There's Something I've Been Dying to Tell You (16 page)

I had also been starting to organise my own party for Christmas. Please don’t laugh, but I absolutely adore Christmas and the preparations are almost more exciting than the day. I had missed the last two Christmases at home because I was doing pantomime, so I was determined to make this one perfect. The only problem was that my son Michael would be in Wolverhampton, with Joe Pasquale, playing Slimeball in
Sleeping Beauty
. Ah he is his mother’s son, we always get the glamorous parts! Also my stepson Bradley would have commitments to his mum and family, so I had decided to have our big Christmas lunch on 30 November.

Now that I was feeling so unwell, Jean and I decided we would find a lovely pub for my family lunch and make things easier for me. We found a beautiful pub in Hampstead called the Old White Bear which had a private room so all the family could let off steam without annoying the regulars. I got Michael to bring the tree into the house from the garage and Jean and I had a lovely day decorating it, the idea being we would eat first at the pub and then come home and have pudding and open presents.

On 11 December, when I woke on the day that I was due to go in for my last scan after my first series of twelve chemos, I had some of the usual niggling pain. By the afternoon it had increased, and when we sat down in front of Justin to discuss my scan and the results of the chemotherapy so far, he looked up at me from the famous screen inside the desk top and said, ‘Are you in pain now by any chance, Lynda?’

As usual I mumbled something about yes it did hurt a bit but it would pass and not to worry too much.

To my amazement, and Justin’s I should imagine, Michael burst out, ‘That is not true! Please, Justin, take her into hospital because I am telling you now if you don’t we will be back later and all hell will break loose.’

‘I am inclined to agree with you, Michael,’ replied Justin. ‘So, Miss B, you will go now this minute and I am contacting Richard Cohen because I think we may have to do something about this tumour, which seems to have been growing under our noses and is causing you all this discomfort.’

Before I could say a word I was in a wheelchair on my way to the London Clinic, yet again, and I was not a happy bunny. Suddenly I was so frightened. I knew I could do nothing but put myself in the hands of these incredible surgeons and oncologists who work so hard to keep the likes of you and me alive. But it also meant I was not in control anymore and that scared me.

12

ALL CHANGE AGAIN

December 2013

A good deal of what happened to me over the next few days I cannot remember, and it becomes Michael my husband’s story in a way. He sat with me in my room and I tried hard to chat, but the pain was so bad by now that all I could do was to concentrate on getting through each minute. It was a bit like giving birth to an elephant. But where in childbirth, the contractions start slowly and come in waves, with a little relief between them, these pains just swept over me relentlessly. I lay there from about four o’clock until ten o’clock, and although nurses would come in and check my vitals, and we would try and explain about the pain, nothing happened. I just hung between waking and sleeping. I could not really focus on anything. Poor Michael told me later he thought I was going to die there and then. Finally he went in search of a ward sister, and finally they gave me painkillers which provided me with relief for a while. I persuaded Michael to go home and said I would see him the following day.

That night, and the following night, were horrific. The nights are always the worst as we know. Strangely enough it might have been better to have been out in a ward rather than my private room, because I just began to feel I had been abandoned. No one came for hours, and the silence was only sometimes broken when a patient pressed their call button and that usually happened just as I had managed to drop off to sleep. My mind was slow but still going round in circles. What was happening to me? The pain hovered on the edge of my consciousness continually threatening to return. I was terrified and I was the one who was good with pain!

Finally morning came and with it a little hope. Mr Richard Cohen came to visit and explained that they were going to try and put a stent in to relieve whatever was blocking my colon. Then Mr Imbert arrived to tell us what he was going to do. This was the surgeon who put my port in originally, only to have to put it in again, but we won’t hold that against him.

It was another long day of pain and a fog of confusion. Why was this happening to me? Dear Michael sat with me but I just couldn’t respond to him and I begged him to go home and be with Bradley and Robbie. I just wanted to grit my teeth and get through the night-time hours that stretched ahead, in that dim blue hospital light, waiting. Eventually it was Friday 13th and time to go down for my operation. Friday 13th? It beggars belief! They came to take me down to theatre around 5 p.m., and Michael came with me. There was a very festive air about the place, as all the staff on that floor were getting ready for their Christmas party that evening.

Michael waited in the waiting room for about an hour and then the doors opened and he saw me being wheeled out with the anaesthetist, who was shaking his head. ‘It is no good we can’t do anything. We need Mr Cohen, and if we don’t operate within the hour she is going to be dead. I am so sorry.’

The plan from day one really as far as Mr Cohen was concerned had been to remove the tumour in my colon as soon as possible. However, Professor Stebbing had needed to get at the cancer and stop its inevitable spread, although unfortunately it had already spread to my lungs and my liver. This operation was to insert a valve that would open and close and allow food to pass through the blockage.

Michael asked where Mr Imbert was, and the nurse told him he was on the phone to Richard Cohen. Michael waited by the trolley sobbing, as the nurses worked around him. Just then Richard Cohen flew through the door calling for a release form. All the nurses produced forms from different places! Michael offered to sign it but Richard Cohen said it had to be me if possible. I just about managed it, maybe I realised it would be the most important autograph I would ever write! Then Richard turned to Michael and said, ‘Do you need me to read the whole form out?’

Michael just said, ‘No, because I know she will die if you don’t operate.’

‘Yes,’ said Richard Cohen. ‘We will be ready to operate in about half an hour.’ And he moved off towards the operating theatre. For the next fifteen minutes, Michael told me, the nurses stood around watching me in silence, then a phone call came through and the porters arrived to wheel me down. Everyone watched us go, and the sister put her hand on Michael’s shoulder and wished him good luck.

At 6.30 the porters were pushing me through the automatic doors. All Michael could see was a hive of activity the other side. As I disappeared, and the doors slowly closed, he was completely alone in the corridor. The silence was terrible and he just burst into tears. He could not remember what he had been told about where to go to wait for the operation to be over, but he managed to find his way back to main reception. Someone then got through to the operating theatre and Richard came on the line and told Michael to wait in the family room next door to the crucial care unit.

So he made his way up to the third floor and found the room chock-a-block with relatives. They made a space for him to sit down, but within two minutes he was up on his feet again, pacing the corridor outside. He spoke to several of our friends and they all offered to come and join him with support. Their kind offers were so lovely but Michael told me afterwards that he suddenly realised that even though you feel alone and need comfort, you also need to stay in the zone. I suppose I felt the same in some ways with the pain, there are no words or even thoughts just an instinct to stick with the moment and get through it. Finally at about ten o’clock the room had emptied and Michael was alone. A few minutes later the lift doors opened and out stepped Richard Cohen still in his scrubs. He joined Michael in the family room.

‘Is she OK?’ asked Michael.

‘She is doing fine,’ replied Richard Cohen. ‘I have taken out a huge tumour and I could see all the secondaries in the liver. I have had to add an ileostomy which is like a colostomy bag but for different functions.’

Here we go! In the shit again! The tumour was knocking at the wall of the colon and, just in time, Mr Cohen arrived to remove the tumour as it was literally perforating my colon. It was also in an awkward place. In fact they all agreed that not only did I have colon or bowel cancer, I had the most difficult one. I never do things by half! I’ve never been entirely clear on all the details, one of the reasons I never ask the questions is because the answers can be even more long and involved . . .

‘She will be up in the crucial care unit in about an hour. So don’t you worry,’ Richard Cohen told my husband.

Michael said he burst into tears again and gave the surgeon a big hug. He was just so relieved.

‘How long do you think she has got?’ asked my dear hubbie.

‘Two probably, that is about the norm.’

‘Is that days, or months, or what?’ said Michael.

‘No, years,’ replied Richard.

‘Oh right,’ Michael nodded. ‘Right I can live with that. Thank you so much, Richard.’ And he gave the man another hug.

When Richard had left, Michael went into the family room and sat down. Once again relief flooded through him that I had made it through the operation, but this new prognosis had shortened my life somewhat as originally it was two to five years. The problem now was whether the chemo would keep it all at bay.

Suddenly, sat there alone in the family room that December evening, it occurred to Michael that he was starving. He hadn’t eaten all day and now it was eleven o’clock at night. He looked around but there was nothing. No vending machine or drinks machine. However, there was a large Selfridges carrier bag on the seat opposite with what looked distinctly like a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate sticking out of the top. He went and investigated. There were several empty sandwich wrappers, and obviously the owner had either decided they had had enough, or they would be back for the chocolate later. Taking a quick look round first, my naughty husband then scoffed the lot and stuffed the bag into the bin. So if anyone who mislaid a large bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk on the night of Friday, 13 December 2013 happens to be reading this, please accept our humble apologies. We owe you one!

Finally, a nurse came out from the crucial care unit and told Michael she was going down to fetch me now and would be up in fifteen minutes. Sure enough the lift doors opened fifteen minutes later and I was wheeled out. Michael said he could hardly see me for all the tubes and wires going into me, but I was quite chatty and lucid.

‘Give us thirty minutes to plug her in and sort her out and you can come in,’ explained the nurse.

Michael came and sat with me for about three-quarters of an hour. I can remember him being there holding my hand, but it was dark in the ward and I was so hot and sweaty and disorientated I just clung on to him.

When he got up to go I called after him, ‘Don’t forget, Michael, there is lots of food in the freezer for you and the boys.’

‘Typical!’ thought Michael as he made his way home. ‘Her answer to everything is to make sure we all eat.’

But he was smiling for the first time in forty-eight hours.

The next day Michael came to visit from eleven and stayed until about 1.30. The crucial care unit is not the best place to try and hold any sort of conversation, not that I could have done so anyway. I was in pain and still very drugged up, and the nurses were in and out all the time checking up on me. I wanted Michael to go home and rest.

The next twenty-four hours are a haze to me now. I just remember pain and noise of other patients crying out in the night. Sometimes the nurse, who was so brilliant, would come and just dab me with cool wet flannels or rub my back. I was so uncomfortable and kept trying to turn on my side to sleep, which was impossible. I had tubes up my nose which were driving me mad and my throat was so sore. It was just an endless stream of discomfort. Then I would have very clear lucid moments and I watched a family opposite me through the glass partition, sitting with a woman in the bed who was obviously very ill. I asked a nurse what the problem was, and she told me the woman had had a brain operation and was in a coma. That shut me up and I felt very lucky to be able to feel my pain.

Michael visited and I sent him home as usual! But on the Sunday, he told me later, as he was coming to visit, Justin Stebbing popped out of the lift and greeted him. They discussed the success of the operation and Justin apparently told Michael that he gives all his clients three lives.

‘Lynda has just had her first one. Do you think you and Lynda would be up for putting her up for trial drugs any time soon?’ he asked.

‘Yes, we will do whatever it takes,’ Michael answered.

‘Good. So let’s go and see how your wife is getting on.’ As Justin turned one way Michael went the other, towards the crucial care unit.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Justin. As Michael pointed to crucial care, he added, ‘No, she is back on the ward now, much nicer.’

They both entered the room together and each took hold of my hands. I looked from one to the other.

Michael told me afterwards that I looked like a rabbit in headlights.

It was a very apt description because I have never felt so frightened in my life. I thought they had both come to say goodbye!

I was sixty-five years old and had hardly ever been in hospital, let alone an operating theatre, and I certainly had not found myself lying in a bed attached to eight intravenous drips before! The word ‘random’ sprang to mind. How random is life? I have no control whatsoever, and I could only hope there was a plan to get me out of this mess.