The View from Room 39: A Memoir

nephew.

CHAPTER 1

The View from Room 39

The view from the large shuttered window of Room 39 is fascinating. I see high-rise buildings, traffic, and the golden leaves of autumn still clinging to their branches. A few weaklings are rustling on the still-green grass. The American term fall for autumn seems so appropriate; the golden leaves on the ground remind me of myself – a fall from grace. Ah, but that is inappropriate. I am the chosen one, like those few leaves on the grass to be trampled by weary passers-by going home from work, giving them an opportunity to reflect as they rustle their way through.

But this is the romantic notion of the fallen auburn leaf, and I am not that. I am truly the chosen one, given challenges to overcome and broad shoulders to carry the load. I shall, by the grace of the Almighty, reach my destiny. I have lived a life of challenges: losing my son to cancer, losing every penny I possessed to the futures market, and being diagnosed with a rare cancer in April 2000. Given four years to live, I enjoyed ten and then relapsed on the same day of the original diagnosis. As I look out of the window, ten years after my first stem-cell transplant, I am undergoing my second transplant.

It is 30 October 2010, 9.00 p.m. After I drew my curtains to keep the bad news at bay, my daughter telephoned to tell me that explosive devices had been found on planes bound for Chicago. Yet I am here in the peace and safety of my Lord, who has carried me in His palms for all these years. The terror threat will travel the world’s airwaves, and some poor, unsuspecting Afghan or Yemeni will be bombed out of existence. He will have never heard of Chicago, but I am safe here.

This will be my account of the view from Room 39 each day I am capable of using my iPad. It is day eleven of my confinement, 3.30 a.m. The world sleeps on its cruel pillow while I languish in my safe haven. I resist the temptation to turn on the TV. Instead, I peer through the blinds at the swaying treetops doing their last waltz in the autumn wind. I can barely make out a few leaves flying like detached kites falling to the ground. The deceptive tranquility is awesome.

Within Room 39, it has not been so tranquil these few hours before dawn. The transplant takes a heavy toll on the faculties. I have had diarrhoea every thirty minutes, enough to cause a breach of the peace. And to cause further hilarity, I sleep wearing a large nappy. I won’t go on, as it’s enough for the friendly English bobby to declare a terror offence!

After five days, the lovely Filipino nurse looking after me has failed to stem the flow on the bedpan and has resorted to a traditional recipe for diarrhoea, BRAT: banana, rice, applesauce, and toast. Well, before I soil my nappy again, I had better rush to the toilet and squirt the gunge out, which has fooled the hospital lab, as they cannot find anything wrong with it. Rushing to the toilet simply doesn’t mean getting off the bed and making myself comfy on the toilet seat; it’s unplugging several drips and plugs before being able to perform the act, and invariably, the arrival is too late.

Another nappy bites the dust. Oh, I must go now!

31 October 2010

I started the day with a leisurely stab at my iPad after being responsible for several uncontrolled explosions in the toilet of Room 39 before the break of dawn; hence, the disjointed, unintelligible language. My lovely Filipino nurse looked after me so well last night that I refused to allow her to measure my poo. The vile, black mucus could put anyone off from adding me as a Facebook friend, and I couldn’t risk that. But sadly, I had no choice. She wanted to measure my poo and my wee, a task not easy to comprehend, considering both occur concurrently. What a great business idea to pursue for a bright young star from MIT or Cambridge: producing a gadget that can separate and weigh the two!

The view on the outside is dreary, perfect for a wintry day. Clocks went back an hour last night; the agony was just a little bit longer. Most people enter a state of depression at the onset of winter, but my lovely daughter has a momentary period of bliss. She is always looking for that extra hour in everything she does, God bless her.

I have moaned about the late breakfast, but it matters not. It’s no one’s fault, really. My room number is 39 out of forty rooms. They’ve run out of breakfast by the time they make it to me at 10.00 a.m. This is the beauty of NHS protocols; they don’t know the meaning of anticlockwise.

I cannot bear to look outside. It’s wet and dark, with rusty leaves splattered against the grassy verge. I notice part of a car’s front end on the pavement; it must be some enthusiastic driver rushing to Accident and Emergency. My teeth are chattering away, and I am shivering violently and having difficulty hitting the right button on the keypad. The weakness, pain, and diarrhoea have removed the steadiness from my fingers.

A volatile day with a dramatic finish. The morning got off to a bad start when a friend presented me with the Sunday Times. I was safe in my cocoon until then, away from the madness that existed beyond my window. The paper opened a window on a world where evil exists, where the life that the doctors are striving to save in Room 39, and all the other patients around me, has little value. May God deliver us from evil, and may we fight to preserve life, not extinguish it. I continue to resist turning on the TV.

My platelet count dropped below the minimum threshold, and with my temperature spiking to 39°C (102.2°F), the doctors decided to give me a transfusion. Just before the transfusion started, another good doctor intervened and decided that, as I had courageously entered a medical trial, I was not to be given platelets until I started to bleed. Behold, at 8.00 p.m., I am bleeding from both ends, the front and the rear! The nurses have told me that Sunday night is not the best time for such antics. Let’s see what happens.

There was further excitement during the day. Two nurses spent over an hour trying to dress me up as a goth. I used to wonder why these beautiful young girls have piercings all over their bodies. After my encounter with the nurses, I have decided I don’t want to know. I ended up like a pincushion, but they failed to find the blood they were looking for. Eventually, they decided to leave the bloodthirsty activity to the night staff, bearing in mind tonight is Halloween.

The diarrhoea continues unabated. The only respite was after I ate some home-cooked boiled rice and lentils. I am writing this blog to keep my mind off the pain, and it helps! Highly recommended!

1 November 2010

I am in a sombre state of mind, though I take no swipes at the medical community or rigid NHS protocols, as they will throw me into the dungeon, which is a small room with no windows. I spent my first night there, and it wasn’t fun. Luckily, the next morning, a pretty nurse who thought I had smiled at her, took pity and moved me to Room 39. Sheer bliss.

I trust my doctor friends will not be offended when I say, with some degree of confidence, that the NHS works Monday to Friday only. The consultants are all off on skiing holidays and safaris on weekends and holidays, of which they have plenty. They strictly forbid people from throwing tantrums and falling ill on weekends. But having said that, they do come good in the end, God bless them. The good doctor who decided to stop my platelet transfusion caused several issues, apart from the terrifying sight of my manhood oozing drops of blood. Some nurses got upset, including the pretty one I had smiled at on day one. I think this was worse than the pain in the willy.

Everyone was getting agitated by 10.00 p.m., as I was curling up in pain. The on-call doctor was contacted, but there was no news until midnight. My little niece, who is also a doctor, rang the hospital and was told that the doctor would call and authorise the transfusion. Then, at 1.30 a.m., with a flash of lightning, wearing Zorro-like boots and resplendent in a leather jacket with little bags and trinkets all around her, appeared this young Asian doctor. She strode around confidently and within an hour or so had everything sorted, including my platelet transfusion and blood drawn from my veins. The only thing that made me hide my face under a pillow was when she asked me to turn over and pull down my pants. The rest is left to your imagination.

I feel like a rebel without a cause now with everything resolved. Until the morning, of course.

CHAPTER 2

The Auburn Leaf

2 November 2010

I lost it for a period yesterday afternoon, very unlike my normally cool character. I had been told that the doctors would prescribe a poo-stopper for me as soon as the results of the stool tests were available and that the procedure would take forty-eight hours in the lab. I was still pooing merrily away hourly while the consultants were merrily twiddling their thumbs. I had had enough, so I insisted on seeing the consultants.

Four of them suddenly descended upon me, round one, of course, to them. They had the element of surprise, as I was snoring away when they arrived. No doubt MI5 had informed them that shock-and-awe tactics work. And they did. After an excellent discourse, a few bouts of feigned laughter, and my telling them their actions were being documented in my blog, I received relief. The Lord be praised, I was prescribed an anti-diarrhoeal despite the lack of lab results. Seven days of painful, hourly pooing could have been avoided, but then the blog may not have happened!

I also discovered in the process that consultants can laugh. It’s mostly the silent, shaking kind of laugh, lest the patient in the next room who they are laughing at wakes up. They are the best, the pride of the NHS.

I had a busy day otherwise, having been at the end of a transfusion line for two units of blood. That allowed me a momentary interlude of self-indulgent mirth. What if the donor was Osama bin Laden or, worse still, Tony Blair or George Bush? I would never be a rebel without a cause then, a crusader for world cleansing. God have mercy. The transfusion was an uneventful affair, which I didn’t mind, as I was in pain and had the usual shivers prior to my temperature spiking. This took several hours during which my only view was that from my bed through the big, shuttered window.

Staring out of the window for a long time, I noticed something one never would. I could only see the tops of trees from my bed and beautiful auburn leaves still clinging to branches swaying merrily in the crisp November wind. Then I saw a few leaves relinquishing the comfort of their habitat and giving themselves to the elements to take them wherever they would. One swayed and clung to my window on the fifth floor, Room 39. If only I could have talked to it, I would have spoken about my childhood and youth. We could have shared stories of chivalry. I would have talked about my lost world in Lahore and Abbottabad and the times of love, innocence, romance, and, above all, peace, and humanity. I would have said that I, too, left my habitat of comfort, that most beautiful lively city of Lahore, and floated on the wave of the elements until I clung to a dark, dull, depressing Dewsbury. I was nineteen and naive and didn’t know I was a Paki. I came from one of the best boarding schools in the country, but I was a Paki. But it wasn’t all gloomy; all the girls called me love!

What a quirk of fate. The lost golden leaf clings to the outside of the window of Room 39 while the lost golden boy from Lahore clings to the inside of the window of Room 39. The golden leaf lost its habitat. I lost my youth and innocence, and my Lahore and country of heritage