The Cancer Ward

3.10 in cancer ward F. I haven’t slept yet. They took me for an X-ray around midnight insisting on taking me everywhere in a wheelchair. I feel like a fraud when I do a Little Britain and walk to the machine. The nurses are great here and I learn about their lives as night workers, one runs their own business in the day, the other does it to avoid the crowds.

Here’s what I wrote at midnight.

‘All quiet on ladies ward F in Charing Cross Hospital. I’m on steroids and tea. So far we have in our inventory of night sounds. A loud buzz which is maybe a saline unit or aircon. There’s a torpedo breather across and left who sounds a bit like submarine sonar. A gentle rhythmic piuuu. A heavy nose breather to my left. A lady who hasn’t been to the loo in 8 days making…well the sort of moans I imagine are appropriate to that particular torture. And an elderly Indian woman opposite and right who is gently murmuring or singing to herself in Hindi I think. It’s surprisingly relaxing. But they have not encountered the warthog in F5 yet! Sorry laydeez here I come crashing on to your astral plain! It’s not my fault I have a tumour the size of a large marble on my lung but sorry all the same. At least The Husband will get a good night’s sleep for once.’

3am looks a bit different.

A night amongst the dying sobers your thoughts. I am suffering absolutely nothing yet and feel my cheery defiance melting a bit. I remember my husband taking Solzhenitsyn’s book ‘Cancer Ward’ on holiday. He has a way of ruining his own holidays with difficult literature or books on music theory or Russian grammar. Like him I am in the theoretical phase. I feel relatively well and my cancer which appears pretty serious and can be seen in many places is fairly… hypothetical….at the moment. It doesn’t hurt that much yet.

Joan next to me was brought in as an emergency admission around 12.30. She’s in the late stages I would say. A large lady of Caribbean descent with a beautiful lilt to her range of tragic expression. She was talking in her sleep a while. She snored me out of the ballpark. And around an hour ago she began to weep bitter tears and cry out ‘oh god someone help me I am dying’. No one came. The lady opposite and to my left who is a bit confused or off her head on some strong drugs shouts weakly ‘the baby is crying. Why doesn’t someone go to the baby?’ Eventually I could stand it no longer and went to her. I held her hand and asked if I should find the nurse. She calls me sister (possibly mistaking me for an Asian nurse) and I explain I am the lady from the next bed. I put my hand on her forehead and stroke her like a child until the nurse comes. A no nonsense Asian guy. He tells her off gently for not ringing the bell. Perhaps he is chiding me indirectly for doing the human thing.

Joan is clearly here a lot. The nurses know her well and they say ‘Oh Joan’ a lot. I sense she does drama well but is nonetheless in pain. She nearly breaks my heart at one point and stops crying to say ‘sorry’ to the by-now-slightly -grouchy male nurse. ‘You must be tired. I really do appreciate this. There is also comedy as she is complaining her bottom hurts but her accent causes confusion as they think she is saying ‘arm’ not ‘bottarm’ as it sounds. God knows where this could lead. Poor Joan. She needs her mother. In the face of such pain we need our mothers. Or just some comfort.

I was with my mother in the weeks, the nights, the hours, the seconds, the moments leading up to her death and her cries of pain were similar. I searched desperately through the bag of meds we’d had delivered earlier in the day to fnd the drug the hospice said to give her if things got bad but could not find it so we had to call the paramedic. I remember what late stage cancer pain sounds like and I know what looks like. But I don’t know what it feels like. I have no illusions about the end because I have stared it in the eye. But I’m not ready to think about this fully yet. Not at this late hour. Not here.

All has calmed down by 3.35. Joan has been knocked out with some horse tranquillisers but I think the lady opposite who has not had a bowel movement for 8 days may be having some movement.

It seems to be lights on and obs time at 3.45. Perhaps I will sleep tomorrow. Joan was asleep and peaceful for a bit but now she appears to be eating a packet of crisps. Oh Lord.

4.23 am Joan has an infection in the line into her kidney. I didn’t even know that was a thing. Poor Joan. She has, I think, fallen asleep on her snacks as I am pretty sure you cannot eat and snore at the same time. The crackly rustling of her snack packet is anmoying but mainly it is making me hungry. From the smell I am thinking it is more like Bombay mix. I’m wondering if this is prescribed for people with kidney problems. But since the doctor just offered her more snacks (no!) I’ve asked for snacks AND painkillers but really I am hoping they will knock me out. They ask what I normally take and I say ‘well, nothing, I’ve never been on the cancer ward before’. There is pain in my back. Possibly from the tumour on my spine. Possibly from three sets of tricep dips, back squats, pull overs, curls and pull downs. And my finger has gone numb, either referring from the tumour on my scapula or from typing too much but I can’t tell them that 😂. Dawn arrives. My mother was called Dawn. If only she was here now.

5am. Daylight arrives. Well. That was the night. The lady in the bed opposite asks if I am awake and I say ‘you can use your call button’. Twice in 24 hours I have discovered the limits of kindness. I am not the nurse. The night is over. Maybe I will sleep in the day.