Kneading love into broken bodies and minds

In a cubicle in a darkened ward, I heard a murmur behind drawn curtains around my neighbour’s bed. It was two nurses changing the soiled bed linen. As they worked in the semi-darkness they whispered about the nightclub jaunt and they had been on the weekend before. I could make out the muffled laughter as they describe the events. Not a word from the patient on the bed.  Only a grunt of pain as they turned the dead weight between them. Sores develop when bodies lie too long on one spot. Nursing staff must regularly turn their charges like bacon on the grill, to avoid the burden of a bed sore. The patient, now immobile, cannot turn themselves to find relief. They await the mercy of others.

These two nurses giggle as they work quickly to complete their tasks. Their rubber gloves allow cleaning to be brisk and impersonal. Job done and with a laugh, over her shoulder, the gloves were discarded in a nearby container. Hand wash was dispensed and then they both emerged from behind the curtain. One whispers to the other, “it was awful crazy that last dance, I could barely stand!”

Her co-worker sniggered something I could not hear. Whatever it was, it triggered an outburst of hysterical laughter. In response, the inert figure groaned again from the bed. They left whispering confidences down the long corridor, shoes squeaking annoyingly.   

I remember having my first massage aged 50. I had waited half a century but it was worth it. As my cousin and I lay in opulent luxury at a lovely spa I was amazed what a good massage can do. These hands soothed muscles taut with stress and even penetrated deep tissue. Finding the points where pain lingers and working them free as if untying a knot.

It is an art form this craft. Masters of the trade can do real magic with their hands. I was delighted, inside one week, to be given a second voucher to a different spa.  Anticipating the same treatment, I was disappointed. It was obvious this masseur did not want to touch me. I felt her disdain through her fingertips and voice. My skin screamed its dislike of this touch. Every time her hand poked or prodded me I wanted to withdraw into the couch. To disappear completely from view or touch. It was such a relief when it was over. A long, long hour that felt as long as the 50 years that preceded it. Feeling foolish and frankly abused I left. I’d learned a lesson of sorts just not sure what?

Then this week, 10 years later I got some insights on the whole business.  Fourteen language students visited our home for a meal.  The eldest was in his 30s and was an Italian masseur with his own business in Sicily. I asked this professional about my experience at the hands of these two different masseurs.

He happily explained that physical touch conveys so much. Even one’s mood! A bad attitude is transferred to a client immediately through touch. As I described my horrid experience and its mechanics he nodded knowingly. “When you begin a massage”, he explained, “with a client and touch them you should never let go of that touch until the complete massage is over”. Apparently, touch is so personal and private you cannot afford to discard physical contact with them and then with touch intrude again. Instead, when moving on to massage a leg or arm you leave one hand always in place and only having touched and stroked the new area allow the remaining hand to be removed. The sudden withdrawal of touch in the midst of a massage is interpreted as neglect/antipathy for the client who is aware of everything through your fingertips. Care or indeed indifference is conveyed through the hands as effectively as fingerprints on a crime scene. He pointed out that the hands of a masseur should be warmed before being applied. As he spoke of how emotion can be conveyed through simple touch the vital importance of respect became clear. That it has to colour every interaction. The tone of one’s voice, respect for privacy and always permission sought for each physical interaction.

It made me think of a famous doctor who has made a medical examination into a kind of art form at Harvard. Taking care to perfect his physical examination with practice and reflection he now teaches these forgotten skills to other doctors. At a time when blood tests and scans dominate their methodology, he believes in the power of the doctor’s touch. This physical touch during medical examination, he is sure, should be an expression of concern, gentle but perceptive and can provide a deep reassurance that comforts a worried or ill patient.

It made me think of that silent patient groaning behind the curtains on the darkened hospital ward. Lifted and turned with such cavalier indifference. I know our staff have so little time, understaffed and overworked. I understand all that, but I really wish the importance of touch was taught to all. How to do it with love and respect. How spirits are soothed by the presence of mindful hands. When voices are silenced and patients withdraw beneath their skin how wonderful if loving hands caressed that wounded spirit and kneaded love into broken bodies and minds.

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“laminated book of dreams”

Back in the haematology department. Sitting in a packed hospital waiting room. It’s like sitting in Argos having paid for your purchase. You perch on wooden chairs awaiting your number to be called. Here you have paid with blood but were offered no “laminated book of dreams”. Instead, you shift on your seat, arm to arm, with fellow inmates awaiting your possible "laminated folder of uncomfortable treatments". With good fortune, the many vials of blood they’ve sent away will contain nothing vile.

I’m in a holding pattern. My blood is not normal and this has been the case for many months. If today’s results show no change I shall be free for a whole year from hospital visits. I am filled with both hope and fear. My liver sort of stopped working over a year and a half ago and weird proteins flooded my system. My liver function has recovered greatly and it seems as if my system has also begun to recover. Except for these pesky proteins. They keep being mass produced by an immune system that feels it’s still under threat. So, these tests have been happening regularly and each time I feel a fraud. Sitting like a healthy cuckoo among the nest of smaller weaker birds.  Normally the cuckoo lays its eggs in another bird’s nest and when the intruder egg hatches it rapidly disposes of the rest of the eggs by pushing them out.  But here it is the cuckoo, I, who is examined by its fellow inmates with suspicion.  So, I sit trying not to be intimidated out of the nest by those much sicker than me.

A year and a half ago my weight plummeted and I wanted to sleep all the time. I knew something wasn’t right. One, I don’t lose weight I gain weight. It’s what my body does. Two, I used to sleep only at night. Strangely, now, I have put on weight but cannot sleep even at night. It’s as if my body is playing silly beggars with its symptoms. One minute this the next minute that, a confusing peekaboo affair. I might be morphing into hypochondriac mode. I want to ask is mental confusion a symptom. Disappearing keys, handbags and glasses are they characteristic of a physical complaint? I try to put milk into cupboards instead of the fridge. Forget why I entered rooms and what I did yesterday. But all of these pales into insignificance when I compare them to not being able to sleep. Staring at the ceiling counting down the hours to dawn. Even that has changed. I used to stare bleary-eyed at my bedside clock disbelieving that it was 3 am and I was still awake. Now, I frequently am heartened that it is 4.30am and dawn has begun at last. Instead of thinking precious hours of sleep are being lost I am just so relieved the night is over. I may not have slept the whole night but at least the bloody thing has ended.

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My brother suggested meditation as a way of passing the long hours. Then, as we discussed it he confessed that the main problem with meditating at night is the miserable bugger you discover in those quiet reflective moments. You! There is nothing to distract you from yourself. It is a horrific moment of self-discovery and not a good substitute for deep oblivion in dreamtime. Ahh … my test results are ready, got to go.

PS bloods are all good! Hurrah!!!

At our age, there needs to be a good reason to run – like the house is on fire or someone is firing a gun

My two grandsons, 3 and 5 years old, were coming to stay. It would only be for two days but we had steadied ourselves, my mum and I. Looked at each other with a football manager’s eye. What shape are you in? Is that hip weak? Can those ankles take it? Have you taken all your medication? Checking up on the team before the invasion. With my mum in her mid-80s and me in my 60s, we are pretty old for this game.

They arrive with a flurry of hugs, boundless energy and laughter. All too soon we are left alone with two little guys who want to explore every quarter, all rooms, every cupboard, the garage the garden and all shelves that they can possibly reach.  Privacy goes out the window as they bang on the toilet door demanding to know "what are you doing in there?" We walk them to the park and local playground. It was frightening for us. My eldest grandson has a cast on his arm from fracturing his elbow and the playground seemed right for compounding the injury. Kids are not like adults in so many ways. They, in a cast, will happily scamper up a climbing wall or the tallest helter-skelter slide. My mum and I ran like demented bodyguards after the two of them. Danger seemed incredibly close and we walked home relieved everyone had survived. Even the eldest with his cast had insisted on trying the zip line and managed remarkably well. Don't ask why unearth we let him do it. We have no idea!!

By the time we got home to a welcome cup of tea and a quiet sit the two boys had already eaten, instantly recharged and were as full of energy as before. Now mum and I began to worry. It was barely 10.30am and we were ready to be substituted. Fortunately, my middle son their uncle had boundless energy like the boys. While mum and I sneaked off for a badly needed midday nap he ran them around the house playing wrestling games.  We awoke refreshed but aware the rest of the day lay ahead. 

A box of old toys from the garage was salvaged and the boys fell on them like wolves. We built Lego together, played an ancient basketball game that their father had played more than 30 years ago (the exact same toy, conserved in mum’s garage over the decades).  The boys were constantly good-humoured. Normally they were instructed by their parents, when they had eaten enough, to stop. We, grandmother and great-grandmother, adopted an alternative approach. We force-fed the two of them rather like they stuff ducks. Until they’d hold up their hands and say no more. We would ignore that and keep filling their tanks. They were obviously nonplussed by this novel handling. The eldest examining us strangely as if we didn't know the rules at all. The first day we fed them until they had indigestion. The second day the boys were more cautious, having learned that we would feed them dangerously full. Their appetites seemed smaller and both mum and I fretted. What if our small charges starved under our careless care?   Meanwhile, our own intakes had increased substantially. I was downing chocolate and crisps in minutes of stolen time. My mum had taken to eating three Choc ices (white chocolate of course) a day. Regularly smuggling them behind her back to the living room so the boys would not see them. In our second day, all the rules went out the window. Survival was the goal and we thrived on their hugs like an energy source. 

They were challenges. Like mum finding a small brown leaf on the bathroom floor, it turned out not to be vegetation at all, least said! Or discovering that some small fingers had turned on the electric blanket on the bed in the spare room. Buttons are an attraction for the under fives. So we needed to check freezer plugs, electric fireplaces and phones constantly. Small children are a bit like controlling a flood. When you manage to block them touching the cooker switches immediately they head for the TV or sound system or computer. The running around the house both inside and outside seem frenetic but was good humoured. At our age, there needs to be a good reason to run – like the house is on fire or someone is firing a gun in your direction. At their age running seemed the default setting as did the shouting and laughter. 

At night they usually have a bath in their own home and when I told the three-year-old we had no bath he didn't believe me. He pushed into the bathroom hunting for one. Finding none he reluctantly agreed to sit on a small stool in the shower while I showered him.  I was telling him that his great grandmother believes most people have dirty bottoms and claims that the shower-head should be directed at this extremity from below not above. Our three-year-old took this piece of advice very seriously and sprayed his own bottom and me (by accident) with equal gusto. When both were washed and in clean pyjamas in bed my mum and I gave each other high-fives. We had survived this invasion of love.  Grandmother and great grandmother’s tanks were topped up with love.  They may be small containers but little people pack a big punch in the love stakes.

It’s odd posting one’s shit to someone

On your 60^th birthday, an unusual present arrives in Northern Ireland. It is a poo kit. A bulky envelope with little windows and flaps with intricate instructions which involves providing three samples of one’s poo. You are even given little cardboard spatulas to paste your shit into three little windows on stiff cardboard. It’s odd posting one’s shit to someone. It’s almost a “happy birthday now you are 60, shit will happen” and “we want you to send us your shit so we can tell you exactly what sort of shit you are in!”  I hesitate to do the deed.  Given how messed up my blood has been these last two years I am not particularly optimistic about my poo.  If my lifeblood is looking dodgy who knows what my poo will flag up.

Generally, I don’t mean to complain. After all, I have so much to be grateful for.  Especially the wonderful people in my life. But the big discovery, so far of being 60, is that shit happens. To good people and bad.  It comes in all shapes and is usually not what you expect.  I used to complain about the elderly being uniformly sad and angry while the young seemed happier, more hopeful like friendly puppies full of life.  Now, I begin to understand why. 

As you get older people approach you with rubber gloves and blood vials.   Your hearing gets worse, your eyesight falters and normal tasks become like intelligence tests designed to trip you up.  A friend of mine recently had to give a stool sample and was instructed by his doctor that he only needed to bring a sample the size of his tiny fingernail.  Obviously, people had been bringing in plastic bags and Tupperware containers full of poo for him to test.  Hence his insistence on nothing bigger than the nail of his smallest finger.  The doctor mentioned his fingernail three times for emphasis. The sad truth is that with age you can morph into the type of person who is quite capable of lugging a stool sample the weight of half a bag of potatoes into a surgery. 

The young often have no idea of how tricky it is for the older person in a hospital.  Even parking, locating the right floor, consulting room, hearing instructions, remembering details are all fraught with confusion.  I reckon that’s why we tend to adopt an unshakeable demeanour. So that if the doctor announces that we have an alien inhabiting our abdomen we tend to respond with “Well, I’ve had a good run so far. I mean I’ve been blessed with a good constitution all these years. So, I can’t really complain, now can I?” We tend to be infinitely grateful for the unexpected kindness of the medical staff and rather stoic if they seem indifferent or even hostile. After all, there are so many of us older ones filling surgeries in waiting rooms in hospitals up-and-down the country. We know the system is weary of us with our blood and poo all over the shop. Samples being sent here and there via postal systems and even being couriered to expensive labs. We want to apologise for all the shit. But there you go, such is life. 

Pretty soon we may well morph still further into entities that cannot deal even with our own shit. Others will have to wipe and clean us. Then, we will long for these heady days when our shit was our own and in our own hands not others! (that just did not sound right!) But, there is a wonderful symmetry to it all. After all, we come into this world unable to deal with our own shit as babies. Others do it for us. Then, we grow in our ability to deal with shit. Afterwards, we can have babies of our own who we, in turn, teach this fundamental skill of life.  Ultimately, this ability can gradually be lost so that we become again dependent on the services of others as we were in the beginning.

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The good news is that all this shit will eventually stop. The even better news is that this amazing journey, shit and all, is a wonderful love filled escapade that you get to share with so many loved ones. Despite all the shit, I wouldn’t have it any other way. May you have joy along with all the shit that comes. May you grow wonderful roses from life’s richest fertiliser!