Last night I watched ‘Prime Suspect’, the first of that iconic long-running television series starring the brilliant Helen Mirren. This episode charts Jane Tennison, the female DCI’s gradually earning of the support of all but one of her initially resistant male team. Tom Bell’s superbly odious sergeant is the exception. Such institutional prejudice was a real issue at the beginning of the final decade of the 20th century.
Today was dull, cold, and overcast. This morning I finished reading Susan Hill’s ‘The Betrayal of Trust’, and occupied myself with domestic chores preparatory to my departure for England tomorrow. I had been unaware that Susan Hill, one of our most gifted writers, had written a crime series focussed on DCI Simon Serrailler.
Written at a pace engendered by skillful use of short sentences and crisp dialogue, this is a gripping tale worthy of the author of ‘The Woman in Black’. It is only towards the end of the book that she drops in a couple of clues. The denouement draws together the strands of the lives of the expertly depicted personnel, all of which display the novelist’s gift for characterisation. Her descriptions of place and dwelling contribute economically to our understanding of the people.
But. As one would expect from this author, her book is about much more than the unravelling of a crime. It is a treatise on disability, dementia, terminal illness, and euthanasia.
One evening, late in 1997, over the space of three hours, what seemed to be ‘flu’-like symptoms reduced my wife Jessica to a terrifying inability to swallow. I telephoned the emergency GP service and spoke to a most unhelpful doctor. He refused to visit and told me to give Jessica aspirin. ‘If she can’t swallow, how am I going to give her aspirin?’, I asked. The response was that I should contact my GP in the morning, and if I became concerned in the night take her to casualty.
In the small hours of the morning I drove my wife to Newark Hospital’s casualty department, by which time panic had set in. There we were seen by a man in white, presumably a qualified medic. He stuck a spatula into her mouth, peered into it, and said he couldn’t see anything. He took a blood test, told us to go home, and said we would have the results in three days. I stood between him and the couch, faced him squarely, and asked: ‘If you can’t see anything, why can’t she swallow?’. At that, without a word, he walked out of the room leaving us alone. After what seemed like an age another man came in and announced that we were being sent to Nottingham. There followed a 25 mile ambulance trip.
Within minutes in one of that city’s casualty departments, with the aid of more sophisticated equipment, epiglottitis was diagnosed. I asked the doctor on duty what would have happened had I not stood firm. He replied that at the next stage Jessica would have been unable to breathe and would not have lasted the night. She was treated, rapidly improved, and we thought that was that.
Jessica seemed well, we forgot about the blood test, and I resumed my commuting to London. A couple of days later, in my consulting room 125 miles away, I received a phone call from my GP sister-in-law. ‘It’s myeloma’, she said. I had no idea what that incurable bone barrow cancer was. This is what the test had revealed.
There followed ten years of various treatments, including blood transfusions, two stem cell transplants, and finally, an unsuccessful donor transplant. Initially, periods of remission were such that Jessica was able to continue working as an emergency duty social worker. The months of relief gradually became shorter and shorter, and the relapses longer and she retired on ill health grounds after about five years. She died on 4th July 2007.
I am unable to follow this with what I had for dinner at Le Code Bar. Perhaps I’ll do that tomorrow.
Tag: dementia
Conversations
Mrs. Reynard is looking most uncomfortable lately. Perched on her pile of sticks this morning, she was gnawing away at her rear end, which is now on one side completely devoid of fur. The patch the magpie was pecking on 26th. May (see post) is now rather raw.
On my normal route to Colliers Wood to catch the tube for lunch with Norman, in Morden Hall Park, I met Benjamin and his mother. This eloquent and cheerful little chap was on a dinosaur hunt. He was taking his task very seriously and wanted to know if I’d seen one, especially ‘a big one’. He declined to produce his hunting roar for the photograph. Perhaps because I am not a dinosaur, although some people may quibble with that. Well, Benjy, I didn’t see a dinosaur, but I did find a very big slug. His picture is at the top of this page.
One of the most amusing regular announcements on the Underground was given out at Green Park. A long list of severe or minor delays is intoned. This is always followed by: ‘There is a good service on all other lines.’ ‘Which are they?’, I ask myself.
Seated reading on a bench near the mainly Somali area of Harlesden, I picked up one cent of an euro, thinking it might come in handy in the Sigoules supermarket. I hoped it wasn’t a Greek one. It was fortunate that I wasn’t on my feet, for these days I wouldn’t bend down for anything less than a tenner. I remembered once diving for a ten-bob note at a bus stop in Worple Road in case Chris got there first. For anyone too young to remember, that’s 50p in today’s money. But, then, you could do a great deal more with it.
A middle-aged woman came and talked to me. She began by saying I looked so peaceful that if she had a camera she would photograph me. I hoped she wouldn’t notice the one hanging round my neck. 
She went on to eulogise about the beauty of the thousand year old church that lay behind me. She spoke of recent renovations, and I realised that the graveyard is looking much better kept these days. It is a sad reflection of our times that the building was not open for my inspection. She was on her way to visit her father, now suffering from dementia, in a care home. On her regular visits she does a lot of the feeding and caring herself. This woman was not complaining and initially spoke appreciatively of her father’s carers. She did, however, say it would be nice if they thanked her, because they were paying the full ‘feeding rate’. According to her this former Southern Cross establishment has been taken over by a Methodist organisation. It has a new manager who is trying to improve things. From the sound of it she has her work cut out. Once this daughter learned that I had been in Social Work she told me about some of the attitudes and systems she found problematic, asking me what I thought. For example, did I think it unreasonable that he was not allowed to ‘poo’ until 11 a.m? I most certainly did. Apparently the staff would rather he ‘pooed in his pad’, which they could clean up afterwards, than disrupt other morning routines. She felt that his personal dignity was suffering. My beard didn’t put her off expressing her conviction that it was normal to want to shave every day. Presumably there are days when her father can and cannot shave.
Norman served up a dish of delicious Catalan chicken accompanied by a fine rioja, and followed by apple strudel. Perhaps not entirely by coincidence we discussed the writing of Iris Murdoch. I have not read her philosophy, but have most of her novels, except the last. This was so badly reviewed by critics who could not make any sense of it that I decided to give it a miss. Some time later we learned that she was suffering from the same condition as my conversationalist’s father. For anyone working with dementia the biopic ‘Iris’, starring Jim Broadbent as the long-suffering and somewhat bewildered husband, and Judi Dench as Iris, is essential viewing. No-one living with the condition would need, or probably wish, to watch this fine portrayal of the slow realisation that all is not well and the gradual decline into frustrated helplessness.
This evening Jacqueline came over for meal, and, given that she had recommended the Watch Me to us, we just had to take her there. The food was as good and reasonably priced as always. As I don’t normally eat another meal after a Norman lunch, this was stretching it a bit for me.