by Harry Beaves
I found hypnosis a very pleasant experience, calming and relaxing. The therapist would talk me down, then ask me what was in my mind and I would burble thoughts from my subconscious. One thought would link with another and so on for about an hour. He would then slowly bring me back up with reinforcing phrases like ‘Every day in every way you will become stronger. Your confidence will soar.’ In the early sessions I talked almost exclusively about my military experiences, particularly Northern Ireland. I had six sessions in all and, with no obvious explanation, I began to feel better. My phobic reactions were under greater control and, strangely, some of the bad habits of a lifetime, like nail-biting, were reduced.
As a result of the hypnotherapy I was able to go ahead with the operation on my other hand without too much anxiety. The frustrating thing was that the hypnotherapist could not satisfactorily explain why I felt better. He could not tell me why my subconscious mind was so concerned with the subjects that I burbled about or why I worried unnecessarily. I wanted to know the reason or cause of my condition, but he could only say that it was my mind reorganising my thoughts or responses to events more logically. The submarine was back in deep water so that I was able to lead a more or less normal life again and for a while I was stable.
Unusual events still triggered serious bouts of anxiety. When Heather’s son Edward had joined the Royal Marines, Barbara and I had accompanied his family and friends when he completed his training and passed out at the Commando Training Centre, Lympstone. It was a glorious day. I revelled in being back in the military environment again and Ed and I yarned about all the things that had happened to each of us in basic training.
We followed his military progress with great interest and inevitably his time came for active service in Afghanistan with 40 Commando. He was trained as a signaller and before he left assured his mother that he would be working in the comfort and safety of Company HQ, but I was only too aware that sooner or later he would be involved with patrol activities that would put him at serious risk. Family and friends rallied round and sent letters, parcels and cards to him, but I could do nothing. All of this happened when my anxiety was mounting and became a serious cause for me to worry. I very much wanted to write, but I couldn’t say trite things about the weather, TV or football when I knew the stresses that he was experiencing, nor could I find words to express my understanding of the circumstances that he was in and the pressure that he was under. I think my father had a similar problem when I was in Ireland. Stella sent me letters with little notes from Heather and I made two or three free phone calls home, but my father never wrote. Perhaps he, like me, was worried about receiving unwelcome news by return.
Ed returned safely and, as I had expected, he had been in the thick of it on a number of occasions. He matured noticeably over that period and today we share the manly handshake and the unspoken understanding of what it takes to be a soldier, in the same way that connected me so closely to my father.
My experience after my second hand operation is a prime example of the poor man-management within the company for which I was working. Having taken no notice of my hand problems before I had the two operations, the boss now decided, for some reason, to refer me to Occupational Health for a report. The report said that my reduced dexterity meant that I could only be employed on light duties. This made no sense at all as, until then, the pain in my hands had been so bad that, had I not had the two operations, I would have been unable to continue my work as a cabinet-maker at all. Now my hands were better than they had been for years and, although my grip was weaker, I was almost pain-free and had developed techniques to compensate for my shortcomings.
I appealed against the report, but health and safety was paramount and it took nine months to get the decision reversed. That was nine months of frustratingly-mundane work for me and nine months of reduced productivity for the company.
* * *
At the boatbuilders the workforce were always told that health and safety was a priority and that every incident, no matter how minor, had to be entered in the Accident Book and properly investigated. The result of the investigation was sent to the company lawyers who recommended action, as necessary. We were led to believe that this was to look after our wellbeing, but we gradually began to realise that the lawyers were far more concerned with apportioning blame, establishing that the accident was the employee’s fault and raising an umbrella over the company. Employees became reluctant to use the first aid box as it would mean an entry in the Accident Book, blame and, often, disciplinary action. Consequently, it was not unusual to see a cut finger covered with a dressing of toilet paper and masking tape rather than a proper dressing. In this climate it was probably inevitable that my departure from the company would be as the result of an incident.
I had spent the day working on my own, making table tops, and at about 4pm I was completing my fifth. The procedure involved bonding slats of tongued-and-grooved teak to a heavy plywood core. The boards were clamped tightly together and pinned to the plywood before being put in a huge hydraulic press.
I was putting the pins in with a gun, powered by compressed air, which was old, dirty and rarely serviced. A spring-operated safety device prevented the pins from being fired unless the gun was in actual contact with the wood. With wet glue, I had to work quickly and ran down the edge of the boards with the pin gun. As I lifted it off the work piece there was a ‘phutt’ and to my horror I saw a twenty-five millimetre pin had been fired into my left forearm. Caked with old glue, the safety mechanism had failed to work.
I called a colleague over and showed him, then took a deep breath and drew the pin out. As luck would have it, it had only penetrated about an eighth of an inch into the fleshy part of my arm and although it bled, it had missed the veins and arteries. I ran my arm under a tap, pressed hard with my thumb and the bleeding subsided so I thought I had better go and inform the boss.
He was very concerned as a faulty pin gun is potentially extremely dangerous. The wound was not bad enough to go to hospital, but it had to be entered in the book. We talked about it among the workforce and were firmly of the opinion that the state of the pin gun was a serious failing on the part of the company. The following day the management completed an inquiry and I thought no more of it. About a fortnight later I was called into the office and the boss told me that the findings of the inquiry were that the accident had occurred as a result of serious negligence on my part. I had lifted the pin gun from the work piece with my finger still on the trigger and not looked where the gun was pointing.
I simply could not believe it and suggested that the safety catch would have prevented this from happening, had the pin gun been clean and regularly serviced. I said that I felt the company had been seriously negligent, but the boss would not accept it and I was given a formal written warning for inefficiency. I asked to appeal, but there was little point as the inquiry and the appeal both came from within the company, so were unlikely to be change anything. I was incensed and felt I had been treated very badly. For me it was the end of the line with a company that had no interest whatsoever in its employees, so in August 2010 I resigned.
Chapter 36
Heather
The cowslips bloomed prolifically on the chalk downs of Salisbury Plain when, one Sunday in the spring of 1956, our family took a picnic on Red Hone Hill above the village of Urchfont. There were so many flowers that my father decided we should gather them so that he could make cowslip wine. We all set about it with enthusiasm, except for my mother who was so heavily pregnant that she could not bend down to pick them, so she sat on a rug, took the stems off and filled bags with the heads. My father brewed several different homemade wines, but the 1956 cowslip was his best ever. He kept a bottle and cracked it on Heather’s twenty-first birthday – sheer nectar.
When my mother told us that she was pregnant I set my heart on a baby brother, someone with whom I could play football and climb trees, so, when Stella and I were given the news that we had a baby siste
r, I was very disappointed. That disappointment soon disappeared and I quickly became devoted to her, as did everyone. Heather was a very energetic baby with a happy smile and whatever the gang were doing, she came too, much to the horror of my mother. I would carry her on my shoulders and when we put our coats down for goal posts I would sit her on top, but unfortunately she wasn’t much good as a goal post as she kept crawling away! Years later friends would ask cautiously, ‘… and how’s Heather?’ always wary that some dreadful fate might have befallen her at my hands. But in those childhood years I was devoted to her and if I couldn’t have a brother (or a goal post) then she was undoubtedly the next best thing.
She grew to be a very happy outgoing little girl with a winning smile that made her everyone’s favourite, but she had a hard childhood. When our mother died she was too young to have understood and I regret never having asked her what, if anything, she remembered of those times. For her, life must have been particularly difficult after Stella married in 1971 and she was left at home with my father. At the time I was single and serving in Germany so unable to give her the support that I should have done – another cause for regret.
Whilst she was at school she met Stephen Curr who went on to read Mathematical Physics at the University of Sussex in Brighton while Heather, who wanted to teach languages, obtained a place at Brighton Teachers’ Training College. Soon after she qualified, they married and set up home in Derby, where he was working for Rolls Royce. They lived in Derby for most of their married life and, with breaks for the birth of her daughter and son, Heather taught at the same school throughout the period.
With Heather on Swyre Head.
I suppose it was almost inevitable that she would inherit the cancer gene that was prevalent in my mother’s family and it is an indication of the advances in medical science that she was able to fight it and enjoy life for so much longer than either our mother or Stella did. She seemed to have recovered well from her first major operation, but at around the five-year point, when she was hoping to be declared ‘clear’ another problem flared up. After a second period in remission 294 | Down among the Weeds she had a third operation. This time the treatment was much more intense and recovery was far more difficult.
By the time of Philip’s wedding in 2010 she was much better, but at John’s wedding a year later she was off colour. She had been to France with a school trip and returned apparently with a virus which made her feel sick and dizzy. When she failed to respond to treatment the doctors looked further and discovered several tumours in her brain. The news was devastating. Her condition was inoperable, but we hoped it was possible to shrink the tumours and somehow prolong her life.
Her treatment was due to start in the autumn and it would be very intensive, so before it began she and Steve came to stay with us. They chose the weekend of the Great Dorset Steam Fair, which they were both keen to visit. The Steam Fair is a massive event over several hundred acres of farmland only a few miles from where we live. It is a great day out with something of interest for everyone.
I was particularly concerned that I would find Heather’s physical condition distressing and that my upset would make her unhappy, but I need not have worried. She was very calm, relaxed and every bit her usual self, although she was a little weak and tired easily. On the Friday evening we went to the Fairground which, alongside the modern white-knuckle rides, features many restored traditional attractions. The main feature however is a magnificent line-up of Showman’s Steam Traction Engines, with gleaming brass and coloured lights. Fifty or more of them form a magnificent spectacle. There was a lot of walking involved and it worried me that I might be asking too much of her, so in my anxious state I planned for every possible eventuality short of air attack! I watched to make sure she was OK, but I need not have worried as she coped well and seemed to be loving every minute of it. The evening was a real joy.
The following day we went back to see the rest of the show. It was warm and dusty, but we enjoyed a really lovely day and Steve took some excellent photographs. The weekend could not have gone better and I consciously fixed the happy images of those times firmly in my memory so that when the sad times inevitably came, I would have those memories to look back on.
Through the autumn the treatment was successful and the tumours were reduced in size and she was able to enjoy Christmas with her family. During these final months I was again suffering badly from anxiety and struggled to cope with Heather’s illness. I couldn’t answer the phone in case it was news that I did not want to hear. I didn’t want to visit or even ring as I didn’t trust my emotional state, yet I desperately wanted to help and was ashamed that I could not do more.
We decided to go to Derby to visit Heather and Steve at the end of March, at a time when my anxiety levels were relatively low. When we arrived we learnt that Heather had been admitted to hospital that day with severe stomach pains so we went straight there to see her. The sight of her in that hospital bed, in pain and sedated, her grey hair growing back after the chemotherapy, brought back vivid images of my mother’s last days and I knew her situation was very serious. That afternoon I heard Steve phone his son Ed, who was working away from home, to tell him to come back as his mother was very ill. It was only when I heard my father make a similar phone call to Stella that I really understood how very serious my mother’s condition was. There were so many similarities that it was as if I was watching my mother’s last days all over again.
My last picture of Heather at the Great Dorset Steam Fair, the happy memory that I fixed in my mind. Picture Steve Curr.
When the medical staff looked more closely they discovered that the cancer was also in other parts of her body and that there was nothing they could do but give her pain relief – memories of my mother again. We were due to go home the following day and I spent the last morning sitting by her bed just holding her hand. From time to time she would open her eyes and even then through the pain and sedatives there were sparks of that old sense of humour until the time came when we had to leave. I kissed her and said, ‘Goodbye’.
She died on 7th April 2012, aged fifty-six.
Chapter 37
The Anxiety Increases
I did not look for further employment after the boatbuilders and became busy in my retirement with my two paying hobbies. I had for some time collected old woodworking tools, a spin-off of which involved selling at markets and fairs in the summer months. Through the winter I maintained my woodworking skills by making wooden items that I would sell at Craft Fairs and the like.
Despite the release from the stresses caused by the management in my last job, I began to realise again that I was experiencing the same levels of anxiety as I had before hypnotherapy. My phobias had returned, in particular a sort of claustrophobia that meant that I was never happy in a place (even an open area like a market) unless I could see an uncluttered exit. The thought of being stuck, even for a short time, in a traffic queue caused huge anxiety. I had to summon up courage to have a haircut as I felt constrained in the chair by the barber’s cloth, so that I couldn’t escape if I needed to. (Why should I need to?) I was identifying problems in any unusual events that were about to happen, no matter whether they were pleasant or difficult. In consequence I began to stop doing many ‘normal’ things that I enjoyed.
In the autumn I became particularly anxious and apprehensive about a dental appointment to get a tooth capped. Dentists have always worried me since I had a very frightening and unpleasant experience having a tooth extracted aged about six. Ever after my dental treatment always seems to have been unusual, again feeding my thoughts that I was the person to whom the one-in-ten chance of complications would happen. Once in the dental chair I would be out of control and unable to escape (similar to the barber). I tried to dismiss my dental appointment as nothing to worry about – after all, anaesthetics work and it would be entirely routine – but my anxiety was rapidly mounting so I decided to return to the hypnotherapist.
The treatment was th
e same as before, but somehow I did not feel the same benefit and was far less comfortable. On the day of the dental appointment my anxiety level was sky high, but somehow I got through, mainly by using coping techniques given to me by the hypnotherapist. Afterwards, of course, I felt there had been nothing to it and I could not see why I had made such a fuss, but the dental treatment had been an enormous hurdle and I had suffered immense anxiety. In the days that followed my stress levels subsided and I returned to normal, but Christmas was approaching and I began to become unnecessarily anxious about events surrounding it.
I was unhappy that the hypnotherapist had not been able to explain why his treatment had worked before. This time he was less successful and I felt there was a deeper problem that hypnotherapy was not reaching. More and more I was beginning to feel that these problems were associated with my time in Belfast so I decided to go back to my GP.
I explained my problems to the doctor and he asked if there had been any traumatic events in my life. Were those traumatic events connected with my military service and could they be causing the anxiety? Deep down I knew the answer was ‘Yes’. He explained that two courses were open to me, talking therapy or medicinal treatment.
Some mental health problems are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. Correcting these imbalances with Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) can often return a patient to health more quickly than talking therapies, so I opted for this.