Still Riding on the Storm

by Robert G. Barrett

  Gosford Private Hospital isn’t all that bad, but compared to St Vincent’s Private, it’s the MASH 4077. St Vincent’s is the sort of place where you could have Alan Jones in the room next to you, Rupert Murdoch in the other and the Prime Minister in the room across the hall. Plus the nurses treat you like royalty and the place has its own gourmet chefs. Naturally I wasn’t allowed to eat anything. In fact I couldn’t eat anything for three days. But didn’t worry me that much because the chemotherapy had stuffed up my appetite along with everything else.

  They operated on me not long after I booked myself in and as usual I blathered on, yakety-yak, blah, blah, blah, right up until the off. When I came around this time, I was covered in drips, with a metal monitor in a bag round my neck wired up to these plastic tabs stuck to my chest, because I get heart fibrillations. I checked under my gown to find the Kransky was gone and I had a normal-sized stoma under the bag alongside a plastic bottle rigged up to my stomach to drain away any excess fluid. I was also in another shitload of pain, but it didn’t take me long to find the morphine button and again that’s where my trigger finger stayed while I waited to be wheeled back to my room.

  The doctor came to see me and assured me the operation was a success; in fact he called in every day. The sweet lovely nurses came in on a regular basis and prodded me or poked me, stuck needles in me and checked my blood pressure. And every now and again the tea lady would open my door then shake her head and say, ‘Oh sorry. I forgot. You’re not allowed to have anything.’ All the while I just stayed in a morphed-out haze waiting for the time to go.

  I had my player and plenty of DVDs along with my radio. But with all these drips and monitors hanging off me it was a bit hard to move around. So I spent most of my time reading. Mainly Keith, Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones biography. And quite a good read it is. I also had plenty of time to think, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t sleep. I might nod off for half an hour during the day sometimes. But mostly I’d just lie there at night staring out the window at the thousands of flying foxes drifting or flapping their way across town. Watching TV was pointless because on Sky View or whatever they call it, you just see the same shows over and over again bombarded with ads.

  One night I was lying in bed thinking about old times and I reflected back on a girl I had an affair with when I was twenty-two. She was a hairdresser from Adelaide, twenty years old and really good looking with a great set of boobs. One night after having a few drinks, we went back to my place for a bit of the other and just as we started getting our gear off, she said to me, ‘Why don’t you tie me up and rape me?’ Now you have to remember, this is back in the sixties and I was just a naive twenty-two year old waxhead who didn’t know much about nothing. But this didn’t seem like a bad idea at the time. So I went out to my old FJ ute and came back with the board ropes ready for a night of debauchery and licentious evil. And even though I’m ashamed to admit it now, and will rue the depravity I allowed myself to be talked into that night for the rest of my life, the sight of that twenty-year-old glamour lying on my bed with her hands tied behind her back wearing nothing but a pair of lacy white knickers and her huge tits hanging out of a half-open shirt which I was about to rip from her body, along with her skimpy underwear, looked absolutely sensational and will be indelible in my mind till I toss tails.

  Now the relationship between myself and Mr Wobbly is fairly much one of mutual celibacy. After all the cutting, dissecting and radiotherapy he’s been through, Mr Wobbly’s had enough. Not even the National Aeronautics and Space Administration could get the poor little bloke up. Yet for some strange reason, he can still get his rocks off, have an orgasm, or blow, as we blokes refer to it. The only thing is, you’ve really got to bash the shit out of the poor little bloke at a fast and furious rate to get him there. I don’t know. Maybe it was reading about all the sex and drugs in Keith, lack of sleep or too much on the morph button, but with the picture of that young good sort tied up on the bed stuck in my mind, a sudden stirring started in Mr Wobbly. A small stirring. But a definite stirring. I stared at the picture in my mind, which got more vivid all the time, and thought, bugger this, I’m going to knock myself off. Have a three bags full. A pull. So I slipped up my hospital gown and had a full hand going alone.

  This time I really gave it to Mr Wobbly. Kick, punch, knee. Crash-boom-bang. Cop that, you little bastard. It didn’t take all that long and whooshka! Mr Wobbly raised his angry little head up and emptied himself out. I collapsed back on the bed gasping for breath, then after a short while managed to get my shit back together. I put the reading light on, propped up the pillows and went back to Keith.

  The next thing I knew, the doors burst open and in charged all these paramedics and nurses armed with fibrillators, an oxy-viva and a great big needle full of adrenalin to shove into my heart. I simply sat back like the cat that just drank all the cream and said, ‘Yeah? What’s up?’ This red-faced nurse glared at me and said, ‘No.’ It was more an accusation. ‘Mr Barrett, your heart rate just went up to 185. Now it’s back to 79.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I replied. ‘It often does that. I’ve got heart fibrillations, remember? That’s why I take Lanoxin tablets. I wrote it all down when I booked myself in.’ They looked at me, looked at each other, and although they couldn’t quite smell a rat in my room, they knew there was a pretty big mouse hiding in there somewhere. Finally, they packed up all their life-saving equipment and left and I went back to reading Keith. Okay, I told a blatant lie and messed some good people around. But what was I going to do? Tell them I’d been in bed playing with myself? Especially at my age.

  The days and nights dragged on and I still couldn’t sleep. A few old mates called in to see me and that was good. Then finally it was time to go. And despite my pain and lack of sleep I didn’t want to leave. For the last three days they put me on solid food: scotch fillet with Hollandaise sauce, beautiful fresh steamed vegetables, pan fried snapper, tiramisu and ice cream. But before I left they gave me a nice big box of hillbilly heroin to help me with my pain. Lovely. Lisa came to get me and with my drip and catheter hanging off me and my grouse new stoma, I split. Before I went, I thanked all the nurse for their kindness and left them with a big tin of beautiful English toffee a mate’s wife had brought me in. I couldn’t eat any because I’ve got diabetes. But it put a smile on the nurses’ faces. Then Lisa drove me home. It was a bit sad not having the old cat there to greet me when I arrived. But I was that buggered after seven days without any sleep, I simply popped a mother’s little helper and crashed.

  After that I just rested up. The new stoma worked sensationally, I got rid of the drip and despite a little bit of pain, this time I was able to drive my car okay. I called in and saw Mum a couple of times and while I was listening to her troubles and telling her about my time in hospital and that, I couldn’t help notice she was looking a little frail. After all, she was 92. Then one day I got the inevitable sad news. One of the nurses at Terrigal Medical Centre who worked part-time at the nursing home, told me Mum was off her food and not looking real good. It might be a good idea if I went out and saw her. I got in the car and hurried out to the nursing home. Mum was on her bed with her eyes closed, they’d taken her teeth out so she wouldn’t choke and her breath was just coming in these awful rasping gasps while her right arm kept flicking up and down. She was in her death rattles and it was one of the most terrible things I’ve ever seen. I sat down alongside her, took her hand and howled my eyes out while I told her how much I loved her and I wished things could have been better between us in the past. For a brief moment her eyes opened and she knew I was there, then they closed again. But at least we’d made up. It was just bad luck we’d left it too late. I stayed with her as long as I could then I kissed her goodbye, went home and cried myself to sleep. The nursing home rang me early the next morning to tell me she’d gone and Lisa had arranged for her to get the last rites. We went over and cleaned out her room while she was still lying on the be
d then I kissed her goodbye for the last time and we arranged for a small funeral service later that week. I’ll never forget her tiny little coffin sitting in the church covered in flowers. There wasn’t much left of the poor old thing when she left. But apart my father, she’d had a pretty good life and she had a son she could be proud of.

  But life has to go on and the grieving eases and I still had a fight on my hands with the old Bengal Lancer. The oncologist was doing a good job and thanks to the chemotherapy the cancer hadn’t spread. It was still there, but at least it was stable. It was funny how I missed the old cat. She wasn’t much of a moggie, but at least she was company. And I read where if you’re sick an animal companion is very good for you. I’ve had dogs and fish and somehow I like cats. They’ve got this cheeky insouciance about them that appeals to me. Dogs will roll over and beg and run around after you because they know you’re going to sling them a tin of Pal at the end of the day. But you’ve got to earn the respect and love of a cat. And if you can do that, you’ve got good mojo. Lisa and I drove out to the RSPCA at Somersby to see what they had waiting on death row. Lying back in this big cage, looking like he owned the place was this red-haired, deknackered kitten about six weeks old. It was love at first sight. As soon as we got him out of the cage he was all over me and Lisa and we were all over him. I said I’d take him. They still had to give him some shots, come back and pick him up in three days. So we did. I gave the lady behind the counter $10,000, she nearly fainted, then we took the cat home and I called him Reg. Short for Reggie Ramjet. Because that’s what he’s like, he’s so fast. He comes charging through the cat flap at the speed of sound and dives straight at my legs, trying to knock me over. I might love Reg and he might be my best mate, but I know he’s going to kill me one day. Not if I get the little bastard first though.

  One day I got to thinking, if those surgeons in Sydney could fix up my stoma, maybe I could lose the catheter. Despite having the thing in me for over a year, I could still piss out my old boy. I had to push a bit, because the thing had been in me that long the muscles round my bladder had become weak. But I’d been doing these pelvic floor exercises so there was still a bit of strength left in my bladder. I went down and saw my old mate, the doctor in Bondi, and he lined me up with another surgeon at St Vincent’s Private. The surgeon was a total buzz. He was an Indian-Australian about 198 centimetres tall, an absolute gentleman, and looked like the opening spin bowler for the Mumbai First Eleven. Yet he spoke like Chips Rafferty. ‘Yeah mate. No mate. I can fix that orright mate. I’ll getcha in ’ere in aboudaweeg.’ I was a bit pissed off. He spoke Strine better than me and he had a terrific signed portrait of Don Bradman hanging on his office wall.

  Lisa drove me down again and this time I’d only be in there three days. They prepped me and instead of putting me under, a nurse rammed this big plastic syringe full of local anaesthetic up my wozzer. I might have been in St Vincent’s, but I reckon the scream I let out could have been heard at the Prince of Wales. Then they stuck a mini camera up Mr Wobbly to make sure there was no scarring or blockages. There wasn’t. So after that they wheeled me up to my room and all I had to do was drink a certain amount of water, piss in a bottle and some lucky nurse would get to measure it. Then twice a day they’d take another measurement to see if I was emptying my bladder. And I was. It was grouse. The only rotten thing about it was, seeing they weren’t doing an operation I could go straight onto normal food. The chemo might have knocked my appetite around a bit, but I could still force down the tender lamb cutlets, cauliflower in cream sauce, crème brûlée and all the other little tasties they brought me. Lisa came and got me and Reg was happy to see me come home, I was happy to see him and I was absolutely fuckin ecstatic about losing the catheter after all that time, even if I did have to wear a pad just in case Mr Wobbly leaked a bit now and again. But compared to walking around with a meat skewer jammed in your stomach, that was nothing.

  After that I just sat around trying to get well, trying to do a little walking and doing a bit of thinking. While I was in a state of deep meditation one day I thought of a terrific quote. Awthers are supposed to come up with deep and meaningful quotations. How about this one: Old age is God’s way of punishing you for poking fun at old people when you were young. Not bad, eh?

  Then something happened in my life that can only be described as some sort of epiphany or revelation. A miracle, even. An old mate of mine in Bondi, Phil, once had liver cancer, but managed to beat it. The cancer came back only this time in his prostate. Phil also married the best stacked, best sort and best girl on Bondi Beach and she got breast cancer of all bloody things. But after operations, chemo and her almost dying too, she managed to get on top of it. However, Phil was back on chemo and battling the odds like me. One day a mate of Phil’s, who’d got over cancer, sent him a fax of something he’d trawled up on the internet. Phil faxed me a copy. My neighbour up in Shoal Bay, who had got over a serious illness, also faxed me the same thing. It was a mixture they used back in 1739 to treat kidney stones. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania did a study of the same mixture in 1854, and gave it the thumbs up. The same mixture is also supposed be dynamite when it comes to cancer. Somehow the mixture got hidden in the mists of time. Or maybe the big pharmaceutical companies jumped all over it so no one would find out about it. Knowing the grubby greedy bastards running the multinationals, this would not surprise me in the least. I’ll give you three of the testimonials that were in the faxes:

  Case 1. A man with an almost hopeless case of Hodgkin’s Disease (cancer of the lymph glands) was completely incapacitated. Within one year of him starting on the mixture, his doctors were unable to detect any signs of cancer and he was back on a schedule of strenuous exercise.

  Case 2. A successful businessman, 68 years old, who suffered from cancer of the bladder for 16 years. After years of medical treatment, including radiation without improvement, he went on the mixture. Within three months, examinations revealed that his bladder tumour had disappeared and that his kidneys were normal.

  Case 3. A man who had lung cancer was put on the operating table where they found the lung cancer was so widespread that it was inoperable. The surgeon sewed him up and declared his case hopeless. In April the bloke started taking the mixture and by August all signs of the cancer had disappeared. He is now back at his regular business routine.

  When you’ve got cancer you’ll try anything for a cure. I’d even eat dog shit spread on a mouldy bread roll if I thought it would help. Phil and myself thought we’d give it a go. So we both started at the same time and got our blood tests back about two months later.

  Phil’s cancer count had dropped to zero. He’s swimming with the Bondi Icebergs most days and the last I heard he was with a bunch of blokes playing golf up at Port Stephens. All my cancer counts dropped dramatically as well. Something called a CRP was 504 when I first went into hospital, it was now 5.8. Another count was 30. Now it was 4.2. Something else that was 15 now read 2.0. A count that was 11 was now 1.3. I went for a CT scan and the result was:

  Lymph nodes. No enlarged lymphadenopathy identified. Conclusion: no metastatic disease identified. Prescaral soft tissue thickening appears stable.

  In other words, there was no sign of the cancer spreading and what they thought might have been a bit of cancer was a shadow of old leftover scarring at the back of my prostate. If I did have any sign of cancer it was well and truly hidden and the blood tests and CT scan couldn’t find it. I showed both my doctors in Terrigal and Bondi the results and they were astounded. I showed my oncologist, she was chuffed and took me off chemotherapy. It looked like me and Phil were home free. And don’t forget, it wasn’t that long ago I was two minutes away from dying of septicaemia. But it wasn’t only the cancer levels that bottomed out. I’ve got diabetes and all my blood sugar levels seemed to start dropping as well.

  So what is this wonder mixture that appears to have saved me and my mate Phil from a cruel death? You’ll laugh and mock wh
en I tell you, but it’s the truth: asparagus. Not organic asparagus grown on some mountain in Tibet. Just plain old tins of asparagus from the supermarket. You cream up a couple of tins, juice and all, in your blender. Keep it in a sealed jar in the fridge and take four tablespoons in the morning and four tablespoons at night. According to research, asparagus contains a protein called histone, which is believed to control cell growth. It also contains a substance which is a cell growth normaliser. But be warned. Creamed asparagus makes your piss smell like a werewolf’s been around marking out his territory. It’s absolutely fuckin diabolical.

  Now I’m not knocking chemotherapy or my oncologist. Her putting me on chemo definitely helped save my life. And I’m truly grateful for her care. Also, I’m not claiming asparagus is the magic bullet. The dreaded Bengal Lancer could come back and bite me on the arse any time. He’s renowned for doing this. But Phil and I are convinced it was the icing on the cake. The way it worked for us in the same timeframe we started taking it and got our blood tests, has to be more than a coincidence. I’ll never be as fit or as strong as I was before all the operations. But I’m now taking 50-minute walks and doing a slow hour on my exercise bike, plus there’s a lot more pep in my step and I’m gradually getting my appetite back. And recently I took out an attractive young lady forty years younger than me to a show in Newcastle. This caused a lot of disparaging looks and remarks amongst the locals in Terrigal. Dirty old bastard. Who’s he think he is? Cradle snatcher. It also got me a lot of second looks off the young blokes in the pub next to the theatre when, with her arm in mine, we slipped in for a drink before the show. I also got a lot of strange looks from some of the aunties and their male friends in the theatre. Look at that old bastard. I’ll bet he’s a millionaire, that’s the only way he’d get a young girl like that. It’s probably his daughter. What they didn’t know was that I can’t get it up and she batted for the other side. In other words I’m impotent and she’s a lesbian who lives with her girlfriend. But we’re good friends and we both had a great night. Between that and my exercise, not a bad effort for a dirty, grumpy old man who shouldn’t even be here. Not a bad effort at all. I’m sure Hank Chianski would have been proud of me.