The Man Who Didn't Go to Newcastle

by Alison Clink

  On the journey to Westbury she chats all the way, unfazed when we are stuck behind a defunct Mr Whippy ice cream van doing twenty miles per hour. We get to Westbury just in time for her to catch the London train – she says she’ll visit again in a couple of weeks’ time. We all keep making these plans but is she wondering in the back of her mind, as I am, whether this will be?

  *

  When I get home Adrian is in the garden doing the crossword. If it wasn’t for his voice and his skeletal appearance, this could be just like old times. In the evening we go to McDonald’s for a takeaway to please the girls, who are now back home. But Adrian seems grumpy and only nibbles at the edges of his burger. I soon realise he’s feeling sick.

  Phil Gullifer phones to tell Adrian about a drama on TV tonight starring Martin Clunes, so we plan to watch it. It’s called The Man Who Lost His Head and I like the sound of it but then realise Peter is settled in the living room watching Sharpe which looks like it might go on for some hours. Peter decamps with some reluctance to the less comfortable chairs of the kitchen to watch Sharpe in there and Adrian obviously feels bad, and de trop.

  ‘I don’t want to cause any trouble here,’ he says.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say. I realise Adrian may not understand the subtle dynamics of a family of six people, not to mention the dynamics of myself and the man I’ve lived with for thirty years. We have unwritten rules about television viewing. New dramas starring Martin Clunes score higher than old re-runs of Sharpe, which have been on a million times, last for ever, and are not exactly what could be called female friendly – except that Sean Bean is attractive-ish – if you’re partial to a red-coat with a Leeds accent.

  However, as Adrian and I sit together on the sofa watching what turns out to be a love story set in Africa, I wonder whether he’d prefer to be watching Sharpe in the kitchen with Peter.

  ‘This is a bit slow,’ he says at least twice.

  But I enjoy the story. I like the way Martin Clunes and the girl, who is his love interest, both see the blood red sun from opposite sides of the world and then end up together. And the way Martin Clunes’ fiancée says of one of their prospective guests (when trying to organise her wedding reception), ‘but if I put him on that table, then every man on the table will have a moustache.’ There are some nice supernatural touches as well as some good minor characters like the policeman who wants to get Martin Clunes away from the island so he can have the girl for himself.

  When Emily rings for me to pick her up, I tell her I’ll come when this has finished – even though I’d intended to leave and miss the ending. I stay and watch it to the end. Lovely. Thanks to Phil G for recommending it. Not sure Adrian would agree, though.

  Adrian finishes the day with a large brandy. How much has he drunk today? I haven’t been counting…

  Monday 27th August 2007

  Adrian’s carer today is Jean from Beckington. She’s less buzzy than Lizzie. Less thin. Less highly strung. In less of a rush. After making his bed she sits down for a coffee with us in the kitchen. I decide to ask if the service could include the cleaning of the downstairs toilet which Adrian is using. She says ‘yes’. As we sit chatting Adrian says he feels sick and looks very miserable.

  ‘I’m feeling rough,’ he says. ‘I’ve taken an anti-nausea pill but I think I might need more than one. I’m going back to bed.’

  ‘That’s ok,’ I say. ‘We can go to Lullington another afternoon.’

  We’d planned to go to Lullington, a village on the other side of Orchardleigh, which is full of up-market cottages, most of which have been renovated by rich Londoners. Adrian was going to sit in the car while I took Billy for a walk. Instead he adjourns to the study.

  As Jean leaves I manage to have a talk with her in private as I walk with her to her car.

  ‘Surely if you drink alcohol when you’re taking morphine you’re going to feel sick?’ I say. ‘Doesn’t morphine cause nausea? I think my brother is an alcoholic but I’ve never really seen him drunk, except maybe once or twice.’

  ‘Alcoholics don’t get drunk,’ she echoes Matron’s words of a couple of weeks ago. I’m still not convinced this is true, though. She says Syd, the nurse from Dorothy House, might be the one to talk to Adrian about the dangers of mixing pills and booze. When Jean has gone I sit in the kitchen waiting to take him out but he’s asleep. And the sun has gone in anyway.

  At the weekend Carol said Adrian must be very strong to continually fight off the C.diff.

  ‘Maybe he’ll live on and on despite the London doctor’s gloomy forecast. I’ll never forget those words that doctor used,’ I said to her. ‘Weeks rather than months.’

  ‘But that was weeks ago, and will soon be months ago,’ Carol pointed out.

  So where does that leave us now? Where does that leave Adrian? Surely the medical profession isn’t always right?

  I pray the London doctor was wrong.

  *

  Tonight over a dinner of roast chicken and apple crumble, which Adrian has chosen and eats well, he tells us about the new-build flat Carol has bought in east London.

  ‘One of her friends rather spookily told her she would never live there. This reminded me of something that happened to me in The Gardener’s. There was a strange guy in there. No one knew who he was. When he left the pub he singled me out, although there were a lot of us in there. He said “you are the most spiritual and religious person in this room”.’

  Everyone gasps. ‘How did you react?’ I ask him.

  ‘At the time I laughed. But his remark stayed with me. Funny that I should think of it now.’

  We all agree these kind of random remarks, made by people who may well be slightly unhinged, do have a big impact. I tell the story of a similarly bizarre encounter at a jumble sale in Kensington in the seventies.

  ‘As I rummaged through the jumble I was suddenly aware of a man beside me who was wearing a brown blanket over his head. He was dressed as a woman but had a full beard and was a large, masculine man. He looked so disturbing I was shocked when I caught sight of him. For a moment we locked eyes as he peered at me from beneath the blanket.

  ‘“You’re evil,” he said to me.’

  Everyone shudders and laughs.

  *

  I have been thinking about Adrian in relation to spirituality and religion. I can see him being spiritual – even more so lately. Though not particularly religious. There is a difference, I think. And I can feel him moving away from us. Moving away from life. After dinner Adrian and I watch University Challenge together, but as the evening progresses everything changes. At about ten o’clock I’m upstairs about to have a shower when I hear him calling me from the downstairs loo. I come down. His pants are in a mess and the room smells horrible. The C.diff has returned – with a vengeance. I clean him up and he shivers with cold since he has hardly any clothes on and then eventually I manage to settle him in bed with instructions to ring my mobile in the night if necessary.

  At four-thirty my mobile rings and I stagger out of bed to find him in a mess again. Diarrhoea is everywhere. There’s a fat bluebottle buzzing round the kitchen that’s probably had a leg in something juicy and I can’t seem to swat the blasted thing. After I’ve cleaned the floor (and Adrian) I go back to bed, tired and hopeless, feeling so sorry for him. He takes a few steps forward and then a hundred faltering steps back. He looks destroyed, but, unbelievably, ready to face the C.diff challenge again.

  ‘We’ll have to get onto the docs in the morning and get more antibiotics,’ he said when I’d got him back into bed. He’s up for the fight again. Where’s there’s life there’s hope, they say. How extraordinarily true.

  Tuesday 28th August 2007

  Today turns out to be a long, miserable day. It reminds me of long, miserable days spent at home on my own with babies. With each of my kids I seemed to have at least one day like this. The kind of day when the baby’s only slept for an hour the night before and cries all day with colic.

  Li
zzie arrives and cleans up. She tells me I must call the doctor because of the return of the C.diff and because Adrian has conjunctivitis in his right eye. Do I need to be told when to call a doctor? It seems I do, but with so many things wrong it’s hard to know when we need help and when we don’t. Have things got worse?

  Yes, things have definitely got worse.

  I phone the surgery to arrange a doctor’s visit. Then I wait. She’ll come between eleven-thirty and two-thirty apparently. I carry on waiting until two twenty-five when the dog is fastening his own lead around his collar and eating his way through the back door. I ring the surgery again.

  ‘The visit was cancelled because you had a visit from a District Nurse,’ the voice on the other end of the phone tells me.

  ‘No, we haven’t had a visit from a District Nurse. At least, not today,’ I reply. ‘And I’ve been waiting in all day. I need to take my dog out.’

  ‘Well, I can offer you a visit by six-thirty pm. You can take your dog out for half an hour as the doctor won’t be coming straight away.’

  Oh, cheers! I’ll go and share that piece of encouraging news with Billy who is now sulking on the sofa.

  When I get back from the dog walk, Olivia from Dorothy House arrives. We chat together over a cup of tea before she goes into the study to see Adrian. As nice as I’d imagined from Adrian’s description, she is personable and quick to laugh. She talks about a group at Dorothy House which Adrian could join. The thought of him joining a group of fellow cancer sufferers seems depressing, yet I wonder what Adrian’s take on this would be. I don’t see him as a group-joiner. But this is academic since he can’t meet with them now he has C.diff again.

  She mentions the ‘neat bugs’ once more. I never did manage to find a website selling them. I tell her I’ll go on the internet to look for them later. She also says that when she first met Adrian he made a point of making it clear to her he was a graduate and said everyone at St Vincent’s was talking to him as if he was a five-year-old.

  ‘Well, he certainly did seem to have a problem with the staff there, but I think he was a lot younger than most of the other residents. It wasn’t really the right place for him.’

  ‘Listen, I think Adrian is a lot younger than most of the staff at St Vincent’s!’ she says. From hearing her talk I can tell Adrian has touched her, and that’s why she’s come to see him, despite the fact he’s no longer on her patch. He likes her too and don’t we usually like people who seem to like us? Maybe he makes her laugh.

  I relax as we chatter whilst waiting for the doctor. Suddenly I hear myself asking her the sixty-four thousand dollar question.

  ‘How long do you think he’s got?’

  ‘Well, he won’t be collecting his pension when he’s eighty,’ she says. ‘But I can’t make any other predictions.’

  Olivia makes me feel as if he could fight this. As if we all can. These nurses who work with cancer patients are truly amazing people. They have something extra tagged on to their souls the rest of us just don’t have. A little bit of God. She leaves me and goes into the study.

  *

  By the time Olivia comes back into the living room after she’s spoken to Adrian her mascara looks smudged. She’s been crying. How can people like this who must be dealing with cancer patients all day and every day afford to be so easily moved? Maybe Adrian is a bit special to her. I’d like to believe he is.

  She tells me Syd, who is to be her replacement, will come tomorrow.

  ‘Everyone loves Syd,’ she tells me. How many times have I heard this recently? Although his name makes him sound like someone who might be selling second-hand Jags I’m feeling I already like him too, despite not having met him.

  While Olivia is here I take the opportunity to ask more questions. Like, why is Adrian’s voice so hoarse?

  ‘The tumour in the lung sometimes touches the voice box,’ she says. ‘Which is why his voice is affected.’

  I feel shocked by this revelation. The explanation as to why Adrian’s voice is so weak seems obviously graphic and at the same time unsettling. I’m about to ask whether this will get worse, when the locum GP arrives.

  The GP is small, youngish – probably in her thirties – with a strong Teutonic accent and two Mary Poppins sized bags. Billy barks at the bags for a moment before trying to have sex with the larger one. After looking in on Adrian she joins us in the living room with the news that she will prescribe the usual antibiotics. Olivia and I have just been discussing the antibiotics. It seems as soon as Adrian comes off them the C.diff recurs.

  ‘I’ve heard drinking alcohol makes patients more vulnerable,’ I say.

  ‘Possibly,’ Olivia says. The doctor is too busy writing out the prescription to join in this debate. As a mother of four who’s had my fair share of drugs prescribed for various throat infections etc., I suggest a liquid form of the antibiotics might help Adrian since the pills he’s been taking are so big, he refers to them as horse pills. The GP reluctantly agrees to this and writes out a new script for a liquid antibiotic. Her bedside manner is unengaging and she is completely overshadowed by Olivia’s easy, people-friendly demeanour. After handing me the prescription she totters off with her two carpet bags. What on earth does she have in them? Definitely a rubber plant, a tape measure and an expanding hat stand.

  When Olivia has also left I head off to Sainsbury’s where the pharmacist informs me they don’t have the liquid form of antibiotics so I can’t have them.

  ‘Okay, I’ll have them in pill form, then.’

  ‘I’m not allowed to dispense anything unless it’s written on the prescription,’ she says. ‘And I can’t get anyone on the phone now as the surgery is closed.’

  She’s young. It’s gone seven. Once again, computer says no.

  ‘But surely the pills contain exactly the same ingredients as the liquid.’

  ‘Yes, but the patient may not be able to swallow anything but liquid.’

  ‘But that’s not the case here. It was my suggestion to try a liquid. The GP wanted to prescribe the usual pills, but I suggested liquid to make it easier for my brother, who is the patient, to swallow them. He needs them tonight. Have you heard of the hospital superbug, C.diff? Well, he has C.diff and he needs antibiotics urgently.’

  ‘I’m sorry but I’d be breaking the law if I dispensed something not on a prescription.’

  I do my other shopping while she prepares the eye drops for his conjunctivitis. I need lots of antibacterial sprays, disinfectants and air purifiers to make sure the bacteria isn’t passed on to any of us. Although my symptoms of the other morning have gone, I want to be careful. But as I look around Sainsbury’s for all these things I’m boiling up inside. I cruise around the aisles preparing my speech for the pharmacist when I go back to collect the eye drops.

  ‘Look, these antibiotics are for my brother who has terminal cancer as well as a potentially fatal superbug which he contracted in an NHS hospital. If he doesn’t get the drugs tonight, it might mean life or death for him. I understand your rules but you must know the liquid is the same as the pills and ok ‘computer says no’ but have a heart, use your initiative, use your brain, what is this country coming to? I blame the Labour government…’

  When I get back to her counter the same woman pharmacist is standing waiting for me with the eye drops and a packet of antibiotic pills in her hand. She hands them to me before I can speak.

  ‘I’ll be taking full responsibility for dispensing something not written on a prescription,’ she says. ‘And I’ll let the surgery know first thing tomorrow morning what I’ve done.’

  I swallow my planned tirade, hold in a sob that’s about to bubble up and burst, only managing a barely audible ‘thank you’ before heaving onwards with my trolley full of disinfectants, sprays and rubber gloves towards the queue at the checkout.

  *

  Back home I juggle the tasks of cooking spaghetti bolognaise and cleaning up another commode-full of liquid poo. Stressed, and baulking at the sme
ll (the study is off the kitchen) I phone the out of hours nurse to see if I can get some extra help with the cleaning up in the evenings. However, they don’t offer this kind of service.

  Before I go to bed I tell Adrian something Olivia said today. Apparently the doctor who visited him at St Vincent’s said the lung cancer didn’t appear to have spread. I had noticed in Adrian’s Daily Mirror racing diary against Wednesday 22nd August he’d written 3.15 Dr Higgs with a tick beside his name and the words Good Guy.

  Adrian then surprises me by saying, ‘Do you think it’s all a mistake and it’s just benign?’

  I’m cut. This is a far cry from his original ‘I’m stoic’ whatever-will-be-will-be attitude way back in June.

  ‘No,’ I answer. Quite harshly, in fact. Too harshly. ‘No,’ I repeat, softening the word. ‘Because we know it’s spread to the liver and kidneys.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he concedes, looking down at his crossword.

  In bed Peter is softly snoring beside me. As I drift off to sleep I try to imagine whether there’s anything I could say to Adrian to help him if we came to the point where he was actually dying. Wait for us. I’ll see you when I get there. I might not be so far behind. I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon? If I said something like this maybe it would help him feel better, not so alone. And wouldn’t it be true in a way? We’re all going to die one day. The only difference for Adrian is he’s been told it will be sooner rather than later.

  Just before midnight, Emily calls me. She’s been watching a film in her room and went downstairs for a cup of tea. I go down to find Adrian sitting at the kitchen table with excrement down his new white tennis shoes, the ones he bought with his winnings on the horses when he went AWOL from St George’s. It’s all down his new dressing gown too. He’s obviously been to the toilet but not realised the state he’s in. This is tough. I don’t want to humiliate him, but I have to point out to him what’s happened in order to help him clean up.