real world outside while battling rubber sheets and mechanical beds. One minute I would be gazing out of the window at a perfect blue December sky, catching a breeze from the crack in the open window, and the next I was reeling in agony trying to sit up. The tube up my nose was making me retch all the time and I was constantly fiddling with the bloody thing. All my drips were explained to me and then I completely forgot what they all did within a minute.

I knew by now that I had a huge scar and when the nurse came to change the dressing I gazed down in amazement at what could only be described as a very long zip going from my chest to my pubes. It looked bizarre with metal clips all the way down. To the right of the zip was a pouch which I really could not fathom out. I had been informed that the bag hanging down my left side was taking away the bile from my stomach, and as soon as the stoma kicked in I would no longer have that particular attachment. Stoma? To my utmost horror I was then introduced to the attachment on my right side. A very pink strawberry was poking out of my stomach! This was a step too far for me. I may have a high pain threshold but I was about to discover I do not do body parts, however neat.

I shut out all thoughts of what I was supposed to do with that straight away. But Michael, as usual, came to my rescue. While Richard Cohen was examining his handiwork he asked Michael if he wanted to look. Michael could not refuse the challenge and came round to the side of the bed. I had my head turned away as I could not bear to look, but my dear husband listened attentively to everything Richard told him about how it would all work and then announced, ‘Thanks, Richard, that is really interesting but isn’t it amazing how it looks like a little willy!’

We all burst out laughing and somehow I managed to relax about the whole thing. As the days went on and I slowly grew more accustomed to my plight, we nicknamed the stoma ‘Furby’ because it started to make the most incredible noises like those Japanese children’s toys. It sort of chirruped or whimpered depending on what was going on! The lady who wins the prize for hard sell of the stoma bag is Rebecca Slater, this truly inspirational stoma nurse, who took Michael and me through every aspect of the wonders of a stoma bag.

‘You will never want to pooh normally again,’ she announced. ‘So many of my patients say they prefer to have a bag.’ Well, the jury is still out on that as far as I am concerned, but at least Becky made me feel more secure about it all. However, it was a few days before I saw the wonder of the workings of a stoma. There were many more hoops to go through before that, I am sorry to say.

The first week was a dark tunnel. I managed to get through the days in a kind of bubble. The routine of hospital life kicked in. I would wake up and wait for my painkillers and try to drink some water to get rid of my parched throat.

I made a terrible mistake the second or third night by pulling the drip out of my nose. For a brief few blissful hours I was free of the thing, and the retching and trying to be sick. All these wonderful actions, of course, pull the stomach muscles and my muscles were being held together with metal clasps. Every time I coughed it was agony. So the fact I had stopped the retching by pulling out the tube was a job well done as far as I was concerned.

Then the nurse informed me I was not getting the benefit of the intravenous feeding so they were going to have to put in another tube. Now, folks, here’s the thing. The first time they put the dreaded tube up my nose I was unconscious, but this time I was awake and absolutely terrified! It was like a bad dream and it still does return to haunt me. It is similar to the feeling when the doctor puts a spoon in the back of your mouth and you want to retch. But this also scratched the edges of my nasal passage and made my eyes water. How long does it take to push a tube down your nose into your stomach? Too long!

The whole coughing business of course is there for anyone who has been through an operation. And the Kathy Bates moment when the physiotherapist appears in the door! This moment came the second day for me, in the form of a very pleasant young man who seemed very malleable, if you know what I mean!

When this very pleasant young male physiotherapist came round, I whimpered, ‘Oh no,’ in my best Dame aux Camélias voice. ‘I really don’t think I am up to this at all. Can you come back next week?’

Not on your Nellie. That seemingly sweet young man was across the room before I had finished speaking and was levering me up out of bed!

Stuffing a pillow into my arms he said, ‘Now make yourself take deep breaths and cough.’

Oh my goodness, the pain. How could he be so cruel? He was smiling all the time as I tried pathetically to produce a semblance of a throat clearance. Then suddenly he was gone and I was lying back in a pool of sweat gasping for breath like a fairground goldfish.

Ten minutes later the healthcare ladies came to change the bed and there was another fifteen minutes of acute pain trying to get me to the bathroom and set me down on a chair for a wash.

The first time I had warm water splashed over me I almost cried with joy. How amazing that something as simple as water can bring such relief. The lovely girl who washed me those first few days was a naturally gentle person. She would wash me so carefully and apply cream to my skin so expertly it was better than any five star spa I have experienced. My eternal gratitude goes out to these carers.

So then I was clean and dry. I was set down in a chair and told to try and sit up straight for fifteen minutes or so. I stared blankly at the TV screen on the wall. My mind had shut down, I think. I believe this is the only way to deal with these things: just let the routine carry you through, do as you are told and hang on in there.

I went back to bed and waited for more painkillers. I had this self-medicating button I was supposed to press every ten minutes or so, but quite honestly it was not doing anything except making me feel sick. Eventually I had a visit from Jamie who deals with all the patients’ pain relief. We discussed the merits of the button and I tried to explain that my pain was localised and I thought it was in my stomach where the cancer was, not in my muscles or working parts. He changed the medication to something more like paracetamol which helped, but this did not go down well with the next ward doctor who came to visit. He flounced in and I think he thought he was in an episode of
Casualty
!

‘Morning,’ he threw across the bed at me. ‘Who have we here, nurse?’ He took the proffered notes with a flourish.

‘I’m Lynda, and can I just say that I have worked out my meds with Jamie and things are going much better.’

‘Well I don’t understand, we have given you pain relief in your button, Miss Bellingham. You probably do not understand how we go about deciding these things, but I can assure you we are correct in our administration of pain relief.’ He turned to go.

‘Um, sorry, Doctor, but you are wrong,’ I called after him. I think it must have been the drugs that made me so brave, because normally I am such a wimp about confrontation.

He stopped and tossed back his floppy hair.

‘I am sorry?’

‘Well I am sorry too. It is my pain, not yours, and maybe I might just know a bit more about what is going on and what works and what doesn’t. Are you not taught to listen to your patients?’

Doctor Kildaire turned on his heel and left, leaving me and the nurse in fits of giggles. Well I would have been giggling if it didn’t hurt so much!

I never had a visit from said doctor again, and the meds were left as they were, and it was all fine. The thing is, as time goes on and every day is spent not only navel gazing, literally, but having to work out how to feel better, the patient feels the problems better than any doctor can guess. I think that it should be a dialogue between the two.

The days seemed to pass quickly and Michael would always come in to visit in the afternoon with cards and letters of goodwill from friends and well-wishers. I asked him to tell people not to send flowers because it is such hard work for the nurses. Yes they are lovely to look at, but there are never any vases and when the water starts to smell and you can’t empty the vases yourself, it is just a chore. I could hardly ring the bell for a poor hardworking nurse to sort out my flower arrangements. Priorities exist and saving lives tops flowers any day. I was certainly grateful that my life had been saved.

For the first few days I could not eat solids so there was no meal break to look forward to. I would watch the darkness descend outside and dread the onset of bedtime. Bedtime? That’s a joke, the whole time was bedtime. But once again the wonderful nursing staff would come to my rescue. As I watched the minute hand move inexorably across the face of the clock on the wall in front of me, and toss and turn in my sweaty pit, suddenly Sister would appear with a cold bag and put it behind my back and just hold my hand, and chat about this and that. I am sure she had so many other things to do, but she gave me those few minutes to settle. Then I would sleep for a couple of hours then wake again, sliding off my rubber pillow. Oh my goodness it was awful.

In fact nobody could quite decide why I was so hot and sweaty. I eventually worked out that, in one week, I went through my entire menopause, because I had had no HRT for months, having come off the medication and suddenly all hell had broken loose in my body. There must have been enough raging hormones to jump start a car, I would have thought. I have had no symptoms since, and can only assume this was the case. Be grateful for small mercies, I say.

Bring on any change of life, it has to be better than death!

14

THE BEST-LAID PLANS GO TO WASTE

Christmas 2013

By the time all of this had happened, we were into the second week and Christmas was nearly with us. In between trying to walk upright with a walking frame and coughing without choking, I was obsessing about what Michael was going to do about Christmas dinner.

‘Don’t worry, I will do all the cooking,’ he announced one day. This from a man who has trouble making a salad! I was devastated that all my planning was falling apart. My dear sister, Jean, knew only too well how much the whole shebang meant to me, and she had been helping me from the start to gather all my supplies together for Christmas. In fact we had been scheduled to go to the wonderful Christmas fair at Olympia together as we had done the year before. At the fair they sold everything imaginable you need for a perfect Christmas. I had ordered this amazing organic turkey due to arrive on 19 December. Did Jean think Michael would be able to manage?

Her silence spoke volumes. I could not even rely on Jean to help him prepare it as she is a veggie and would not touch the bird with a barge pole. So I had to write all the instructions out for Michael. Fortunately the turkey came with perfect instructions so that bit was sorted, but the timings of the extras proved a problem!

However, due to the fact that I had been planning Christmas since the end of October I had most of the gig under control. I was still cooking whenever I felt well enough, and had a list of dishes I was going to produce over the festive season. I know this must all sound completely nutty to many of you, but Christmas is such a joy to me, and I always want it to be perfect.

I had been collecting bits and pieces for the boys’ stockings as well and I was keeping them in a box at the bottom of my bed. I know they are grown up now but they still love their stockings. I also had my step-grandchildren coming over Christmas, Cooper and Oakley, and my grandson Sacha. I decided not to go too mad with the decorations round the house, but just put out a few of the favourites, like the wreaths and table lights and garlands! At least I was not setting my Christmas table yet. Years ago I was filming in Prague and was not going to arrive home until Christmas Eve. So I decided to do all the table settings, and decorations and the tree, in my dining room before I left in November. I locked the door so the boys would not find out and set off. Sure enough I arrived home Christmas Eve and after a bit of a dust things looked lovely!

So from October, with every trip to the supermarket I would add to my Christmas cupboard, which was now bulging with mince pies, candied fruit, Twiglets and Turkish delight. I bought all the wine and spirits too – not that the spirits ever really got drunk as no one in our house drinks them, but I like to know they are there in case. My intention for Christmas Day was for everything to be on hand for everyone because it is the one day of the year when anything goes. So basically I was set and ready to go. Except I wasn’t going anywhere. I was going to be in hospital.

I seem to be one of these people who think that if I have thought about something, arranged something, even dreamed of something, then it will happen. In many ways this is very positive and a good way to view life. However, reading back through some of my thoughts and diaries since being diagnosed with a terminal disease, I am beginning to realise it can be incredibly stupid! There are some things one just can’t change. In this case it was Christmas lunch. Even in my darkest hour sliding around on my rubber sheets in a sweat in the middle of the night, it never occurred to me that I would not be at home on Christmas Day at the head of my table with my family around me. I had thought about the moment, lived it, organised it and dreamed it. Of course it would happen. But when it finally sank in this was not going to happen, I just burst into tears and when I wasn’t crying believe me I spent a good deal of my time trying to keep those tears at bay.