Are We Nearly There Yet?: A Family's 8000 Miles Around Britain in a Vauxhall Astra

by Hatch, Ben

  When Dinah was in labour, at her bedside, I offered, albeit useless in the circumstances, energy tablets. I held her hand and said, ‘Big deep breaths, love. You can get through this. I love you. It will all be worth it in the end. Nearly there, nearly there.’ I wondered if she fancied one of the Marmite rolls I’d prepared, would she like to sit on the birthing ball? On the toilet now, the door closed so she can get back to sleep, I realise what she’s thinking. Dinah’s convinced I’m a hypochondriac. Despite the fact every time I’m ill there’s always something diagnosed as wrong with me, even though sometimes it’s not the original thing I thought it was, she’s clearly thinking it’s all in my head.

  I push the toilet door open. ‘Before you say anything,’ I shout into the room, ‘just because we saw the sofa Emily Brontë died on the other day in the Brontë Parsonage, that doesn’t mean I think I’m dying of TB.’

  I close the door. On the toilet I strain but nothing happens. I try panting to get a rhythm going. Nothing happens. I lie on all fours like a cow giving birth. Nothing. I squeeze my stomach with both hands like I’m a giant tube of toothpaste willing the mass down to my sphincter. Nothing. Off the toilet I grab my phone and google my symptoms: ‘An abdominal pain combined with a change of bowel habits can be indicative of colorectal cancer.’ So then I google colorectal cancer and out of a checklist of seven symptoms, I have six. Lack of appetite. I didn’t have any dinner last night. Dizziness. Check. Fatigue. I am very, very tired. Weight loss. My shorts are practically falling off me. Palpitations – I’m having them now. Pains in abdomen. Check. The only one I haven’t got is blood and mucus in my stool. I wake Dinah again. She’s level-headed. ‘Love, of course you’re tired. It’s five in the morning. You’ve lost weight because we’ve been walking about every day. Trust me, it’s constipation. We’ll buy some peppermint later. Try to be quiet or you’ll wake the…’

  Phoebe appears at the toilet door.

  ‘Great!’ says Dinah.

  ‘Why are you sweating, Daddy?’ she says. ‘Have you been for your run?’

  ‘No, go back to bed, sweetheart.’

  Charlie puts his head round the door. They both stare at me on the toilet.

  ‘Why is Daddy making that sound, Mummy?’

  ‘He’s not feeling well.’

  ‘Are you not feeling well, Daddy?’ asks Charlie.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you got a tummy ache?’

  ‘Yes. Daddy has a very bad pain in his side that is making him sweat and double up occasionally and he’s worried that nobody is taking him seriously and that…’

  ‘Mummy, can we watch CBeebies?’

  They climb into the bed. Dinah puts CBeebies on. Another shooting pain courses through me. Desperate now for some relief, I lock the bathroom door and resort to drastic measures. To relieve the constipation, I force a toothbrush up my arse. I picture the poo as a solid mass like a slab of concrete and the toothbrush as a Kango drill smashing it into bits. Except all that happens afterwards is I emit a series of high-pitched clickety farts that sound like a pod of dolphins communicating.

  Instead I run a hot bath. Out of the bath the pain returns. I try to be sick again but I can’t. I double up on the floor. I straighten out. I breathe deeply. I breathe shallowly. I lean on the kitchen worktop. I picture myself dying while they’re watching Nina and the Neurons. Ten minutes later it comes upon me suddenly and I have to run for the loo but all that I pass is blood and thick yellow mucus. I open the bedroom door. They’re all lined up snugly in the bed.

  ‘Love, you’ve got to take me to hospital.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But we’re watching Ollie the Smell Neuron, Daddy,’ says Phoebe. ‘I love Ollie the Smell Neuron. He’s my favourite neuron.’

  ‘Dinah? We need to go now,’ I beckon her towards me and explain what’s happened.

  ‘You did what? You just stuck a toothbrush up your bum – your one, I hope – and now you’re wondering why you’re bleeding. What’s the matter with you?’

  It takes forever getting ready, preparing milk for Charlie, finding out where the Leeds General Infirmary is from the reception desk. In the car every tiny bump in the road feels like someone punching me in the kidneys. When Dinah takes a wrong turning I find myself shouting directions, ‘Red hospital sign straight on, red hospital sign left, red hospital sign straight on’, whilst in the back Phoebe complains she hasn’t had breakfast.

  Finally outside A & E Dinah says, ‘Just make sure you tell the doctor about the toothbrush as well. Don’t be not telling him now. Ring me when you need picking up.’

  I climb from the car but how on earth am I going to explain that one:

  ‘Doctor, I got constipation so I stuck a toothbrush up my bum to loosen it and when I was doing this I felt some resistance and pushed through an obstacle and now there’s blood in my stool!’

  But the thing is, did the toothbrush cause this or did the toothbrush merely locate a tumour up my bottom that I’d otherwise have been unaware of? Walking to the reception desk I’m having fantasy conversations with friends. I’m telling them, ‘Sticking a toothbrush up my arse saved my life.’

  At the reception desk another spasm electrifies me. I can’t stand up. I have to bend my knees occasionally, and squat down and pop up to finish answering questions.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Ben Hatch.’

  Duck down.

  ‘Address?’

  Pop back up. I give our road name.

  Down again.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  Up again: ‘Hove, East Sussex.’

  In the waiting area the most comfortable position is to squat with one leg half-cocked and the other stretched out behind me on the ground while I rest both my hands on the carpet tiles supporting my forward weight like a 100-metre runner in the blocks. There’s one other person here with a Pudsey Bear-style bandage over his eye. As soon as the nurse sees the state I’m in she points into a consulting room.

  ‘In there.’

  I’m seen straight away by a young Asian doctor. I sit on a gurney. He tells me the pain sounds colicky, like a kidney stone. But when I tell him about the blood in my stool, he tells me to lie down on the bench and take my trousers and boxers down. I do as he asks. While I’m on my side, my knees bunched into my stomach, he snaps on a rubber glove.

  ‘This isn’t going to hurt but you might feel a slightly unnatural sensation,’ he says, as he dabs a glob of wax on his index finger and inserts it. It doesn’t actually hurt that much, but I wince as if it does, to show that penetration of my arsehole by toothbrushes, or by any other means, is a rare and unpleasant event. Afterwards he asks me a series of questions.

  ‘Work OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ I tell him.

  ‘Any kids?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘They all right?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Then the killer question, ‘Mum and Dad still alive?’

  ‘OK,’ he says after I’ve told him about Dad. ‘I think we have two things here.’

  ‘Two!’

  ‘Firstly, I think you might well have a kidney stone. The blood in your stool, however, I believe is probably stress related. A bit of irritable bowel. But I’d still like it checked out. Have you had a barium enema before?’

  He explains what it is, gives me a painkiller and in the Critical Decisions Unit my details are logged again. I’m given a bed and told how to operate the three bed buttons in great detail, like I’ve been given the keys to a Harrier Jump Jet.

  ‘And the third one marked D is for down. And the one marked U is…’

  ‘Is it for up?’

  The nurse shoots me a look. ‘Yes,’ she says, surprised. ‘It is.’ She fetches a jug of water. I’m asked to drink it.

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Yes.’

 
And I lie there imagining dying of kidney failure or bowel cancer, Dinah being informed in the serviced apartment a few hours later: ‘I’m sorry, he was just too far gone when he came in. We did all we could. How he bore that pain…’ I imagine her crying, the kids hugging her, Dinah wailing, ‘I made him cycle in the air. WE WATCHED NINA AND THE NEURONS. I should have known when he says he’s ill he’s always diagnosed with something even if it isn’t the thing he originally thought it was.’

  A large man in an oversized white T-shirt is admitted. He has a shaved head and is linked via a metal chain to two prison warders. Another man is wheeled in, his head fixed rigidly inside what looks like a metal hamster cage. He stares upwards, covered head to toe in bandages.

  Half an hour later a West Indian nurse draws the curtains round the bed. She hands me a box of Picolax. I’m to take it after my kidney scan. It will prepare me for the barium enema.

  ‘Dis stuff very powerful,’ she says, keeping one hand on the box herself as if I’m not yet ready to be trusted with it.

  ‘Make sure you by de toilet all de day.’

  I touch the box. Again she will not release it.

  ‘Don’t be leaving da ward. Goin’ outside.’

  I nod.

  Finally she lets go of the box and, opening the bed curtains to leave, she says just loud enough for the woman lying in the bed next to me to hear: ‘You’re going to be on de toilet all de day.’

  I try to call Dinah but her phone is switched off or out of juice and a short while later Buster calls. ‘A kidney scan and a whatemma?’ he says.

  ‘A barium enema. It’s this white radioactive type stuff that shows up on the X-ray and tells you if there’s something wrong with your colon. I’ve had blood in my poo.’

  ‘When you had that constipation, are you sure you weren’t straining too hard?’

  ‘It’s not piles. I know what they are.’

  ‘OK, but did you put anything up your bum like a toothbrush to loosen the poo?’

  Pause.

  ‘Have you been speaking to Dinah?’

  Buster laughs.

  ‘I knew it,’ he says. ‘You’ve ripped your bum lining, you berk. That’s what did it. Now you’ve got to think up an excuse to tell the doctor.’

  ‘They won’t know I stuck anything up my bum, will they?’

  ‘Of course they will. They must get it all the time. Oh doctor, I was in the bathroom and I accidentally slipped over and a toothbrush went up my bum.’

  ‘Are you sure a toothbrush can tear your bum lining?’

  ‘So it was a toothbrush?’

  Buster laughs.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘For God’s sake, you can’t go sticking things up your bum and expect to get away with it unless you’re a qualified poof. Don’t tell the doctor, whatever you do.’

  ‘I stuck it up and felt some resistance and just assumed it was the poo blockage so I pressed harder and something seemed to give and although I did go to the toilet I also started bleeding.’

  ‘Of course, that’s what it is. I can’t believe you stuck a toothbrush up your arse. You really have to think of an excuse if the worst comes to the worst and it’s not bowel cancer.’

  I laugh.

  ‘Ooh, that’s interesting,’ he says.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘I just read something. If you don’t shit for eight days you die. No! I didn’t know that. Have you got your phone with you? Google “Not Shitting plus Dangers” and see what you get.’

  ‘You googled my constipation?’

  ‘I googled your bum.’

  ‘I’ve got six days to live?’

  ‘Yup. Now go and stick something else up your bum to break it all up. Think of it as gunk wedged in the Hoover nozzle. A coat hanger, a stick. Break it up before you die.’

  I laugh again then he says more seriously. ‘It is weird how it comes out though. I’ve been getting a stomach ache the last few days too.’

  ‘I know. I thought I was coping well – being all Dad-like.’

  ‘Then twenty-four hours later you’re in A & E with wind…’

  ‘And a kidney stone, Buster.’

  ‘You’ve got wind, you berk.’

  In radiology I’m asked to lie down on a bench with my hands behind my back. A nurse in rubber soles manipulates me into an oblong, coffin-like machine. My legs are bunched up and I’m told to obey the instructions I’ll hear on a loudspeaker when she leaves the room. Laser lights illuminate my body around the groin area. The whole thing lasts about ten minutes and afterwards the nurse re-enters the room. She hands me my file and tells me to give it to the ward reception.

  Back on the ward the man with the strapped head complains he needs ‘ger toilet’. He’s told until he’s X-rayed he can’t move at all. Another nurse draws the curtain round my bed. The doctor pulls it back a fraction, closes it after him and sits at the end of my bed. He tells me I have a 4-milimetre kidney stone. I’ll need to be transferred to St James’s University Hospital and will have to stay in overnight, perhaps longer if there’s damage to my kidney. He leaves and the nurse re-enters to explain things in more detail. The specialist department that will deal with me is called urology. She says the word slowly. She even spells it for me – U-R-O-L-O-G-Y – and then writes it down on a piece of paper.

  ‘UROLOGY. Do you understand?’

  I nod.

  I call Dinah, half of me feeling triumphant it wasn’t wind and half of me worried I’ve irreparable kidney damage. She arrives at 1.30 p.m. Charlie runs about crawling under beds and Phoebe tells me she can make me better.

  ‘Pretend Fluffy is a stetamope.’

  She places the bear on my chest.

  ‘What does the stetamope say?’

  ‘You need medicine. Now pretend this is the medicine.’ She passes me an imaginary cup that I drink from. ‘So how you do feel? Better?’

  ‘A lot better.’

  ‘See.’

  Normally the kids brighten any atmosphere. Their exuberance induces smiles from the hardest of hearts. Here there’s none of that. They leave after the nurse, who’s been scowling since they arrived, warns Dinah the ward is full of germs and it’s not safe for them. Looking at their little round faces staring at me through the glass door as they wave goodbye, I feel like crying.

  Two hours later when a bed becomes available, I’m transferred by ambulance to the Lincoln Ward of Jimmy’s. In the bed nearest the door is a bald man in his late fifties in so much pain he cannot lean forward to eat his bangers and mash. Opposite him, nearest the window, is Bernard, a Michael Heseltine lookalike, who’s in such pain he eats his sausage and mash with his eyes closed tightly. Next to him a man is dying. His mouth is wide open as he sleeps, his lips have vanished and he’s curled into a skeletal wiry mass. He’s still given his sausage and mash but clearly has no chance of seeing it let alone eating any. To my left are two others I can’t see because their curtains are drawn.

  I’m clerked, told the doctor won’t see me until the morning and told to take my Picolax. I cannot eat because of the barium enema tomorrow and I cannot leave the ward to make a phone call because of the volcanic Picolax. Our ward overlooks the A & E entrance. The game is to spot how many cops it takes to deal with violent thugs being admitted. Everyone cranes over to look whenever a Black Maria pulls up. The record that night: eleven.

  At 8 p.m., visiting time arrives but Dinah doesn’t. The wife and daughter of the man who’s dying show up and in the words of Bernard, ‘Woke the old fella up. Gave him a banana. And scarpered after ten minutes, leaving him jabbering. He’ll be at it all night now.’

  At 11 p.m. the lights are switched off. I put on my overhead light and the bulb goes. At the nurse’s station I’m told for health and safety reasons they can’t change it. And that neither can I. Will I have to lie in bed all night in the dark? A plucky nurse says she doesn’t care about the stupid rule – she’ll change my light bulb. I read for a while to justify her bravery then switch it off and tr
y to sleep. An old guy called Christopher shits his bed. The dying man groans until 2.30 a.m. when Bernard’s phlegmy snoring takes over. In bed I panic I’m going to die. That I’ll hear bad news in the morning – the sort of bad news Dad received. I picture saying goodbye to the kids and Dinah. I imagine my mum’s shiny fingers and holding her hand.

  The early morning is full of bleeps, of reversing lorries outside, of urine bags that need emptying, of nurse entreaties: ‘Just roll on your side, Christopher,’ then more bad temperedly, ‘Side, Christopher. Side.’

  I get talking to the man in the next bed. He came in with a kidney stone too, but it developed into DVT and from there to a massive infection that left him unconscious and on a high dependency unit for a week close to death. After this I’m very careful shaving so that I don’t nick myself. To have an open wound here now feels as dangerous as having one in shark-infested waters. I’ve told the nurses the soap dispenser in the bathroom needs replacing but it’s still empty twelve hours later and now the towels used to mop up Christopher’s shit last night are here too, lying unwashed in a heap in the corner.

  At midday I’m in the radiology department again. I’m told to sit on a chair in the corner because the radiographer wants to explain a few things. I do as I’m told and he leans down, and with a smile that’s a mixture of reassurance, Schadenfreude, contempt, irony, pity and probably general amusement, he tells me they’re going to insert a flexible tube up my back passage and pump barium solution into me. I’ll then be given a relaxant to loosen my bowels and air will be puffed into me to open my colon.

  ‘At this point you’ll have to do a bit of acrobatics while we take images. Did you take the preparation beforehand?’

  I nod.

  ‘How did it do?’

  ‘It did what was expected of it,’ I say, and the doctor gives me the same smile.

  On the tilting table I lie on my left side and the tube is inserted. The radiographer tells me to take deep breaths while they fill me with the white liquid.

  ‘You’ll feel a sensation of being full,’ he says.

  I’m given the injection, which makes my eyes blur. Air is pumped into me and I’m rotated on the table, feeling now the size of a Space Hopper, so they can take images. On my left side, right side, almost standing up, on my front, and on my back. Every time I move I’m conscious of the tube attaching me to the machinery like an umbilical cord and of the need to grip hold of it with my sphincter muscle in case it comes out and barium starts squirting round the room like it’s coming from an out-of-control hosepipe. After twenty minutes I ask the doctor what he’s seen. He’s vague – he only sees images for a split second.