Dear Readers, I kindly ask that if you have the means, it would mean a great deal if you could support my writing by becoming a paid subscriber, and keep this show on the road. Your loving writer, Hanif. Isabella suggested that I shouldn’t write a blog if it was going be too miserable and morbid. But this is how it is.
Unlike isabelle i believe in the virtues of your bellyaching. If you can’t complain to us, how can the shit get out? Furthermore, we make jewish jokes all the time about pain and misery. How could we have survived without the words oy vey, which are now on a t-shirt someone gave me. You are facing something we mostly don’t ever seriously try to contemplate, something heidegger called being-toward-death, which, for him, allows us to speak “authentically.” Your complaints are authentic to my ear, and allow me to not simply feel for you but feel that you express thoughts i’d be ashamed to share with my own “belle” and children. You aren’t alone hanif, not even at night in the grey room without tv…. After all, what’s on tv anyway besides crap?
Agree with Ken, oy vey. let it rip. we're here to listen. and it ain't fair. your honesty and inventiveness in the face of this disaster continues to inspire. with love and admiration, Louise
I am comforted by the messages you receive, Hanif. So many feast on your every word. Eager fellow travelers, partners in crime. Soon the exchange of constipation stories will begin. You keep us regular; no mean feat. Join in! Would that we all could visit with something good and gossipy to talk with you about. We turn off the TV and look at the wall. I need to find a small room and paint it gray, paste little airplanes on the window. We are all getting better.
It's really important to write it how it is, AND I just want to tell you that I, who rarely follow social media, read your posts every day and am bowled over by your continued creativity and energy in the face of being dealt such a rubbish blow. I think what you are doing in this writing is important and inspirational.
Many people's thoughts are with you and I and many many others thank you for sharing this blog. You transcend the room
Hanif, I can't claim to know what you're going through ot how you feel but I have been bed and housebound for may years with a condition patients laughingly call 'the living death' This is all I can offer but it has got me through some bad places, Nazim Hikmet was a polticial prisoner in hospital when we wrote this
Message- Nazim Hikmet
My fellow patients, you'll get well.
The aches and pains will cease,
Ease will come,
Softly like a warm summer evening
descending from heavy green branches.
My fellow patients,
hold on a bit longer, hang on
What waits outside the door is not death
but life,
Outside the door
is the whole bustling world.
You will rise from your beds
and walk.
You will discover all over again
the taste of salt, bread and the sun.
To turn yellow as alemon, melt like a candle
or collapse suddenly like a rotted sycamore-
my fellow patients,
we're not lemons, candles or sycamores:
We're people, thank goodness.
We know how to mix our hope with our medicine-
how to put our feet down,
stand our ground,
and say,
"We must live!!
My fellow patients,
we'll get well.
The aches and pains will cease
ease will come
softly
like a warm summer evening
descending from heavy green branches.
Hope you find something to cling to in these words. It will pass, things will change
Thank you brave Kathryn for your own words and the deeply meaningful poem . It’s words from people like you, also enduring debilitating conditions that can help Hanif the most v. Even if he can’t answer just now , trust that he had heard you and appreciates your care
Please, please make sure that they sort our your bowels. Faecal impaction - where you are very bunged up - will stop you eating and make your feel terrible. Gone are the days when nurses checked on bowel actions every day. It should be easy to sort out with modern medication.
This should be a priority, fecal impaction will cause nausea, headaches, and damage the nerves that induce the peristaltic wave through the gut. Demand twice daily Magnesium, vitamin C and stone fruit - can’t believe your nursing staff aren’t on top of this
Your friend on hospice here. I am much older than you (80) though everyone I know seems to live to 90 these days. I have a shit ton of drugs in my night table drawer and the ability to use them--which you don't since you can't use your hands so the decision is moot. Unless someone helps you die, which is illegal in England I believe, so you are condemned to live. Unless you're schlepped to Switzerland. I think about it a lot and will probably check out sooner or later but there always seems to be a reason not to--at least today. I have to finish streaming The Americans to find out how it ends. I wish they had MAID (medical aid in dying) in my state. I just did a video for the lobbyists who are trying to get it passed here. I am going through all the stomach ailments too, which sucks., but since I can get up and move around it's not as bad. Get the fucking TV fixed or insist on another one. In the meantime listen to audiobooks--they're a lifesaver. By the way the lady who dropped in was WAY out of line. I never visit anyone in hospital without their prior approval. People sometimes don't want visitors. Thanking of you.
A small grey room and a telly that doesn't work. I'd tack a picture on the wall - of your choice - that is in your vision, and get a telly expert in. No offence to your son. On the slightly less grey side, you have left the external madness behind. Unable to avoid such a cheap link, we are now arrived at your stuckness. Physically (you'd think a hospital could sort that one out??? if you've never tried prunes this might be your window) and mentally. On the one hand, that must have really interrupted your visitor world (the person you used to nod to just turning up)and on the other it annoyed you - now this is a definite emotion and the one you used to have about people standing at your open door. It is an invasion of your privacy either way. Just because you are in hospital, and beholden to a different set of rules and so on doesn't mean a change in invitation. I think next time, if there is one, tell them to go.
Be rude, why not. I well understand Isabella advising you to pack it in (being pessimistic and so on) but honestly, it's ok. For me it's an invitation for us other souls bobbing along touching the wire now and then to commiserate, to sympathise (no not me I don't like sympathy) to share experience. In hospital they are going to find stuff that's their job.Your end game for now in my mind, is to get home where you have more control at least and there's a chance of that happening. You've just moved which is traumatic even if the last place was ghastly. Personally, I'd try radio 2 in the deep of the night Radio 4 has gone a bit funny and try and avoid radio 4 today. Back to me, albeit briefly. There is a free exhibition at the National Gallery on St Francis of Assisi, and it would be a massive endeavour for me to go there and see it. He is the only saint really, that I totally admire. Everything he did was in keeping with Jesus. Reading wise had to dispense with the Anglo Saxons, is all got too detailed. It won't stop raining either and Summer has paused. the night - something to be got through. I say every morning to one of my cats, Binky, when I pick it up (unsure as to its gender possibly both) I say well we got through the night Binky. See how the week ahead goes, your new abode could be the best of the three. Thank you as ever for writing anything, with love from a small village in deepest North Yorkshire, Maddi XXX ps try turning the tv on and off and maybe a sharp tap.x
You are better off without television. I got rid of mine eleven years ago and have never regretted it. Nothing but crap there. Of course, now that the Writers Guild and SAG/AFTRA are on strike (and good for them!) there will only be reruns of crap. Oy vey!
You never mention alternative therapies to use alongside what they are doing in hospital.
Do you think it's bull shit or are you open to suggestions.
Get your family to bring in things from home to personalise your room
When I was in hospital with cancer I had many reminders from home to say that you are you with a life that's been lived before this moment. Sending love and light from Derbyshire
Your symptoms remind me of my mother-in-law, 96, who is currently in rehab herself with a broken pelvis. She swings between bouts of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea to being so impacted that her poop has to be literally dug out by hand.
As you have described, this is terrible, and like you her mood is similarly bleak. Although, being a generation older, her desire to just be done with life feels less shocking than hearing you have similar really bad days.
It is ludicrous and so unfair that problems with our plumbing can have such deeply negative affects on our mental health.
Perhaps some alternative treatments for your nausea, appetite and sleeping issues can alleviate some of your discomfort.
Love your books. If the finger up the bum didn’t work you will feel a little better when you have a dump! And remember you can always kill yourself tomorrow just not today. Love & strength to you and your family ❤️
Thank you for your honest writing. The world needs your honest writing so we can all more easily share and bear the awkward, uncomfortable and distressing truths.
i’m sorry to hear that. Things are going so badly.
Senna tea was recommended for constipation by nurses at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital. ( Some narcotics cause constipation.) It’s available at health food stores or online. It works!
Well at least you’re out of the general hospital and somewhere more proactive, even if that comes in the form of a excruciating finger up your butt!
Hard to hold onto hope sometimes, but a grey room can be decorated maybe? And a TV can be fixed? Uninvited guests can be be prevented, Godfather-style, with a son (or close friend) keeping guard. And again we are ALL rooting for you all over the world.
You will ride another plane one day soon. But not too soon I hope. I’ve been zipping around the globe with my little documentary “Doctor Who Am I” and the air travel resulted in blood clots in my legs that went undiagnosed until 2 weeks ago when one strayed into my left lung and almost fucking killed me. But that’s another story!
Suffice to say ... In California (I suspect all over the States) it’s not just a dysfunctional TV on the wall at the end of your bed, there’s also always a big fucking old fashioned clock in every room.
The TV and the clock combine to create an existential altar to which the times of births and deaths are called ... it’s an altar most of us end up in front of many times .... you are still on a path to recovery my friend however rocky that path may be and however many detours it takes, you sound like you’re in the right place.
And please!
Keep writing your experiences. Why? Because there are thousands (maybe millions) stuck in hospital rooms all over the world who will read what you write, and they will find solace and identify with you. You are famous enough to be heard by them, so keep writing, your struggles are honestly relayed and give hope, even when you think they don’t.
Again, love to you, and masses of strength in the days to come, just watch out for the enthusiastic fingers of well meaning strangers!
Please find a gastrointestinal physician who will address these issues STAT
There are a dozen protocols you should be on that will relieve your distress and the stress on your non functioning GI system. I mean in this day and age with all the science it’s absurd that a nurse is shoving their finger up your rectum. Is Britain in the Stone Age????????
Unlike isabelle i believe in the virtues of your bellyaching. If you can’t complain to us, how can the shit get out? Furthermore, we make jewish jokes all the time about pain and misery. How could we have survived without the words oy vey, which are now on a t-shirt someone gave me. You are facing something we mostly don’t ever seriously try to contemplate, something heidegger called being-toward-death, which, for him, allows us to speak “authentically.” Your complaints are authentic to my ear, and allow me to not simply feel for you but feel that you express thoughts i’d be ashamed to share with my own “belle” and children. You aren’t alone hanif, not even at night in the grey room without tv…. After all, what’s on tv anyway besides crap?
I look forward to reading your posts every day.
And often to your friends’ comments.
Your buddy
Ken
Agree with Ken, oy vey. let it rip. we're here to listen. and it ain't fair. your honesty and inventiveness in the face of this disaster continues to inspire. with love and admiration, Louise
I am comforted by the messages you receive, Hanif. So many feast on your every word. Eager fellow travelers, partners in crime. Soon the exchange of constipation stories will begin. You keep us regular; no mean feat. Join in! Would that we all could visit with something good and gossipy to talk with you about. We turn off the TV and look at the wall. I need to find a small room and paint it gray, paste little airplanes on the window. We are all getting better.
You're right that television would only depress Hanif more. And of course I am a premier league belly-acher myself.
You have said everything I would say Ken. Thank you for putting words to all our thoughts for dear Hanif
It's really important to write it how it is, AND I just want to tell you that I, who rarely follow social media, read your posts every day and am bowled over by your continued creativity and energy in the face of being dealt such a rubbish blow. I think what you are doing in this writing is important and inspirational.
Many people's thoughts are with you and I and many many others thank you for sharing this blog. You transcend the room
Gayle
"Rubbish blow." What a great way to put it.
Hanif, I can't claim to know what you're going through ot how you feel but I have been bed and housebound for may years with a condition patients laughingly call 'the living death' This is all I can offer but it has got me through some bad places, Nazim Hikmet was a polticial prisoner in hospital when we wrote this
Message- Nazim Hikmet
My fellow patients, you'll get well.
The aches and pains will cease,
Ease will come,
Softly like a warm summer evening
descending from heavy green branches.
My fellow patients,
hold on a bit longer, hang on
What waits outside the door is not death
but life,
Outside the door
is the whole bustling world.
You will rise from your beds
and walk.
You will discover all over again
the taste of salt, bread and the sun.
To turn yellow as alemon, melt like a candle
or collapse suddenly like a rotted sycamore-
my fellow patients,
we're not lemons, candles or sycamores:
We're people, thank goodness.
We know how to mix our hope with our medicine-
how to put our feet down,
stand our ground,
and say,
"We must live!!
My fellow patients,
we'll get well.
The aches and pains will cease
ease will come
softly
like a warm summer evening
descending from heavy green branches.
Hope you find something to cling to in these words. It will pass, things will change
All the best.Xx
Thank you brave Kathryn for your own words and the deeply meaningful poem . It’s words from people like you, also enduring debilitating conditions that can help Hanif the most v. Even if he can’t answer just now , trust that he had heard you and appreciates your care
Nazım Hikmet 🧡
Assume the best of intentions of everyone until absolutely proven otherwise, then let it go.
Please, please make sure that they sort our your bowels. Faecal impaction - where you are very bunged up - will stop you eating and make your feel terrible. Gone are the days when nurses checked on bowel actions every day. It should be easy to sort out with modern medication.
This should be a priority, fecal impaction will cause nausea, headaches, and damage the nerves that induce the peristaltic wave through the gut. Demand twice daily Magnesium, vitamin C and stone fruit - can’t believe your nursing staff aren’t on top of this
Totally agree. This is absolutely vital and should not be too difficult. Hopefully appetite will improve.
Someone I know had to have the impacted matter removed manually by a doctor, while the person was under anaesthesia. Nothing else had worked.
Your friend on hospice here. I am much older than you (80) though everyone I know seems to live to 90 these days. I have a shit ton of drugs in my night table drawer and the ability to use them--which you don't since you can't use your hands so the decision is moot. Unless someone helps you die, which is illegal in England I believe, so you are condemned to live. Unless you're schlepped to Switzerland. I think about it a lot and will probably check out sooner or later but there always seems to be a reason not to--at least today. I have to finish streaming The Americans to find out how it ends. I wish they had MAID (medical aid in dying) in my state. I just did a video for the lobbyists who are trying to get it passed here. I am going through all the stomach ailments too, which sucks., but since I can get up and move around it's not as bad. Get the fucking TV fixed or insist on another one. In the meantime listen to audiobooks--they're a lifesaver. By the way the lady who dropped in was WAY out of line. I never visit anyone in hospital without their prior approval. People sometimes don't want visitors. Thanking of you.
I disagree that the lady who visited was out of line. What a nasty response to someone who was just trying to help in her own way, however awkward.
Nasty? Who comes first--Hanif or some random visitor? Visiting someone in his condition without asking is rude no matter what her intentions
A small grey room and a telly that doesn't work. I'd tack a picture on the wall - of your choice - that is in your vision, and get a telly expert in. No offence to your son. On the slightly less grey side, you have left the external madness behind. Unable to avoid such a cheap link, we are now arrived at your stuckness. Physically (you'd think a hospital could sort that one out??? if you've never tried prunes this might be your window) and mentally. On the one hand, that must have really interrupted your visitor world (the person you used to nod to just turning up)and on the other it annoyed you - now this is a definite emotion and the one you used to have about people standing at your open door. It is an invasion of your privacy either way. Just because you are in hospital, and beholden to a different set of rules and so on doesn't mean a change in invitation. I think next time, if there is one, tell them to go.
Be rude, why not. I well understand Isabella advising you to pack it in (being pessimistic and so on) but honestly, it's ok. For me it's an invitation for us other souls bobbing along touching the wire now and then to commiserate, to sympathise (no not me I don't like sympathy) to share experience. In hospital they are going to find stuff that's their job.Your end game for now in my mind, is to get home where you have more control at least and there's a chance of that happening. You've just moved which is traumatic even if the last place was ghastly. Personally, I'd try radio 2 in the deep of the night Radio 4 has gone a bit funny and try and avoid radio 4 today. Back to me, albeit briefly. There is a free exhibition at the National Gallery on St Francis of Assisi, and it would be a massive endeavour for me to go there and see it. He is the only saint really, that I totally admire. Everything he did was in keeping with Jesus. Reading wise had to dispense with the Anglo Saxons, is all got too detailed. It won't stop raining either and Summer has paused. the night - something to be got through. I say every morning to one of my cats, Binky, when I pick it up (unsure as to its gender possibly both) I say well we got through the night Binky. See how the week ahead goes, your new abode could be the best of the three. Thank you as ever for writing anything, with love from a small village in deepest North Yorkshire, Maddi XXX ps try turning the tv on and off and maybe a sharp tap.x
You are better off without television. I got rid of mine eleven years ago and have never regretted it. Nothing but crap there. Of course, now that the Writers Guild and SAG/AFTRA are on strike (and good for them!) there will only be reruns of crap. Oy vey!
You never mention alternative therapies to use alongside what they are doing in hospital.
Do you think it's bull shit or are you open to suggestions.
Get your family to bring in things from home to personalise your room
When I was in hospital with cancer I had many reminders from home to say that you are you with a life that's been lived before this moment. Sending love and light from Derbyshire
Your symptoms remind me of my mother-in-law, 96, who is currently in rehab herself with a broken pelvis. She swings between bouts of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea to being so impacted that her poop has to be literally dug out by hand.
As you have described, this is terrible, and like you her mood is similarly bleak. Although, being a generation older, her desire to just be done with life feels less shocking than hearing you have similar really bad days.
It is ludicrous and so unfair that problems with our plumbing can have such deeply negative affects on our mental health.
Perhaps some alternative treatments for your nausea, appetite and sleeping issues can alleviate some of your discomfort.
Holding your hand from far away.
Love your books. If the finger up the bum didn’t work you will feel a little better when you have a dump! And remember you can always kill yourself tomorrow just not today. Love & strength to you and your family ❤️
Would it be absurd for me to recommend someone smuggle in a regular micro dose of mushrooms? They would help you. X Eleanor
I found that a microdose I had once helped lift my depression in the long term - although the short term was kind of strange! :)
Yes, it works. They’re running tests at Imperial College in London.
Thank you for your honest writing. The world needs your honest writing so we can all more easily share and bear the awkward, uncomfortable and distressing truths.
i’m sorry to hear that. Things are going so badly.
Senna tea was recommended for constipation by nurses at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital. ( Some narcotics cause constipation.) It’s available at health food stores or online. It works!
I'm supposed to take it but am afraid it will work too well when I have to go out. Is the tea gentler? Have to pick that up.
Erica, My memories are thirty years old, but I believe it is gentle.
daughter of a pharmacist here. Senakot! it works! very gentle! they use it after surgery all the time when people are constipated.
Only to say, I have felt that way too and I am glad I didn't leap off a cliff. Things change incessantly, sometimes for the better.
Hi Hanif,
Well at least you’re out of the general hospital and somewhere more proactive, even if that comes in the form of a excruciating finger up your butt!
Hard to hold onto hope sometimes, but a grey room can be decorated maybe? And a TV can be fixed? Uninvited guests can be be prevented, Godfather-style, with a son (or close friend) keeping guard. And again we are ALL rooting for you all over the world.
You will ride another plane one day soon. But not too soon I hope. I’ve been zipping around the globe with my little documentary “Doctor Who Am I” and the air travel resulted in blood clots in my legs that went undiagnosed until 2 weeks ago when one strayed into my left lung and almost fucking killed me. But that’s another story!
Suffice to say ... In California (I suspect all over the States) it’s not just a dysfunctional TV on the wall at the end of your bed, there’s also always a big fucking old fashioned clock in every room.
The TV and the clock combine to create an existential altar to which the times of births and deaths are called ... it’s an altar most of us end up in front of many times .... you are still on a path to recovery my friend however rocky that path may be and however many detours it takes, you sound like you’re in the right place.
And please!
Keep writing your experiences. Why? Because there are thousands (maybe millions) stuck in hospital rooms all over the world who will read what you write, and they will find solace and identify with you. You are famous enough to be heard by them, so keep writing, your struggles are honestly relayed and give hope, even when you think they don’t.
Again, love to you, and masses of strength in the days to come, just watch out for the enthusiastic fingers of well meaning strangers!
Matthew x
Please find a gastrointestinal physician who will address these issues STAT
There are a dozen protocols you should be on that will relieve your distress and the stress on your non functioning GI system. I mean in this day and age with all the science it’s absurd that a nurse is shoving their finger up your rectum. Is Britain in the Stone Age????????
Yep it’s the dear old NHS it can be brutal in its desperation