We have a bed for you
18 nights before, I
arrived dying, in pain and hopelessly unaware of the seriousness of my
condition. Tentatively, I had just one change of underwear but no inkling of
what might ensue. From what my GP (General Practitioner) and the medical personnel
saw, my condition was grave necessitating immediate admission to the hospital. It
is from that assessment that Tuesday morning that the statement, “We have a bed
for you upstairs,” met the urgency for action on my situation.
Much as I wanted the
security and safety of the crenelations of my home, I was in no fit state to be
at home except if I had a death wish. Over the period of time as I pined to
return home, tests, biopsies, treatments, a course of chemotherapy, pills, suppositories,
injections and unfortunately utterly tasteless food triggering emesis had done
their bit, the last hurdle to clear was after-discharge care.
Before you go home
They needed a nurse to
visit me at home daily to dress the fungating tumour lesions and assess my
welfare. Until that was settled, I was going nowhere. Marcella had offered to
have me stay with her, she already had her own ordeal with cancer and wonderful
as that offer was, I just wanted to go back home to my own bed.
On Friday the 9th
of October 2009, I was discharged from the hospital, I bid my ward colleagues and
the nurses goodbye and called a taxicab to take me home. To the quiet, the
serenity, the comfort and the security of my own place where I could either rest,
ponder, or be tormented by what future lay ahead of me. It was the beginning of
my new life.
Getting to tell
better stories
These blogs twelve years
on from when I had to go hospital for the treatment of HIV presenting as
full-blown AIDS with the opportunistic infection and cancer of Kaposi’s sarcoma
are as I recall what has become part of the story of my life before I have gone
to review the blogs I wrote on those particular days. My hope is that whatever
we might be going through, we eventually get to tell better stories.
Blog - Home - At last
Blogs - The
Cancer Tales (2009)
The twelve-year
recollections
Blog - Chemotherapy
was taking death to gain life – 5th October
Blog - How I
battled HIV stigma – 1st October
Blog - We can treat this
– 1st October
Blog - 12 Years on ARVs – 30th
September
Blog - One
Tuesday morning in September – 22nd September
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