by Dave Spikey
It’s no surprise, then, that I remember little of his early years until he got quite a bit older and started secondary school, by which time I was eighteen. I do remember witnessing him split his head open on the edge of the coffee table when he tripped and fell in the lounge. It was a nasty cut and I thought, ‘No amount of butter is going to heal that wound.’
Pete was always a happy-go-lucky kid and into everything. He was spoiled a bit because he was the youngest, but it didn’t really have any effect on him. He did okay at school, but not brilliantly because he was ‘easily distracted’, as they say, and ‘easily led’.
After a couple of false starts, Pete got a job in the laboratories of a bleach works just outside Bolton and started studying for his ONC. He met Bev when he was nineteen/twenty and they got engaged quite soon afterwards. They got married at the Victoria Hall in Bolton and had the reception in a basement Italian restaurant. There was a thunderstorm and I remember the restaurant leaking water and getting a little flooded. It was perhaps a sign of things to come.
Pete became sick shortly afterwards and when we look at the wedding photos, we always say, ‘Why on earth didn’t we notice that there was something wrong with him?’ He looked happy in the photos and sported his big beaming grin, but it was obvious that he’d lost a load of weight and was looking really gaunt.
He was admitted to Bolton Royal Infirmary for tests while I was working at the General Hospital in Haematology. The blood tests showed a degree of anaemia, but nothing much else. It was what is known as the ‘Anaemia of Chronic Disorder’ (ACD), which is secondary to an underlying condition.
They found the underlying condition a few days later on X-ray. It was a tumour growing on and around his heart – ‘mediastinal’ is the terminology. It was a very unusual presentation, especially in such a young person, and the consensus of opinion was that it could be a benign growth or possibly Hodgkin’s Disease, which does present in early adulthood and is a tumour of the lymphatic system.
I remember going round to Mum and Dad’s when the results came through and we had a group hug and cry, during which I tried my best to reassure them that even if it was Hodgkin’s Disease, the cure rate using specific chemo and radiotherapy was extremely high. We hoped, obviously, that it would be benign, but I had doubts because he was so ill and had lost so much weight.
The biopsy, which was examined in the Histopathology lab at the General Hospital, surprised everybody because it showed a malignant Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (NHL), which is extremely unusual in someone of Pete’s age and was, at that time, very difficult to treat and cure. I always wondered if it might have been triggered by the concentrated chemicals he was using at work, but I’d better leave that there.
I thought it best that I tell him, so I phoned the ward and told them not to say anything until I’d spoken with him and went straight down to the ward. As I approached his bed, he said in his own cheeky style, ‘You drew the short straw, did you?’ It seems that the message hadn’t got through and a junior doctor had spilled the beans. I tried to be very upbeat about the situation and told him that the prognosis was good and there had been great advances in treatment of NHL. He took it all onboard and was very positive in his approach to whatever the future held in store.
He was transferred to the Christie Hospital near Manchester, which is one of the finest cancer treatment centres in Europe, and which we are so lucky to have on our doorstep. After his assessment, we were given more bad news, which was that as the tumour was on and surrounding his heart, they couldn’t risk radiotherapy. The only hope was high-dose chemotherapy to shrink the tumour to a size and position where they could access it.
He started this regime while further tests were undertaken to establish exactly which type of NHL he had. At one visiting time early in the treatment, a doctor told my parents that the results were back and that they wanted to see Pete’s wife Bev the following morning, and that someone should accompany her because it wasn’t good news. This was devastating, but perhaps unsurprising, because Pete’s condition had deteriorated more over the past few days.
My mum and dad went with Bev to see the doctor while I waited by the phone at work and then for the first time during his illness, a small shaft of light shone through the darkness. The doctor was initially going to tell them that Pete’s condition was terminal, but overnight supplementary test results had been received, which now gave Pete a slim chance of surviving the gruelling treatment. Any chance was a chance, and so we were uplifted by that information and very upbeat when we visited Pete.
Over the next few weeks, Pete was hammered with chemotherapy, which made him very ill, but was successful in shrinking the tumour enough to get at it with radiotherapy. I visited when I could and his wife Bev was an absolute rock for him, which must have been very difficult for her, especially now that she discovered she was pregnant. This news obviously gave Pete a boost and even more cause to beat this awful disease. My parents, who must have been devastated, were absolutely focused in their support, travelling to the hospital most nights.
It’s a terrible admission, but many nights I tried to think of reasons not to go. I was busy at work, it was November and so the journey there and back was in the dark … The hours at the Christie were desperate, seeing my kid brother tortured by the treatment and seeming to fade. Then of course I gave myself a smack round the head and told myself to stop being so incredibly selfish and to try to imagine what Pete was going through each and every hour of the day. That he couldn’t take a night off because he was feeling a bit tired and worn down by it all.
I visited him on my own one night about a month into his treatment and he appeared a lot brighter. He seemed to have improved significantly in the couple of days since I’d last seen him; so much so that he said that he fancied a pizza! I said I’d nip out and get one for him, but he said no, he wanted to go out for one and suddenly he looked, in his eyes, a bit like his old self again. The staff said that it would be alright and so we went out in search of a pizza place!
It did seem that he had turned a corner and he got stronger every time I saw him. They allowed him to go home for short periods and on one occasion, with his hair falling out in clumps, he decided to go to his old mate Lol’s, who was a hairdresser, to have the lot shaved off. Lol is quite a character and a laugh-a-minute and was weirdly one of my best friends at school, so considerably older than Pete, but they had met through mutual friends on nights out in town and struck up a firm friendship. So Pete turned up at Lol’s shop and asked for a haircut, and Lol said that he was really sorry, but he had no availability that day. Pete removed his bob hat to reveal his half-bald, half-tufty look and said, ‘If you don’t shave this off, I’m going to stand outside your shop and shout, “Look what Lol did to me!”’ Lol cut his hair.
Pete had to undergo more radiotherapy and he became ill again with lung abscesses, which had to be drained. I visited him in a side ward in Manchester Royal Infirmary and was shocked at how ill he was. He went through so much pain in those months of treatment it was heartbreaking.
Then he began to come through it, and doctors became more optimistic that he was in remission and that the disease was undetectable and the side effects were calming down. Because he hadn’t worked, obviously, for a couple of years now and his immediate prospects were not at all bright, he was given a council house, where he went to live with Bev and his beautiful new daughter Zoe.
But this wasn’t good enough for Pete. He didn’t want to live off handouts, and so he resolved to do something about it. Firstly he enrolled in the Open University to do a degree in IT. Information Technology was in its early stages at the time and he had recognized the potential of obtaining a qualification in what was to become a major global technology.
He then convinced his bank manager that he should give him a mortgage based on his sickness and invalidity allowance. The bank manager was obviously sceptical about Pete’s ability to keep up the repayments over the term of the mortgage and he ins
isted on obtaining a report from Pete’s consultant regarding his prognosis. Thankfully, Pete got the mortgage and bought a house on Halliwell Road in Bolton, which fell within the council’s regeneration area. He applied for and got a full grant for the house and set about restoring the property into a beautiful terraced house.
In time, he obtained his degree and started working for a Manchester firm, quickly progressing through the ranks because he was a natural at computer programming and software solutions. Over the next few years, apart from a setback when he needed a new hip after they found that the chemo had destroyed one of his joints, he stayed well, remained in remission, got back to his old mischievous self, had a son, Christian (even though they told him the treatment would make him sterile!), and bought an old Porsche! He became more successful at work and hooked up with his old mates for nights out and partying.
He loved to party. He lived life to the full, as the saying goes (and who can blame him?). He found that he had a good singing voice and karaoke became a bit of a passion; I can hear him crooning ‘Mack the Knife’ now. He more often than not belted out a couple of his hero David Bowie’s tracks, ‘Jean Genie’ in particular. He became well known on the karaoke circuit and later sang duets with Zoe, who has inherited a brilliant voice.
Then his marriage broke down. Pete and Bev were divorced and the associated costs in terms of maintenance etc., added to his other financial pressures (for he had bought a new house without first selling the one on Halliwell Road, and had consequently got into a lot of debt), broke him financially and for a time psychologically. But, as these things do, slowly his situation improved. He got into a bit of debt again in later years, but I was lucky enough then to be in a position to help.
Pete moved into a new place in time and seemed a lot happier. It was around then, however, that he revealed that he’d not been feeling so well, suffering terrifically high temperatures and night-sweats, which left him feeling weak and exhausted. I insisted he went to the doctors because (I kept to myself) severe night-sweats can be an indicator of something serious occurring at cellular level. He had tests, which all came back normal, thank goodness, and soon after he met Sue, who was his neighbour. He brought her over to our pub in Chorley one night out of the blue and they seemed very much an item already.
Over the months, Pete recaptured his vigour, enthusiasm and lust for life, thanks to this relationship, but he still had episodes of illness with the night-sweats recurring. Pete and Sue were, on the whole, extremely happy together and they shared a passion for cooking, always coming up with incredible recipes using sometimes unusual ingredients. He loved a drink as well; his favourite tipple of cider was ‘Cheeky Vimto’, to which he quickly introduced Sue.
His doctor sent him for a scan after another bout of illness, but it came back clear, which surprised me in a good way. Meanwhile, he and Sue continued their intense courtship. I think, no, I’m sure that she loved Pete more than anyone else did. She always called him ‘Gorgeous’, always.
It became obvious that something was wrong with Pete as his periods of illness increased, and they sent him for a second scan. I was driving back from a gig when he phoned me with the results, which shocked me to the core.
‘They’ve found a tumour,’ he said and I could hear the fear and despair in his voice. I asked where and he told me that it was in the same place as his NHL tumour, mediastinal presentation. I said that although this was devastating, he shouldn’t be too down because even if it had returned, there was a good chance that chemo and radiotherapy could cure it again. Indeed, advances in treatment over the intervening twenty-odd years meant that he should be confident about beating it again. Pete, to his credit, did seem to take heart from the words and told me, ‘I’ve beat it once – I’ll do it again.’ You quite often see it said, in obituaries, that people lost their battle with cancer. Pete didn’t have a battle, he had a full-blown war.
I also tried to give him hope by reminding him of the fact that the tumour hadn’t been visible on the scan from earlier in the year, so it must be quite a recent event, and so more susceptible to treatment. That’s when he told me that they had reviewed his earlier scan and that the tumour was present and that somebody had missed it. How can somebody deserve so much terrible luck? Still, let’s stay positive and get it blasted, eh?
He had a biopsy a couple of days later and phoned me on the way back from another gig to give me more unexpected and devastating news. The tumour wasn’t NHL, it was lung cancer, thought to have been caused by the intensive radiotherapy to the area all those years ago! It can happen, but I didn’t think it possible after all this time. He said that they might be able to remove it surgically and I thought that that was really encouraging.
He was admitted to Blackpool Hospital for surgery, but when they opened his chest, they found that they couldn’t get at the tumour because it surrounded one of the major arteries. This pattern was to be repeated time and time again over the following months: small rays of hope lifting the soul, only to be extinguished suddenly by unexpected, awful twists of fate. How he kept going, how he kept smiling when he must have been screaming inside, continually baffled me and generated within me the most amazing respect, admiration and love for my brother as I accompanied him to interminable appointments for blood tests, X-rays, CAT scans, MRI scans, PET scans, consultations etc. The last PET scan was undertaken because it had been discovered that now he also needed a double heart bypass! How’s your lucky rabbit’s foot business doing, Pete? Then a heart surgeon agreed to undertake the procedure as the tumour appeared to be inactive.
Now you see a ray of hope? Now you don’t. The radiotherapy showed that the cancer had spread into his liver and that it was inoperable and that was that: abandon hope.
He was put on various combination chemotherapy treatments and battled away for months, getting weaker along the way. Sue was there for him every waking minute and most of the other hours of the day and we owe her so much for her care of him. I got over to see him almost every other day over the months and we always, always had a laugh, even during the last months when he was confined to bed. His indefatigable sense of humour was simply astounding. Who else could crack a joke like this at the pinnacle of their illness, when yet another doctor asked him the latest in a long line of stupid questions?
‘How do you feel, Pete?’ the doctor asked.
Pete slowly opened his eyes and said, ‘With my fingers.’
My mum and Tom visited regularly and through her suffering, she always put a brave face on for Pete. She was only doing what you would expect any mother to do under the circumstances, I suppose, but it must have been tearing her apart inside to see her youngest child endure such pain. She was amazing through it all and handled it with dignity and compassion and gained total respect for the way she coped with the terrible events over the years of Pete’s illness. She was always there for him, even though she lived quite a distance away. Sometimes she would sleep on the couch to be near him on the nights when she couldn’t bear to leave.
Pete rallied now and again and we’d go out for a meal or a drink. I got him a big-screen TV for Christmas and he got a Wii and loved playing on that. He and Sue came to the Hi-Life Dining Awards at the Hilton Hotel in Manchester and we had a great night and Sue fell out (not) with Pete because a woman sat next to them kept chatting him up! He enjoyed it so much that he vowed that he’d be back the next year and David, the Hi-Life boss, said he’d be very welcome, although I think we all thought in our hearts that he wouldn’t be there.
Pete and Sue and Christian came to our house in Spain in July. Although Pete was very ill from the flight and travel when he got here, he had a brilliant time after a good rest and watching him enjoy himself made us all enjoy the holiday that bit more.
Inevitably, there were sad moments. I was stood with him one night, watching the sun going down over the mountains, when he said, ‘I’ll never see this again, Dave’ – how sad is that? I often think about that moment, especially when
I’m watching a sunset or sitting in the garden in the spring sun. I think that it’s so unfair that after all he went through over the years, all the pain and suffering, all those moments of hope that were extinguished, how unfair that he can’t see the sun rise or hear the birds sing or have a laugh with his mates or enjoy a glass of wine on a long hot summer night and yet I can. He was my kid brother, he was eight years younger than me. After the moment on the terrace, we went in the house and suddenly he was crying and he turned to me and said, ‘I am so scared,’ and I had no real answer, no real words of comfort other than ‘Don’t give up on me now. There’s always hope.’
Back at home, autumn came and I was back on tour. Pete arranged to bring some friends to come and see the show with him and Sue, even though he was very ill. He made it, of course, and loved it and we went for a drink afterwards and he bragged about his ‘famous’ brother. Because that’s one thing I haven’t mentioned about Pete: he was my biggest fan. He supported me all the way through my career, he sang my praises to anyone who would listen and he loved everything that I did. He never begrudged me my success, he never once compared my life to his and felt that it was unfair that I had done so well and he had got the shitty end of the stick. He never felt sorry for himself or, at least, never showed it. He was brave and honest and true, my brother.
As the year passed, Pete became sicker. The steroids he was taking had bloated his features and the constant morphine he was on had deadened his sharpness, but he was still ‘Gorgeous’ to Sue.
I went with him to his hospital appointment as usual on 8 November, two days before his forty-eighth birthday. He asked the consultant how long he had left and the consultant said, ‘Realistically, a couple of months.’ Pete thought for a while and then said, ‘Alright, then, I’ll have the last two months in 2050!’ I still don’t know how he did that. And the thing is, he didn’t do it for himself, he did it for his family, to defuse the tension and to make us smile.