Dear Readers,
Until now, I have been shielded from the costs of disability because of our wonderful and vital NHS. This will change when I get home due to the considerable costs of remodelling the house, and my need for round the clock care.
I ask, therefore, that if you enjoy The Kureishi Chronicles, believe in paying for good writing, and want to help with my recovery, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
My world has both shrunk and expanded. I am doing new things everyday, things I never imagined for a moment. I am, as I might have told you, living in a small room off the main thoroughfare of the ward, which houses twenty-eight patients. If I sit in my electric wheelchair at the entrance to my room, I am directly opposite the nurse’s station, at which three or four nurses are usually doing different tasks. Up and down the main drag move the patients in their wheelchairs, as well as visitors, doctors, nurses, porters, agency workers, and so on. I hear all kinds of conversations, and I am right in the middle of this busy ecosystem. I am, as they say, watching the world go by, and it is not without interest. Sometimes there are two or three hours when I have no visitors or sessions, I cannot, for practical reasons, watch a movie or read a book, and so all I do is stare and listen. I hear amazing things.
When it is time to leave my room and go to my session in the gym, which is about five minutes from here, I will greet many of the nurses and doctors, who I know by name now. Yesterday I ran into my pal from the next ward. He was coming towards me in his wheelchair looking more depressed and hangdog than ever, even for him. “I just shat myself,” he said.
“How did that happen?” I said, “I thought the nurses emptied your bowels this morning?”
“Yes,” he said, “so did I.”
I tell him that I pissed myself earlier that day, because my catheter tube got twisted as I was hoisted into my chair. I had to have my trousers changed. This pal is paralysed from the tits down, and so he can shit himself at any moment, having no control over his lower body. He worries that if he goes back to work as a teacher he could have an accident while lecturing. He has many other concerns, for instance as to where he will live when he leaves this hospital. A similar thing has happened to other patients, some of whom are in their twenties. When they finally have to leave, unless they have suitable accommodation, they will be put into a care home, at least for a while, until somewhere better is arranged. But it could take months. The problem with care homes is that there is little or no physio available, and certainly no gym. I am the lucky one, with a house to return to, and a partner and family who will support me.
As I move further down the corridor, a man in a wheelchair stops me, asking if I am Hanif. I guess he is in his mid-thirties, with a youthful vigour in a bright tracksuit, and a lot of energy in his arms as he skids about the place in his light-weight wheelchair. He was a patient here years ago, and his accident was dramatic. He tells me this freely: he was staying in a hotel abroad when a terrorist attack occurred, hearing shooting outside his room, he opened his door to find the place was on fire, he attempted to escape by tying his bedsheets together and climbing out of the window – he fell and broke his back. He has, what they call here, a “complete” break. He tells me all of this, as I guess he tells other patients, to make a connection with us, so that we can see how far he has come, from a miserable start in 2009. We agreed to keep in touch, and he praises my writing – this blog – saying that he wishes he had done the same thing when he was first in hospitalised; writing it all down as I did, capturing the raw feeling of the moment, the exact horror experienced, without reflection.
As I continue down the corridor, past the bays on the left, I smell dope, and know that the kids, the young patients, have been smoking again. The nurses rush about berating these sad and charming boys, who are much liked by the staff here for their cheek and verve. Then there is the long corridor which leads to the gym. On the left, as I look out, there is grass and trees, and I reflect on how far away I am from my family, how accustomed I have become to being here, and how nervous I am of leaving. When I head into the gym, I know everyone there, the physios and the occupational therapists, the students and the new patients.
Three of the physios took me to a hydrotherapy pool at the other end of the hospital. One of them played some Mozart through his phone, while the other two, like me, changed into their swimming costumes. I was strapped to a chair and lowered into the water. Floating on my back, I was pulled about the pool by the two physios. It was a lovely experience, I found that I relaxed, could kick my legs and move my arms. I really felt that I wanted to stretch out and swim. Then I sat down on a ledge at the end of the pool, stood up, and took a few steps. Movement is easy underwater, and I found that I could actually walk, that I could move my legs forward and tread the length of the small pool without getting tired. I was exhilarated and optimistic; I wanted to be doing this all the time.
Back on the ward it is lunchtime, and I have nothing of my own to eat in the fridge here, which means I have to have the hospital food. I always have the same thing, which is macaroni cheese, the one food I able to consume without wanting to throw up. One of the nurses puts my left arm in a metal sling called a ‘de-weighter’ which enables my arm to be suspended with a special fork stuck in my splint, so that I can grab a piece of macaroni and lift it to my mouth. This is, as you can imagine, time consuming and an inaccurate process. I get some of the macaroni cheese in my mouth, but a lot of it goes down my front, and some of it ends up on the floor. Whichever way I eat, it is a nightmare: if I am being fed by someone else, the delivery of the food is always at the wrong rate; too slow or too quick, and I am aware that I am utterly dependent on another person. But the nurse wants me to be, as she puts it, ‘independent’ so that when I leave here I will be able to feed myself. But it seems futile, the act of delivering food into one’s mouth is only a small fraction of the eating procedure; I cannot walk to the shops or take things out of the fridge, use kitchen appliances or do the washing up.
I am preparing to leave here and go home just before Christmas, and I will require a live-in carer as well as visiting nurses, who will have to be informed of my particular physical requirements. It takes at least an hour and a half for me to be gotten out of bed, washed, my catheter flushed, my clothes prepared and put on, before I am hoisted, at last, into my wheelchair. It is the most boring part of the day, but there is no way around it. It is like raising the Titanic. But at least I will be able to start revising the book – to be called Shattered - I am intending to create out of these blogs. I believe there are around fifty-six dispatches or diary entries, and I am still amazed to think that I have written so much at such an awful time. I haven’t reread a word of any of it, but I am looking forward to finding out what I felt. I am delighted to be doing something new, even at my age. This is essential for any artist, or indeed for any person.
Hanif
That small and perfect read is breathtaking - for its inspirational quality. You sound kind of excited which feels miraculous. The water experience seems especially momentous. Bloody hell. There I was, pondering the state of the world and feeling sad. Now I feel hopeful. Much appreciated. I marvel that your writing has the power to do that. Brilliant.
Dear Hanif, I see you met Will Pike. His father is a university friend and I wrote about how appallingly he was treated by the British government after his ordeal. https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/10/will-pike-taj-hotel-mumbai-terror-attacks
Best Linda Grant