We Thought it was All Over
Further experiences with cancer and the NHS (written in 2020)

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ONE
I am 83 and up until the year before last considered myself extremely lucky. I needed just one hand to count the number of times I have been ill. I don't mean colds and flu and sore throats and the minor maladies we all get from time to time. I mean illness that needs hospital care, a specialist to identify the problem and decide on treatment, the necessity of X rays,  scans, biopsies and other exploratory procedures. I have to go back 71 years to recall the first real illness:-
          When I was eleven a lump appeared on the left side of my neck. It grew until it was the size of a golf ball. At the time we lived in Felixstowe. Our GP, Dr Poole, and old guy, must have been in his seventies, decided the cause was tonsils and arranged for them to be removed along with my adenoids at Ipswich General Hospital. I was in for a week and my lasting memory of it is having the worst sore throat I have ever had.  It lasted for days. The lump stayed. On my return to school I endured a great deal of taunts and insults from my fellow pupils. ("Ooh, look at him! What's that on you neck, Thornhill? Don't come near me, it might be catching."
           We revisited Dr Pool. He now decided the lump was caused by my teeth at the back of my mouth and arranged for the school dentist to remove several. . This had no effect on the lump either, so Mum decided a second opinion was in order.

          As we walked into his surgery, Dr Reid looked up from his desk and said: "Good God, mother, that boy should be in hospital."  I was admitted into the Ipswich and East Suffolk Hospital the next day. It was January, 1947, the worst winter for many years and because of the weather much of the country had been brought to a halt. Mum and I trudged up the hill through the snow and eventually Mr McKenzie, the ear, nose, and throat specialist examined me. He told Mum I had a tuberculosi infected gland and it would have to be drained
          I was in the hospital's children's ward for several weeks and during that time became very homesick. An emotion I had never experienced before. Mum was unable to visit as the bus and train services from Felixstowe to Ipswich had been suspended due to the appalling weather. But then, one day through the double doors to the ward, strode Dad, in his best RAF uniform, sharp creases, shiny buttons and all smiles. He brought with him  bags of assorted sweets and several bars of chocolate. (Which, at the time, was still strictly rationed.)  It was all confiscated by the nurses as soon as he left. "We share them out amongst the other children,"they told me when I protested.
          My neck and part of my head were heavily bandaged after the operation a few days before. "You do look like a wounded soldier, Gerald." Dad said to me and sat talking for an hour or so. He described his journey,"I've just driven up from Devonshire, "he said, and the snowdrifts I passed were twice as high as the car." 
           He noticed a book I was reading about deep sea divers and we talked about that for a while. It was the longest conversation I had ever had with Dad up to that time. I asked him if he was going to see Mum but he shook his head without offering any explanation. But as they divorced a year later it isn't too difficult to work out why he didn't want to go to Felixstowe.

Other things to do, other people to see.
          Mum visited a day or two later  with my, sister Stephanie and brother Cyril, but they weren't allowed in.  It was outside visiting hours and children weren't allowed into the wards. Mum didn't have Dad's powers of persuasion, though once outside, Stephanie and Cyril were able to wave to me through the big windows. 
          The big thing at the time and the most exciting to all us the kids in the ward was Dick Barton - special agent. A daily radio serial on the Home Service of the BBC. Always introduced with the fast and stirring tune, The Devil Rides Out.  Each day one of the nurses would gather us all together and describe what had happened to Dick and his cohorts, Jock and Snowy, the evening before. An event we all looked forward to as each episode would end on a cliff-hanger where the death of Dick was certain. We couldn't wait to learn how our hero had escaped. Which, of course, he always did.
After some weeks, during which the dressing on my neck was changed daily, an uncomfortable process as the sticky plasters holding the bandage in place were unceremoniously torn off. A procedure I grew to dread. It was decided I should be transferred to the Bartlett Convalescent Home in Felixstowe.
          This was an establishment mainly for sufferers of TB at the end of Cobbold Road, not far from Cobbolds Point, a ten minute walk from 'Morningside' and Princes Road, where we lived. The convalescent home stood high high up on the cliff overlooking the beach.  I was the only child there, which today I find rather curious and suspect I had been transferred because I had been so homesick and unhappy in Ipswich and had spent several hours at night planning to 'escape' . Perhaps the nurses had taken notice of my despondency and reported it to their superiors and moving me to the convalescent home, which was only half a mile fro Morningside was their solution to my low spirits.
          At the Bartlett there was a mixture of patients, male and female. The men were accommodated on the ground floor, the women on the first floor. We were all ruled over by the Matron and her team of nurses and Sisters. She wasn't much of a disciplinarian and I was allowed to roam wherever I wished. Mum visited often. Declared fit after som weeks I was released and returned to school. But barely months later the lump re-appeared and I was back in the Ipswich hospital. This time the gland was removed completely. It was ten years before I had to go into hospital again ( for scarlet fever that I contracted during National Service in the RAF.)
          The TB related illness and stay in hospital had caused me to miss the eleven-plus exam, although I had been allowed to sit a especially arranged test at the Junior school which I failed and that propelled me to the Secondary Modern School in Maidstone Road
​                      It was another 65 years before I went into hospital again (see "It happened to Me' - an experience with cancer and the NHS.") 
          It was the 13th of March 2020. At least it wasn't a Friday - not that i'm superstitious. It was a Wednesday if I recall, and that was the date this whole thing started up again. With Heather I went to East Surrey Hospital for a CT scan, arranged by surgeon Niel Smith who had operated on me for bowel cancer. I had seen him some months before for a routing check-up after the surgery the previous August. He had said to me "I don't think there is a need but with your permission I will keep an eye on you - a check-up every six months, is that okay with you?"
                    Well, of course it was.
                    So I had the CT scan on March 13th. "Breathe in, hold your breath.. keep still..." And now I'm sitting in Crawley Hospital, with Heather, waiting to see Mr Smith. There are no concerns in my head, no worries, everything is fine. They told me it would take up to three months to get over the bowel surgery, which it probably did, and I am back to normal. walking, cycling, enjoying. We are joining Cyril at our place in Florida in March. Six weeks in the sun, relaxing, taking it easy, because life is good, everything is fine. Just a bit of a cough. 
         "Good to see you again, sit down, make yourselves comfortable." `Neil Smith, his usual affable and charming self smiling a welcome to us. He introduces a girl, a teenager, a student here for work experience. "Okay," he says, "how are you?"
​          Fine," I said, "no problems, just a bit of a cough that seems to be hanging around, but apart from that..."
          I wanted him to go to see his doctor about that, but..." Heather added.

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Neil fiddles with the computer, moves the mouse around, peers at the screen. "Mmm..." He stood, "if we go in here for a minute or two." He ushered me into  small room next to the one we were sitting.  He examined my chest. Then it was back in front of the computer on his desk, he swung it round so we could see the screen. He pointed at it and said, "That's the CT scan you had and that's your right lung. See that white spot at the top? That showed up last year when you had the CT scan, remember?" 
I nodded, yes, I remembered. I had also had a chest x-ray after the surgery because I had developed a cough that was keeping me awake at night and they had sent me to, 'have  look.' 
      "I doesn't seem to have got any bigger,' said Niel, " but I'll put you on a course of penicillin and to be on the safe side I'll arrange for you to have a check up with the respiratory people. Okay"
THURSDAY16TH APRIL 2019
          About three weeks later Heather and I are once again sitting on hard plastic chairs in a waiting room of East Surrey Hospital. There were eight or nine other patients there. A notice next to the reception desk told us: 'Dr Nimako ia running thirty minutes late.' I look for the letter that came from the hospital, "Is that who we are seeing? I asked, Heather nodded.
​          I can't get used to this - sitting in hospitals, waiting to be looked at, poked, x-rayed, questioned, scanned, examined, and various other personal invasions. Up to last years bowel cancer I hadn't set foot in a hospital for seventy years. Now it seems to have become a regular occurance. But I am now in my eighties and I suppose, and I say this reluctantly, I should expect it. The trouble is I haven't expected it. I think I thought I would carry on as normal, feeling fine, in good health, active, enjoying retirement and that's the way it would stay into my nineties and then...?  Well, slip quietly away, hopefully, the way the Royals do - peacefully in my sleep.
          My name is called, a young lady, attractive, in her twenties. She asks us to follow her and we are led into a small office-like room with three chairs and a computer.The lady introduces herself and I immediately forget her name. She asks if I have ever smoked and I tell her yes, but gave it up over forty years ago. She shrugs her shoulders in a gesture of dismissal, smiles, and says, "oh, well, that's okay then."She makes small talk for a while and then Dr Nimako comes in, greets us and sits by the computer and pulls up the last scan and studies it for a while and then points to a whitish area at the top of my right lung.
          "I think the best thing we can do now is for you to have a biopsy."
          "A biopsy?"
          "Yes, we take a sample and it will tell us if it is something nasty... or not. You would have to come in for a day, maybe stay overnight, though that isn't likely. We could have you in on the 22nd."
          "The 22nd of May?" I looked at Heather, "We are going out to our place in Florida next Friday. We'll be away for six weeks."
          There is a short silence. Dr Nimako said, "Well it's up to you. What date will you be back?"
          "We're back on the 2nd of May, Doctor." Heather said.
         He looked up from the screen. "We could see you on the 3rd of May, but I suggest you go away, think about it. If you change your mind between now and decide to have the biopsy on the 22nd call us."
         `'Will six weeks make a difference?" I asked.
          "Well," he hesitated, "it doesn't seem to have grown since August, so perhaps not."
          "Okay, well,.. I'll go for the 3rd of May, the day after we get back. But if I change my mind  between now and next week, I'll ring."
          We all stand, shake hands.
         "Hope we've done the right thing," I say to Heather as we drive home.
FRIDAY 3RD MAY 2019
I sat with Heather again in the waiting room of the X-ray department of East Surrey Hospital reading the paper-work that accompanied the appointment instructions. "Do not eat anything from midnight ... drink plenty of water... Please arrange for someone to collect you following your discharge..."
          A nurse appeared, smiling, foreign accent, East European I guessed, mid thirties.
          "Mr Thornhill? I will weigh you, okay?"
          "Yes, okay." 
          We walked to a small cubicle, and she asked my date of birth. I told her and stood on the escales. After measuring my height, she took my blood pressure.
​          I returned to the waiting area. It wasn't crowded. No more than a dozen of us sat there. Each looking bored. There was a constant flow of people walking through the area; nurses hurrying to somewhere else, patients wandering through and looking lost, doctors on important missions, porters passing by pushing wheelchairs with elderly people slumped untidily in them.
          "I've put on weight." I tell Heather, "I'm not too pleased about that."
          "Better than losing it in your condition, isn't it?"
          Never thought of that.
          The actual biopsy took about half an hour. Dr Nimako warned me before he started the procedure that he might accidently touch one of my ribs,"And that might cause some discomfort." 
          He did. When he said 'discomfort' what he meant was pain.
Ir hurt like hell. Apart from that the procedure wasn't too bad. After several minutes he said, "I've taken a few samples, I think that will be enough."
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THURSDAY 16TH MAY 2020.
We get the result of the bioply today. So it's East Surrey Hoapital again. Dr Nimako is sitting by his computer moving a mouse about. We all shake hands. There is a short silence.
          Then:"Well, Mr Thornhill, we have the results of the biopsy and I'm afraid it's not good news. You have lung cancer..."
​MORE TO COME. LATER.


          
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