On Friday nights we would go and pick up the van from the Salvation Army Hall in Peckham and make a tour of the city’s homeless spots. London’s bright lights were dimmer, less jewel-like, from the vantage point of a van filled with free food for the disadvantaged. We did the South Bank, Waterloo, Regent Street and the Embankment giving out sandwiches donated by Marks & Spencer; there were urns of tea and coffee plus homemade soup prepared earlier by volunteers. To this day I can summon the smell of soup and tea and petrol, and with it memories of long nights dispensing help and hearing stories from people who I grew genuinely fond of. We only felt scared a couple of times. Once we were in the Bull Ring (a notorious underground area): on Andrew’s barked instructions, we all leapt into the van whereupon people jumped on the roof and kicked it. Andrew got us all out safely and that, thankfully, was the exception rather than the rule.
We gave out blankets and clothes before driving home, shattered, at 3am just before the dawn chorus. But I genuinely loved the work and admired people’s dignity: we would open the van doors to a crowd of people, all of whom had preferences.
‘I don’t like ham. Do you have any cheese and pickle?’
I had infinite respect for the way in which they asserted their right to choose, even if it was for mayonnaise rather than mustard.
To be perfectly honest, I’d say my altruism partly stems from a selfish interest in people; I’m interested in society’s marginalised groups. Later, when I worked with the Kurdish refugees who had fled after the first Gulf War and then the gypsies in Kent (where I set up a three-year healthcare project), I began to think about the implications for us all of those who society rejects. What does it say about us?
By now, in the summer of 1990, I was coming to the end of my health-visitors’ course. As part of my studies, I travelled to an alternative practice down in Wiltshire, where I had a two-week country placement. Wiltshire meant an escape from London’s concrete jungle and the chance to stay with our wonderful friends, Ruth and Jack. It was a blissfully hot summer; the hedgerows were full of foxgloves and apple blossom scent filled the air. I loved driving along the country lanes where sunlight flashed through the woods. Ruth and Jack lived in a cottage with an enormous garden and every day after work Jack would hand me a glass of chilled white wine made from his own grapes. Glass in hand, I would go and lie down on the lawn … and nod off! Ruth had been left severely disabled by polio and their marriage was something Andrew and I always admired and gained strength from over the years.
Fatigue had plagued me for most of that year, as had my left eye. My vision was impaired by what looked like a hair or cobweb floating in front of it but I put this down to studying too hard. When my placement came to an end, I was sorry to say goodbye to Jack and Ruth. I drove back up to the stench and noise of London to resume work.
But I didn’t feel well.
I went to see my GP with chronic backache and a problem peeing (I assumed it was a urinary infection). The GP prescribed antibiotics and sent off a specimen. The following Monday, 18 June (the day before my birthday), I woke to no feeling at all from the waist down on my right-hand side (I remember thinking, I must have cramp – I should eat some salt and I mustn’t be late for work). I got up and discovered that I could walk but I had no feeling. As usual, I jogged round the park with Jet before driving along the road to work. I didn’t want to worry anyone at work with my numb leg, so I didn’t say anything about it.
Mid-morning, I fell down the stairs. I couldn’t feel my foot – I couldn’t tell whether I’d put it down on the stair or not. I mentioned the problem to my supervisor, who immediately whisked me off to see my GP, who happened to be in the same building.
‘What do you mean, by no feeling?’ he asked.
I leant over his desk and picked up a safety pin.
‘This is what I mean …’
I proceeded to stick the pin in my leg.
The GP rang a friend and registrar at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases to make an appointment for me to go and see him later that week on the Thursday. On my birthday (19 June), Andrew drove us to Down House in Kent, where Charles Darwin had lived and worked for 40 years. It was where he devised his Theory of Evolution and wrote On the Origin of Species. According to the guide when Darwin published his work in 1859 the experience was akin to ‘confessing a murder’, which gives some indication of its impact. The impression you take away from the house is of a playful man, who loved digging for worms and ragging with his children. My admiration for him grew.
Andrew and I had dinner in a pub but neither of us knew what to say. We went for a walk in the woods. Drugged by the scent of wild garlic and bluebells, we walked hand-in-hand in silence. Despite the sunshine, I felt bitterly cold and didn’t take my coat off all day.
On my return to hospital I was immediately admitted upstairs for more tests. I was hooked up to IV steroids to prevent inflammation and further damage to the nerves. My face blew up and I had tomato-red cheeks but there was worse to come in the form of a myelogram, which is when dye is injected into the spine to show up the spinal nerves and spinal canal. I had a major reaction to the dye, which made me more ill than I already was.
Tired and now in immense pain as if suffering from chemically induced meningitis, I lay in the hot, overcrowded ward with a splitting headache. It hurt to breathe and I couldn’t pee so I had to have a catheter. With a cloth over my eyes and my head ready to explode, I lay there as the nurses’ hand-washing routine ground into my consciousness. It was in the days before disinfectant hand gel and every few minutes one of them would walk over to the sink beside my bed, turn on the squeaking tap, wash her hands and pull out a paper towel. Rustle, rustle … I’d then hear the click as she stamped on the bin and the thud of paper as the screwed-up towel landed inside. During this time, Andrew would come and go; he was mixing caring for me, his full-time work and dashing back home to look after Jet, traversing London all the time.
Mum came to visit and gave me two new nightdresses. One was crisp Broderie Anglaise, the other a comfy long T-shirt. She also brought books and magazines, sitting beside me to read. Company was what I needed as much as anything else.
Towards the end of my week on the ward, on one particularly hot afternoon I sensed someone sitting on the bed. I can’t emphasise enough how much I felt this presence. It was before the drugs took effect and I couldn’t open my eyes because of the pain; I remember a gorgeous smell of gardenias, as if a nurse wearing perfume was sitting right beside me. I must have said something.
‘Who are you talking to?’ asked the on-duty nurse.
‘The nurse sitting on my bed,’ I replied.
‘There’s no one here apart from me and I haven’t sat on your bed,’ she told me.
For me, this was proof of my faith and it brought immense comfort.
After seven days of waiting and six sleepless nights spent tossing and turning, I woke to learn that I would be seeing the consultant on that morning’s ward round (Andrew was at work and couldn’t be there with me).
I sat up in my bed. It was far too early, of course – you never know when they will arrive nor from which end of the ward they start. Up until then I had only dealt with the Registrar. This time I was to meet my consultant. As usual the entourage arrived: the line-up included the Charge Nurse (why do they always look so deferential and play up to the pomposity of consultants?), multiple medical students, house officers and the Registrar. The beds were so close together due to overcrowding that you could put your hand out and hold the hand of a fellow patient in a neighbouring bed. Even with the flimsy curtains closed, privacy was impossible.
I