Dear Loyal Reader, I am back home, or at least, back in my home city. My actual home, the place where I spent most of my time before my accident, is still someway off. I hope to return there someday. In the meantime, I will continue writing this blog, in the hope that it is useful to somebody. 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.
Hello, I'm in Rome and teach at Sapienza University. I've been reading your blog and the fact that you were so close to where I live moved me. It will get better. I'm not just saying that, it will. My husband was on a wheelchair, he was on a wheelchair when I met him, I was 29 and he was 53 (he had multiple sclerosis). So some of your experiences, of your feeling trapped, of your feeling unbearable anxiety at night, they ring a bell. You will get better, you will get better also physically. We have to live. You have such a brilliant mind, it will set you free. Forza, coraggio e affetto da Roma.
My hurt lurched as I read. I want to beg you to call your most renowned connections who, in turn, will demand you be moved to the best hospital with the best view, in a bright beautiful ward with bright beautiful people and dogs running round. Or whatever your heart desires. If you close your eyes and lie still, can you feel the love of the many around you? I hope astral travel is possible and you learn how to do it and fly then wherever you wish between the hours of four and ten, returning just before your beloved arrives. You are the beloved of this group, Hanif. I believe in God and prayer so I’ll keep doing that. Love to yoy
Courageous Hanif, thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Hilary Mantel once described how her life with illness helped her discover a "savage and hidden faculty" for managing her desires: "for slapping and pounding fate, a rickety raw-faced amateur who should never have stepped into the ring" with someone like her. I have no doubt that you are discovering this in yourself.
When I was in my own dark place shortly after my diagnosis, I copied this from an interview with Eva Gabrielsson, partner of Swedish writer Stieg Larsson, in the Observer, sometime in Feb 2010:
"Don't be afraid. Embrace it and you'll get through it. You become somebody else. You can't sleep, you can't eat, you are in total distrust of the world. But this is the way it is supposed to be. There is something in our genetic code, something primitive that takes us over because our rational self cannot deal with the reality. You are an animal now. But the more of an animal you are, the safer you are: it protects you. It's there to help you survive."
Who the hell put you on a dementia ward? Demand to be moved to a ward with compos mentis disabled people like yourself. That might make a difference. You need to be inspired not dragged down. I hear the NHS in Britain is almost as bad as the U.S. healthcare system. I am on hospice at home which isn't great because I live alone and don't have a mate or many visitors. So glad you have so much company--that makes all the difference. I wrote a Substack called "Which is Worse, Hospital or Prison" about my hospital stay that might amuse you. https://snarkysenior.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/80177745?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts I will not give you bromides that everything will be fine, but more physiotherapy and a better hospital environment should help a bit.
Dearest H. I live in Los Angeles otherwise I would visit. Please consider starting acupuncture immediately. With a Chinese-trained doctor specializing in nerves. I have seen with my own eyes recovery if some functions beyond what western medicine can do. A Chinese acupuncturist (in San Jose, CA) told me in China they sometimes lay SCI patients in bed without any surgery and let vertebrate fuse on their own and nerves to regrow with new pathways.
First year has the greatest potential or promise- so time is of the essence.
I probably sound like a snake oil salesman but if I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t be writing. I have an incomplete injury and wish I had continued with acupuncture because I had regained bladder sensation (after starting treatment 2.5 years post-injury thanks to U.S. hospitals not allowing it then being to sick to go).
O christ. Don’t know what to say. I’m not back in london yet but was trying to work out which one of the visitors i would be. Annoying morose silent one. Shit. No use at all. Am back on Wednesday not sure for how long. Have stories but are all sad moans about night nursing sick family and how awful my family are. How I’ve been away for five months and how no one cares about me. Me? Shit. Wish i could make everything better for you. Hope to see you xx
I also considered what sort of visitor I would be after Hanif's descriptions. I would ask what Hanif wanted me to bring in food, music, books, photographs, board games. I would be a listener and try and to offer a distraction by recounting funny situations, events. Mainly involving my embarrassing antics. I would probably end up being kicked it after endless wittering on!
Oh me, too! I am normally considered a very easy person, but whenever I get into an NHS hospital, I tend to be classified as a behavior problem. I think it’s the rubber mattress covers.
Anyhow, Hanif, the weird sleep patterns can be an awful drag and this is how I managed it: choose one rule a day to break. Sometimes they don’t even notice. In fact, start making your own rules, then see what they do.
Marjorie was the first of my grandparent's to die. She was my father's mother. Though I saw her every weekend throughout my childhood, she presented herself as more of an archetype of a grandmother than a fully-rounded human being. It is fair to say that I never really knew her.
She had survived breast cancer, though not without undergoing a mastectomy. I am told that she referred to the fake breast she wore as 'her hump'. Her desire to shield her grandchildren from the hard realities of life was such that I never knew anything about her first brush with the disease, or her absent breast, until long after she was dead. The stomach cancer that killed her could not be so easily concealed. The last time that I saw her was on a very long ward, in one of the London hospitals. Although I didn't know it, me, my two brothers, and my cousin, had been brought there to say goodbye to her, while she was still relatively well. In hindsight, I wish that my father had made that clearer to me. He is afraid of having that kind of conversation so he never does. As a consequence I was unaware of what I was losing that day. I imagine I said goodbye to my grandmother when we left, but I didn't know that it was the final goodbye. The only thing that I really remember clearly about the visit was my cousin (who I saw infrequently, as he lived in Birmingham, but who I got along with very well) pointing out an 'Emergency Cupboard' on the wall, which, he suggested, was there in case one of the other cupboards on the ward failed.
Hospitals are full of bizarre storage spaces like this, where items with no obvious home will eventually end up. I have seen a number of wall plaques, some donated by former patients (perhaps in a last ditch bid for immortality) that were destined never to garnish any wall. In the stationery cupboard of an oncology department, where I used to work, there was a medium-size disco ball. I have no idea why. Could there have been some unorthodox medical application? Nobody knew.
Another large cupboard in the same department was used to store the hundreds of tins of Quality Street, Roses and Cabury's Heroes that were donated by grateful patients. In December, these would be handed out to the staff as Christmas presents.
I once debated with a ward manager over whether it would be prudent to contact the owners of a water cooler that had been languishing in a cupboard for as long as anyone could remember. We were both concerned that such an overture might elicit a response along the lines of “thanks, we wondered where that was,” followed by a large bill covering back rental. As I had already overspent the ward's stationery budget by over £400 that month, purchasing boxes of forms and drug charts from the print shop, I decided to let sleeping dogs lie.
The Fashion Cupboard, adjoined the Departure Lounge – a liminal space where the Discharge Team would send patients who were ready to go home, but who were awaiting transport, or medication from the pharmacy. The cupboard acted as a repository for items of clothing that had somehow been left behind by inpatients and had gone unclaimed from lost property. The garments were washed and then dispensed to any patient who was being discharged with no clothes of their own to wear on the journey home. You could always tell someone who had passed through the transformative portals of the Fashion Cupboard. They emerged decked in a mismatched Frankenstein's monster ensemble, pieced together from the lives of the men and women who had gone before.
It does not surprise me in the least that there would be a cupboard in a hospital gym, labelled 'Circus Chair Parts'. Rehabilitation bridges the gap between hospital and home life. A lot of rehab assistants I have known have exhibited a creative, anarchist streak, made manifest in the activities they cook up, in their attempts to restore motion to bodies and minds that have long been inactive.
One Christmas, the rehab team on the Stroke Ward had patients painting partially-inflated latex gloves a festive green. These were later assembled into a kind of horrifying Christmas tree, made from disembodied rubber hands. It stood in the lobby of the ward for a day, before Infection Control labelled it a health risk and it was dispensed of as medical waste.
When you were in Italy, London was the Emerald City. A beacon of hope on the horizon, harbouring the promise of a return home. All you had to do was muster enough control over your limbs to click together the heels of your ruby slippers – perhaps a gift from your hospital's fashion cupboard.
Now you are eye-deep in the Capital. Up close, it's not emerald-coloured at all, but more of a matt dark-green. I imagine that you are graduating through a something akin to the stages of grief. Distractions are important – things that make life meaningful and worth engaging with. I know that physically you cannot write a book without assistance, but maybe now is the time to begin planning one, if you are not doing so already.
Stuck in a London hospital (st Thomas's) thinking how did I get here told only 8 months at the most to live so thin I was now caxchesic.
This was 2021 that year was spent with a death sentence hanging over me ( although to be fair I parked that thought as a possibility not a probability) in and out of hospital. Stage 4 non Hodgkin's lymphoma
Chemo which I negotiated fiercely til I got the amount I was prepared to accept - 50% and then when cancer cells still around radiotherapy again negotiated, but had to leave after 7 th session as in so much pain.
I am/was a homeopath for 35 years I had a whole tool box of alternative therapies that resonated for me my disposal which I used along side their very limited medecine. I took remedies every day, had an acupunturist and osteopath come to my house once a week just to keep me alive. I had to learn to walk again as I had lost all my muscle tone in my back . I forced myself to walk round the hospital ward.
This was all during covid so I saw no one except my wonderful husband Jaime who cared for me as Isabella cares for you. I didn't see physically my 3 daughters and grandchildren for nearly 2 years. Thank goodness for FaceTime.
Like you I couldn't read so I listened to audible which I found soothing and transported me elsewhere.
I had always been super healthy never drank and ate organic food for years . That probably saved me as my body was able to respond when I started on Mistletoe Therapy straight after failed radiotherapy.
Christmas 2021 started vomiting and asked for a pet scan
Much to everyone's complete amazement my tumour ( very large ulcerated in my stomach) had gone but had left so much scar tissue that I had to have a stent inserted into the scar tissue so I could eat.
That was a saga in itself. No hurrahs or congratulations just weeks in hospital being fed by a tube through nose - totally medieval as a treatment - until finally everyone came back from Xmas holiday .
By then I was 35 kgs and very frail
But hey in remission.
So here we are july 23 still in remission, we moved from south east London to Ashbourne Derbyshire to be near one of our daughters , I am busy still recovering but so much fitter now .
The stent means I can only eat small amounts at a time otherwise I'm sick this keeps me still thin which I find difficult at times.
Actually the whole process is difficult sometimes
You will get to where you want to be where you need to be but it won't be like before everything and everyone most of all you and Isabella have changed.
I found visualising my self in my favourite spot in my london garden with the sun shining and the roses in bloom a great place to go to and saying I will be there one day .
We met once in Udayan s house in Stoke Newington , must be at least 30 years ago. We sat in his garden and chatted about this and that .
So when I read about what happened to you in Rome I was struck how I felt an instant connect having spoken with you so long ago .
I follow your stories and enjoy them .
My love to you and your precious family. We can only forward
I don’t know how to write anything clever or uplifting to soothe your soul, but I will take in your words and hold them gently with love. I can listen.
Jeeze man! What you are living sucks the suckiest! I’ve been a fixing sort all my life, until recently. Now that need to make all things right is replaced with feeling love and compassion. It a good strategy as my own physical health is in a dark place right now. It seems you have many friends there or in you connection circle who may help you get to a better physical place. I hope that’s true. You deserve that. What I can do from the other side of the world is think of you every day (and I do) and feel the gratitude that comes from the privilege of being able to tap into your world as it really is. You are such a gift and I’m just going to keep loving you and doing my best to project that caring across the globe.
dear Hanif, I've read every single one of your posts from the very start and am (of course) blown away by your courage. I think of you every day and hope for your recovery. But as a fellow writer (and longtime fan!) I wanted to say this: the work you are doing at the moment is totally extraordinary. It's not just the courage and resilience you show (though, yes, it is that, of course it is), but the words!! The prose. The actual writing. You've lost none of your power or your honesty and I have no idea how you manage it without the use of your fingers (I couldn't). This is the most urgent and alive writing I am reading anywhere at the moment. It makes me laugh and it makes me cry and I feel its honesty and openness and take huge inspiration from it. It is so interesting. It lights up my day, makes me feel that anything is possible. so thank you! Please keep doing it. I can't be the only writer who feels that you've made something very exciting out of such adversity. At the end of the day isn't that all any of us can hope to do? I'm so glad you're home. I hope things get better. I hope you get to see your dog very soon. Julie X
When I was in the hospital after chemo and radiation and appeared sad I was visited by a psychiatrist who offered me Zoloft which I agreed to take. It did help make me feel less aggravated or rather just a meh attitude which at that time was probably useful when you’re experiencing daily traumatizing physical crapola (literally and otherwise).
So a couple of years after all that I asked for a prescription for a pain medication which I had been on in the hospital and in rehab, on higher doses, for some discomfort, and I noticed in teeny print on the bottle that one side effect was “sadness”, which apparently the psychiatrist who saw me in the hospital hadn’t connected the dots in the meds I was taking and my apparently concerning “mood”.
It’s so odd to click “like” with a little heart lighting up to show I’ve read and enjoy what you’ve written today. How can one “like” what you are being forced by fate to endure and now relate to us?
I hate that you have to go through this. And yet so many the world over suffer as you are doing. Your writing about it though forces us to really look and try to understand; it makes it personal.
I am so deeply thankful for your honesty, for sharing your humanness. I hope your writing serves as some sort of catharsis or therapy for you.
I would love to be one of your visitors! Sending an embrace from Southern California🤗
Hi Hanif...I did not want to say it...but I am not surprised you are disappointed...I know from experience the vibe here...your best bet is to get your home adapted and get back there...don't be surprised if the system is an arse about it....hopefully not...you will likely need carers etc
Hello, I'm in Rome and teach at Sapienza University. I've been reading your blog and the fact that you were so close to where I live moved me. It will get better. I'm not just saying that, it will. My husband was on a wheelchair, he was on a wheelchair when I met him, I was 29 and he was 53 (he had multiple sclerosis). So some of your experiences, of your feeling trapped, of your feeling unbearable anxiety at night, they ring a bell. You will get better, you will get better also physically. We have to live. You have such a brilliant mind, it will set you free. Forza, coraggio e affetto da Roma.
My hurt lurched as I read. I want to beg you to call your most renowned connections who, in turn, will demand you be moved to the best hospital with the best view, in a bright beautiful ward with bright beautiful people and dogs running round. Or whatever your heart desires. If you close your eyes and lie still, can you feel the love of the many around you? I hope astral travel is possible and you learn how to do it and fly then wherever you wish between the hours of four and ten, returning just before your beloved arrives. You are the beloved of this group, Hanif. I believe in God and prayer so I’ll keep doing that. Love to yoy
Courageous Hanif, thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Hilary Mantel once described how her life with illness helped her discover a "savage and hidden faculty" for managing her desires: "for slapping and pounding fate, a rickety raw-faced amateur who should never have stepped into the ring" with someone like her. I have no doubt that you are discovering this in yourself.
When I was in my own dark place shortly after my diagnosis, I copied this from an interview with Eva Gabrielsson, partner of Swedish writer Stieg Larsson, in the Observer, sometime in Feb 2010:
"Don't be afraid. Embrace it and you'll get through it. You become somebody else. You can't sleep, you can't eat, you are in total distrust of the world. But this is the way it is supposed to be. There is something in our genetic code, something primitive that takes us over because our rational self cannot deal with the reality. You are an animal now. But the more of an animal you are, the safer you are: it protects you. It's there to help you survive."
Trust yourself, much love, Sabine
Who the hell put you on a dementia ward? Demand to be moved to a ward with compos mentis disabled people like yourself. That might make a difference. You need to be inspired not dragged down. I hear the NHS in Britain is almost as bad as the U.S. healthcare system. I am on hospice at home which isn't great because I live alone and don't have a mate or many visitors. So glad you have so much company--that makes all the difference. I wrote a Substack called "Which is Worse, Hospital or Prison" about my hospital stay that might amuse you. https://snarkysenior.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/80177745?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts I will not give you bromides that everything will be fine, but more physiotherapy and a better hospital environment should help a bit.
Dearest H. I live in Los Angeles otherwise I would visit. Please consider starting acupuncture immediately. With a Chinese-trained doctor specializing in nerves. I have seen with my own eyes recovery if some functions beyond what western medicine can do. A Chinese acupuncturist (in San Jose, CA) told me in China they sometimes lay SCI patients in bed without any surgery and let vertebrate fuse on their own and nerves to regrow with new pathways.
First year has the greatest potential or promise- so time is of the essence.
I probably sound like a snake oil salesman but if I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t be writing. I have an incomplete injury and wish I had continued with acupuncture because I had regained bladder sensation (after starting treatment 2.5 years post-injury thanks to U.S. hospitals not allowing it then being to sick to go).
Shedamorshed@gmail
This may be right!
Thank you for sharing this! Yes to acupuncture!
O christ. Don’t know what to say. I’m not back in london yet but was trying to work out which one of the visitors i would be. Annoying morose silent one. Shit. No use at all. Am back on Wednesday not sure for how long. Have stories but are all sad moans about night nursing sick family and how awful my family are. How I’ve been away for five months and how no one cares about me. Me? Shit. Wish i could make everything better for you. Hope to see you xx
I also considered what sort of visitor I would be after Hanif's descriptions. I would ask what Hanif wanted me to bring in food, music, books, photographs, board games. I would be a listener and try and to offer a distraction by recounting funny situations, events. Mainly involving my embarrassing antics. I would probably end up being kicked it after endless wittering on!
Oh me, too! I am normally considered a very easy person, but whenever I get into an NHS hospital, I tend to be classified as a behavior problem. I think it’s the rubber mattress covers.
Anyhow, Hanif, the weird sleep patterns can be an awful drag and this is how I managed it: choose one rule a day to break. Sometimes they don’t even notice. In fact, start making your own rules, then see what they do.
Marjorie was the first of my grandparent's to die. She was my father's mother. Though I saw her every weekend throughout my childhood, she presented herself as more of an archetype of a grandmother than a fully-rounded human being. It is fair to say that I never really knew her.
She had survived breast cancer, though not without undergoing a mastectomy. I am told that she referred to the fake breast she wore as 'her hump'. Her desire to shield her grandchildren from the hard realities of life was such that I never knew anything about her first brush with the disease, or her absent breast, until long after she was dead. The stomach cancer that killed her could not be so easily concealed. The last time that I saw her was on a very long ward, in one of the London hospitals. Although I didn't know it, me, my two brothers, and my cousin, had been brought there to say goodbye to her, while she was still relatively well. In hindsight, I wish that my father had made that clearer to me. He is afraid of having that kind of conversation so he never does. As a consequence I was unaware of what I was losing that day. I imagine I said goodbye to my grandmother when we left, but I didn't know that it was the final goodbye. The only thing that I really remember clearly about the visit was my cousin (who I saw infrequently, as he lived in Birmingham, but who I got along with very well) pointing out an 'Emergency Cupboard' on the wall, which, he suggested, was there in case one of the other cupboards on the ward failed.
Hospitals are full of bizarre storage spaces like this, where items with no obvious home will eventually end up. I have seen a number of wall plaques, some donated by former patients (perhaps in a last ditch bid for immortality) that were destined never to garnish any wall. In the stationery cupboard of an oncology department, where I used to work, there was a medium-size disco ball. I have no idea why. Could there have been some unorthodox medical application? Nobody knew.
Another large cupboard in the same department was used to store the hundreds of tins of Quality Street, Roses and Cabury's Heroes that were donated by grateful patients. In December, these would be handed out to the staff as Christmas presents.
I once debated with a ward manager over whether it would be prudent to contact the owners of a water cooler that had been languishing in a cupboard for as long as anyone could remember. We were both concerned that such an overture might elicit a response along the lines of “thanks, we wondered where that was,” followed by a large bill covering back rental. As I had already overspent the ward's stationery budget by over £400 that month, purchasing boxes of forms and drug charts from the print shop, I decided to let sleeping dogs lie.
The Fashion Cupboard, adjoined the Departure Lounge – a liminal space where the Discharge Team would send patients who were ready to go home, but who were awaiting transport, or medication from the pharmacy. The cupboard acted as a repository for items of clothing that had somehow been left behind by inpatients and had gone unclaimed from lost property. The garments were washed and then dispensed to any patient who was being discharged with no clothes of their own to wear on the journey home. You could always tell someone who had passed through the transformative portals of the Fashion Cupboard. They emerged decked in a mismatched Frankenstein's monster ensemble, pieced together from the lives of the men and women who had gone before.
It does not surprise me in the least that there would be a cupboard in a hospital gym, labelled 'Circus Chair Parts'. Rehabilitation bridges the gap between hospital and home life. A lot of rehab assistants I have known have exhibited a creative, anarchist streak, made manifest in the activities they cook up, in their attempts to restore motion to bodies and minds that have long been inactive.
One Christmas, the rehab team on the Stroke Ward had patients painting partially-inflated latex gloves a festive green. These were later assembled into a kind of horrifying Christmas tree, made from disembodied rubber hands. It stood in the lobby of the ward for a day, before Infection Control labelled it a health risk and it was dispensed of as medical waste.
When you were in Italy, London was the Emerald City. A beacon of hope on the horizon, harbouring the promise of a return home. All you had to do was muster enough control over your limbs to click together the heels of your ruby slippers – perhaps a gift from your hospital's fashion cupboard.
Now you are eye-deep in the Capital. Up close, it's not emerald-coloured at all, but more of a matt dark-green. I imagine that you are graduating through a something akin to the stages of grief. Distractions are important – things that make life meaningful and worth engaging with. I know that physically you cannot write a book without assistance, but maybe now is the time to begin planning one, if you are not doing so already.
Oh how I know how you feel
Stuck in a London hospital (st Thomas's) thinking how did I get here told only 8 months at the most to live so thin I was now caxchesic.
This was 2021 that year was spent with a death sentence hanging over me ( although to be fair I parked that thought as a possibility not a probability) in and out of hospital. Stage 4 non Hodgkin's lymphoma
Chemo which I negotiated fiercely til I got the amount I was prepared to accept - 50% and then when cancer cells still around radiotherapy again negotiated, but had to leave after 7 th session as in so much pain.
I am/was a homeopath for 35 years I had a whole tool box of alternative therapies that resonated for me my disposal which I used along side their very limited medecine. I took remedies every day, had an acupunturist and osteopath come to my house once a week just to keep me alive. I had to learn to walk again as I had lost all my muscle tone in my back . I forced myself to walk round the hospital ward.
This was all during covid so I saw no one except my wonderful husband Jaime who cared for me as Isabella cares for you. I didn't see physically my 3 daughters and grandchildren for nearly 2 years. Thank goodness for FaceTime.
Like you I couldn't read so I listened to audible which I found soothing and transported me elsewhere.
I had always been super healthy never drank and ate organic food for years . That probably saved me as my body was able to respond when I started on Mistletoe Therapy straight after failed radiotherapy.
Christmas 2021 started vomiting and asked for a pet scan
Much to everyone's complete amazement my tumour ( very large ulcerated in my stomach) had gone but had left so much scar tissue that I had to have a stent inserted into the scar tissue so I could eat.
That was a saga in itself. No hurrahs or congratulations just weeks in hospital being fed by a tube through nose - totally medieval as a treatment - until finally everyone came back from Xmas holiday .
By then I was 35 kgs and very frail
But hey in remission.
So here we are july 23 still in remission, we moved from south east London to Ashbourne Derbyshire to be near one of our daughters , I am busy still recovering but so much fitter now .
The stent means I can only eat small amounts at a time otherwise I'm sick this keeps me still thin which I find difficult at times.
Actually the whole process is difficult sometimes
You will get to where you want to be where you need to be but it won't be like before everything and everyone most of all you and Isabella have changed.
I found visualising my self in my favourite spot in my london garden with the sun shining and the roses in bloom a great place to go to and saying I will be there one day .
We met once in Udayan s house in Stoke Newington , must be at least 30 years ago. We sat in his garden and chatted about this and that .
So when I read about what happened to you in Rome I was struck how I felt an instant connect having spoken with you so long ago .
I follow your stories and enjoy them .
My love to you and your precious family. We can only forward
Or onward and upward
Shaunx
What an amazing person you are Shauna !
I don’t know how to write anything clever or uplifting to soothe your soul, but I will take in your words and hold them gently with love. I can listen.
Jeeze man! What you are living sucks the suckiest! I’ve been a fixing sort all my life, until recently. Now that need to make all things right is replaced with feeling love and compassion. It a good strategy as my own physical health is in a dark place right now. It seems you have many friends there or in you connection circle who may help you get to a better physical place. I hope that’s true. You deserve that. What I can do from the other side of the world is think of you every day (and I do) and feel the gratitude that comes from the privilege of being able to tap into your world as it really is. You are such a gift and I’m just going to keep loving you and doing my best to project that caring across the globe.
💕 💪 Mary
Olympia Washington USA
Keep writing, Hanif.
dear Hanif, I've read every single one of your posts from the very start and am (of course) blown away by your courage. I think of you every day and hope for your recovery. But as a fellow writer (and longtime fan!) I wanted to say this: the work you are doing at the moment is totally extraordinary. It's not just the courage and resilience you show (though, yes, it is that, of course it is), but the words!! The prose. The actual writing. You've lost none of your power or your honesty and I have no idea how you manage it without the use of your fingers (I couldn't). This is the most urgent and alive writing I am reading anywhere at the moment. It makes me laugh and it makes me cry and I feel its honesty and openness and take huge inspiration from it. It is so interesting. It lights up my day, makes me feel that anything is possible. so thank you! Please keep doing it. I can't be the only writer who feels that you've made something very exciting out of such adversity. At the end of the day isn't that all any of us can hope to do? I'm so glad you're home. I hope things get better. I hope you get to see your dog very soon. Julie X
When I was in the hospital after chemo and radiation and appeared sad I was visited by a psychiatrist who offered me Zoloft which I agreed to take. It did help make me feel less aggravated or rather just a meh attitude which at that time was probably useful when you’re experiencing daily traumatizing physical crapola (literally and otherwise).
So a couple of years after all that I asked for a prescription for a pain medication which I had been on in the hospital and in rehab, on higher doses, for some discomfort, and I noticed in teeny print on the bottle that one side effect was “sadness”, which apparently the psychiatrist who saw me in the hospital hadn’t connected the dots in the meds I was taking and my apparently concerning “mood”.
One giant DUH all around, eh?
Moral of story: READ THE SIDE EFFECTS
Ugh
It’s so odd to click “like” with a little heart lighting up to show I’ve read and enjoy what you’ve written today. How can one “like” what you are being forced by fate to endure and now relate to us?
I hate that you have to go through this. And yet so many the world over suffer as you are doing. Your writing about it though forces us to really look and try to understand; it makes it personal.
I am so deeply thankful for your honesty, for sharing your humanness. I hope your writing serves as some sort of catharsis or therapy for you.
I would love to be one of your visitors! Sending an embrace from Southern California🤗
Hi Hanif...I did not want to say it...but I am not surprised you are disappointed...I know from experience the vibe here...your best bet is to get your home adapted and get back there...don't be surprised if the system is an arse about it....hopefully not...you will likely need carers etc
Give it tine but aim to get back hone
Keep doing the physio
And dream...
Visualise the improvements you wish for...
Xx
Thank you for sharing as much as you do with us. I'm keeping you in my thoughts and wishing you well X