Half the river and all the way up to the sea

It's a commonplace to say you can be lonely in a crowd, but crowded hospitals incubate some particular strains of loneliness. This morning was spent sitting around the table in Ward 5 at Cherry Tree Hospital, with Nora, Dorothy, Leila, Helen and Hilda, trying to put a finger on what hospital loneliness is.

The very fact that we were gathered around a table was an issue. As Leila said, "To talk, you need a table to sit round." Chatting over cups of tea, taking turns with the conversation, is much easier with a table as meeting place. Unfortunately, many wards - especially some of the modern builds - have tiny day rooms and no large communal spaces. People can spend weeks sitting by their beds, in rows, cut off from close contact with one another.

The uncertainty of ill health is another factor. Not only might you be physically at a low ebb, medicated, and moved from ward to ward - but uncertainty as a continued state erodes confidence. As Dorothy said: "It's the general setup of it all, and then you don't know what you've got to face. Waiting to see what's going to happen. You're not as outgoing if you've got something on your mind, worry. This thing, it's happening to you, no one else but you. So you feel alone. Swimming half the river and all the way up to the sea."

Language is of course another problem. We are beseiged by misunderstanding. Whether we simply don't have the words, or the words have been taken away from us (by a stroke, medication, tiredness, dementia) it is a difficult thing to reach a happy meeting with these sounds we make. Just before I started the session, I spent a little time with a woman whose stroke had taken most of her speech, she spoke instead with smiles and hand pressure, and with her eyes. Leila's first language is not English and so a different set of problems appears. The word for loneliness in Polish is samonsc.

And what to do about loneliness? Helen: "Think of your close people. I would do that, after all they're the ones you really love."

Norma: "I approach people and ask them 'Would you like to talk?' People often say yes, they're pleased to know me. If you don't talk to em they think your too posh for them!"

Dorothy: "Every day is a little different - it can change sometimes for the good."

We discussed the photographs that people have by their beds. Norma again: "Bring a photograph of people you love - then you're near to them. You feel you're with them and they feel the same."

And what would a picture of loneliness be, I wondered?

Dorothy: "Empty!"

Business as unusual

Home is sometimes the littlest thing. Frank Powell has a small calm in the bustle of the ward. On his bedside table is a stack of CDs, a newspaper, a book, a carton of juice.

"Do a crossword, something like that. Or read. I reminisce many times, thinking of the past. Each thought is different."

Everybody deals with the experience of hospital in their own way. And the reasons for being in are as varied as the people.

"They cope with it as differently as themselves. The life in here, you need to ease it. Crosswords, reading, it's like ordinary isn't it? It's a bit annoying the noise here but not as bad as some. Just cope that's all. Pain? Grin and bear it. Good luck with the weather."

Being with Frank, I have a strong sense that he has created his own space, a bubble of concentration and inner life. But he doesn't especially stand out, it's not a big statement, quite the opposite.

"Got my CD. Newspaper, book. I fit in. When in Rome..."

I often wonder: how I would deal with all this? The pain, the strange space and strangers, my own body a stranger too.

"Make it close to your ordinary life. Try to make this unusual thing as close to your usual as possible."

War and peace

"I was five when the war broke. A little nipper. Remember the bombs coming over and the black curtains. Burning candles. And much later, I remember this man coming out of the dancehall. Shouting, 'The war's over!' and dancing in the street."

On Friday morning I sat with Norah, Helen, Dorothy, Freida, Mary and Angela in the rehab ward at Cherry Tree Hospital. I asked them about the big war they'd lived through - the 1939 war - if the struggle of simply getting through it had prepared them for the struggle back to health now?

"You've got to get on with it, or slip behind. It makes you harder. You look after yourself, you're not baby-ish like, crying all the time. You're hard, strong I should say. You don't notice at the time, but it comes later. You think about it, see it in your mind."

Did that experience shape your experience of hospital?

"Yes, it's part of life. It's hard but you've got to get on with it."

Did it prepare you for hospital?

"You're never ready for hospital. Not if you've been healthy before. You're not the same as you were. It's change. Suddenly you find yourself in hospital in terrible pain. Some people get upset, some feel it deeply, some accept it easier. Different temperaments. The ones who accept change, the ones who fight it."

And what would you say to someone in that position.

"It does pass in time, it does. IT DOES PASS."

ever

a stroke: it’s like freezing a piece of meat

waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting
a cancellation
put me back again
a slight stroke
couldn’t move my arm
so I lift it with the other one
don’t let it lie dead
rub the back of your hand
keep it going

and then it’s un-frozen

waiting and
try to keep moving
haul yourself
with a walking stick
to your exercises
tried, tired and knackered
they train you, so
if you fall in the house by yourself
trapped

but only in part and some remains

waiting and
trying to open the door
try to get to the phone
try to climb a step, up four inches
(one bad leg, two arms, nothing 100%)
terrifying thinking about it
don’t think, try to
get on, to stand

on ice.

Anonymous
24-31 July 2009

for further examples of arthur+martha poems please visit http://arthur-and-martha-poems.blogspot.com/

come back come back come back

walking:
a simple question

put it this way
once you’re in these places
they expect you to stay
til you’re better

my own children took to walking straightway

my wife in hospital expecting a child
I walked there four times that day
morning, afternoon, evening
must’ve done 40 miles

now you can’t say I’ve been a lazy person so
far as walking is concerned

put it this way
what changes is you
are seeing four walls day in
out

came here with expectations
put in here, I plunged
to where I am
now

walking:
a simple question, a simple answer
me, wheelchair

lets put it again this way
opportunity is a fine thing

a fine thing is opportunity
a pint and a half of beer a day
my doctor recommended

recommended a little village green
fields, the pub, a walk
dig the allotment
active all my life’s apprenticeship

(walking in the wood at night
by the river
it’d make a noise like:
come back come back come back
sandpipers
on the side
oh god aye
comes to life that does)

come in here and I’m idle, a passed buck

explain that to me straight
a straight punch
tell the doctors
they will be treated in their late life
like this.


Thomas Weston
31 July 2009

for further examples of arthur+martha poems please visit http://arthur-and-martha-poems.blogspot.com/

come back come back come back

I walk, or I ride a bike. For most of my journeys I’m self-propelled by my own limbs. Even when Julia and I travel by car, there’s often a long walk at the end of it, hiking up into the hills. Thomas, who is 88 and has walked his life's duration, now sits all day in a chair by his hospital bed.

I asked him: how can you come to terms with this?

He said he remembered when his wife was expecting their child, he had to walk to the hospital – a journey of several miles. The baby was a late arrival and he made the journey four times – about 40 miles by foot.

I asked him my question again.

He told me about his daughter’s first steps. And then of his own disastrous first memory of walking. His mother was scrubbing the kitchen floor. There was a bucket of boiling water. He recalled the bucket, gesturing the rising steam. He stumbled into it. Remembered the spill, his mother’s shock. Happily he survived to toddle into more mischief.

I pressed him for a more direct answer. How do you deal with not being able to walk?

He said he remembered walking at night by the river in the village where he was born. The river sounded like talking. It seemed to say: come back come back come back.

Terminally ill and suicidal

I've just finished listening to a fascinating program on the radio: 'Inside the Ethics Committee', entitled Terminally Ill and Suicidal

Phil and I have been wanting to create some work on the emotive subject of death, dying and Palliative care with older people, for the PATIENCE project, so it was a timely and very informative program.

In it Joan Bakewell discusses the real-life case of Mary, a terminally-ill woman in her 80s. She has considered her condition and has decided that she wants to die.

If you missed it and want to listen again, or find out more about the subject matter, you can by following this link http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lvgwj