My Tuscan Holiday in 2012

I share a room with a very pleasant geographer from Florence, who speaks a little English. His wife speaks French so we can communicate quite well. They tell me I am seriously ill. I certainly don’t feel well and I have a lot of pain. They have started me on pain medication, but it does little more than take the edge off it. The plan is for me to receive heavy-duty antibiotics for 24 hours and then they will decide whether to operate. An emergency operation isn’t possible until my blood clots more quickly but peritonitis is almost always fatal if not treated promptly. Right now I am on intravenous feeding and antibiotics, with IV pain and fever meds added alternately. Bummer!

I think they are operating later today or tonight. The doctors had a foot-of-the-bed conference earlier while Doe was visiting, and they don’t think that the antibiotic treatment will work well enough to get me over this, or make me fit enough to return to Canada. They feel an operation is essential but they are not hiding the risks. Doe is coming back this evening. We should know by then.

Lying in a public ward, dying of cancer of the bowel, my grandfather’s last words in 1950, as recorded by my uncle Claude, were that he wished he could fart. I can now more fully understand how he felt. This afternoon, praise the Lord, some gas escaped from my bowel, a non-odiferous whisper that for a moment slipped under the sheets of my bed.

This happy event has changed my circumstances. It means that the blockage is allowing gas to move past it. Just as I was contemplating returning to Canada with a colostomy bag attached to my side the surgery has been postponed. For now. The diseased and constricted section of colon will have to be removed, they say, but just maybe I can have it done at home.

My gut, paralysed yesterday, has come back to life and is starting to roil and tumble, albeit dreadfully painfully. The perforated diverticula that leaked faeces into my peritoneum is sealed, they say, and they are slowly getting the infection under control. If this keeps up, they say, there will be no emergency surgery. Ever the pessimists, they are preparing me for it anyway. They tell me they will know if I need an operation by counting the little white blood cells in my blood, not the little grey cells in my brain, and by observing the progress of my fever.

Did I fart in vain?

(later the same day)

The truth is that I don’t know whether I will have to have surgery or not. At least ten doctors have been to see me. I have just witnessed another bedside conference. They are hanging in there with the antibiotics but they are worried that I am not responding as quickly as they had hoped. They promised to do what is best — not just to get me home but also what is in my long term interest. They are going to give me another scan, I think, and more x-rays to see if anything has changed since Saturday.

I am still feverish, which is a concern, so the first thing is to get the infection under control. I am feeling less pain, however, so things must be moving in the right direction. They are still preparing me for emergency surgery by reducing my clotting time using a vitamin K drip and heparin therapy.

They tell me my diverticulitis was caused by diverticulosis, a not uncommon disease I didn’t know much about and never suspected I had. The doctors today wanted to know why I had not had a colonoscopy at my age. I told them I did have one quite recently, together with a CT scan, and the results were negative. So much for modern technology detecting everything!

Enrico Andolfi came to see me last evening. He told me that my condition was serious enough to require immediate surgery, in which he would assist. Enroco is a very personable young doctor who takes whatever time he can to visit with me. He explained the Italian medical system to me and reassured me that if I had to have surgery there was no better place for it than right here at San Donato’s.

Apparently my gassy leaks have not been sufficient. This morning there was another major consultation with more doctors. After that I had a conversation with the surgeon, who told me that they recommended surgery right away, based on the slow results from the antibiotic therapy. Arezzo is a major centre for laparoscopic surgery but they think they may have to do an incision because my intestines are too swollen to leave room for the intra-abdominal technique. It’s an ill wind…

The type of surgery will depend on what they find. I may have a temporary colostomy bag and have to go in again for surgery to connect the pieces when I’m home. At any rate the die are cast, the Rubicon crossed, I have signed the papers, and they have draped me in a paper gown ready for surgery.

It will be at least two weeks before I can travel, possibly longer, but I hope to be out of the hospital earlier. The one sure thing is that Doug and Marilyn’s beautifully prepared salmon dinner from last Friday evening is destined to remain in an Italian path lab as it must be right at the blockage.

I am just out of ICU and in a private room. They were able to remove some diseased colon and reattach the bowel laparascopically. No colostomy! I have some pain but it is better controlled. My fever has gone but nothing is moving through my gut yet.

They have put two drains in, one near the diaphragm and one just above my bladder, and are watching the discharge for bleeding or leakage. They seem to be using very modern surgical techniques allied to very traditional nursing. For example, they air the place by opening all the windows in the morning, they make sure the patients get lots of exercise, they clean the room thoroughly twice a day and change the lower bed sheet every day, and, best of all, they start the day with a pot of tea. So far, I am very impressed with this hospital. Doe is coming soon. She is still staying in Anghiari, which is some distance away from the huge San Donato hospital in Arezzo, where they have taken me.

Well, this evening’s doctors’ rounds have taken place. Two dropped by to see me: the older “Trapper” doctor — laid back and casual, but with eyes that told he had seen a lifetime of suffering and not been able to do much about it — and a small, elderly man, who had a noble Arabian countenance (think of one of the older characters in Disney’s Aladdin). The latter smiled often and touched me comfortingly, but perhaps too frequently.

The young lady with them translated, although by now I am familiar with the Italian for “Have you farted?”. Noting my sorrowful shake of the head, the next question was “Are you doing much walking?”

Of course not, what a silly question, I thought. What I said was even sillier: “I didn’t know I had to. Nobody told me”.

“Of course, that’s what makes your bowels move things through them. If you are in bed, you must march in bed. March until you fart!”

Makes sense, I suppose, so, with my eyes closed, I have been marching down a sunny street to the various strains of Alten Kameraden, the Radetzky March, and various offerings from George Marshall, Dean Goffin et al. — all without leaving my bed. At this rate a fart is sure to come soon.

By morning I’ll be doing shit-ups.

Despite marching through the night I have had no action and am feeling low. Things are moving along, but the news is not all good and I doubt that I will be out of the hospital by Sunday. At least another four or five days here while they check the various bags hanging from holes in my abdomen for blood-tinged contents (still bloody today) and get my intestines working again.

Trapper was in this morning and laughed it away but I could tell he was bothered that nothing had happened. His conversation with his two colleagues was scattered with (my translation): “Monday afternoon, surgical intervention, three days, no farts, no good”.

It’s strange how things work out, isn’t it? Before coming away I downloaded from iTunes the Laudamus Te from Karl Jenkins’ Gloria — his recording with the UK National Youth Chorus and London Symphony Orchestra. Most of my musician friends would sniff at such mushy, low-brow stuff so I am practically embarrassed to tell you what a strength it has been to me. Who’d have thunk it? Maybe it’s been a channel for the well-wishing thoughts and prayers of so many of my friends.

I am out of the bed and enthroned in an armchair. My bags are scattered around me, all except for the stomach contents bag. They removed my naso-gastric tube (deo gratias) earlier today, which is a great blessing. And a sign of progress, no doubt.

I am having trouble writing. The arthritis in my left thumb has flared up because of the assault on the veins in my forearm close to it. Doe is coming back this evening (it’s a good hour’s drive each way). She has had to find a stomacher to hold my belly together when I am up.

Maricica, the Romanian nurse who speaks some English, has just removed the IV that was causing me so much bother and replaced the dressings around the drains in my belly. Ugh! What a mess. But now I am cleaned up again and feeling chipper.

I have had my first bowl of soup, a salty, mucilaginous mess with the strong taste of long-dead chicken in a base of semolina. It was delicious. I also have to walk around the corridors regularly during the day. This keeps the intestines motile (and saves the nurses having to go to my room to see I am okay).

I am reading “The Emperor of All Maladies” by Siddartha Mukherjee. It’s a biography of cancer and won the Pulitzer Prize. Doe brought me a couple of other books from our host’s bookshelves, light environmental detective novels by Carl Hiaasen.

I brought my iPad instead of my Kindle and there’s no WiFi here. How stupid! I should have known that I would be sick and need more than Louise Penny’s latest Inspector Gamache novel, “The Beautiful Mystery”, which I finished in short order.

October seems to be my hospitalization month. Last year it was a serious attack of asthma/influenza in Lexington, Kentucky, that put me in St. Jo’s for a few days on my return; the year before, H1N1 meant an isolation ward in the same hospital (see One Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). This third time I’ve really hit the jackpot. Lucky me!

No tuba playing for at least another six weeks, so lucky everyone!

Well, our Tuscan holiday is almost over. As Doe, Doug and Marilyn have trekked in Florence, San Gemigniano, Rimini, and, of course, Anghiari so I have marched alongside them in spirit. Fortunately they haven’t had to feed me or listen to my complaints. This has given them, I’m sure, a more relaxing holiday but one which has been reduced in scope by Doe’s wifely insistence on visiting me each day. Arezzo, where I am, is almost an hour’s drive from our apartment, and often in a direction contrary to their daily excursions.

Doug and Marilyn, to their great credit, have sucked it up and soldiered on, visiting me when permitted (often, it has been only family members who can get in) and generally making the most of their time here in spite of everything.

Doe has had various missions. Her latest is to provide me with some tableware. Italian hospitals expect patients to bring their own mugs and cutlery — a bit like going camping.

So, this being the first day of me taking food by mouth, I was presented at lunchtime with a bowl of soup and nothing more. I ate it in the mid-eastern fashion. This evening, another bowl of soup was left in front of me, but this time my friendly surgeon had dropped by for a chat. He saw the difficulty I was in and told the nurse to bring a plastic spoon. If looks could kill! She returned with it and gave me strict instructions (from what I took of her rapid Italian) that she was not there to do the things my wife should be doing. All in good humour, but I am glad Doe wasn’t around. Later I got a plastic Dixie cup, too. Surgeons carry a lot of clout, it appears. Must be a knife thing.

Tomorrow, Doe will bring me a mug and I have been promised tea– but only the tea produced by the nurses as the cafeteria drinks are far too strong, according to the doctors. I’m sure it won’t be anything like the tea I’m used to, but just the idea of tea in the morning is something to hold onto tonight.

I was grateful to see the bowls of soup.

One of our nurses tries to speak English, and generally does well. Today, when the doctors said I could take something by mouth she told me that it would have to be soap for a couple of days. What a barbaric colon-cleansing routine, I thought. Later it became evident that she meant soup. Although, honestly, soap would have been almost as palatable.

The insurance people are in touch with the hospital and tell us that I shall be discharged Monday and then taken to a hotel near the Rome airport overnight before flying out on Tuesday. They have not found British Airways cooperative because BA has insisted that a person with authority (i.e. Doe or myself) must authorize them to grant the insurers’ agency access to my booking details. We found that out only tonight, but the BA offices are not open in the evenings, and only Saturday mornings on weekends. How do they expect people to deal with emergencies?

I have set up WiFi at the apartment so it’s easier for Doe to work at it there in the morning (9-12 office hours), but it’s another intrusion into their already disrupted touring plan.

My orifices are free of all tubes now. I still have abdominal drains, however, so I carry unpleasant looking bags around with me wherever I go. I am down to one IV site, albeit one freshly dug this evening — on the third attempt as all the veins in my forearms seem to know what’s coming and squirm away from the needle. Let’s hope it’ll do.

By the way, the other thing not provided is a hospital gown. You have to bring your own night clothes or walking wear. Fortunately I had two pairs of boxer shorts that have done sterling service, although I must make a strange site walking around with my bottles clipped to my Haynes, holding an IV pole before me, and carrying my iPhone and iPad (leave nothing valuable in your room, I was told).

I really like the staff here. I suppose it’s easy to fall for people who have helped you through one of the hardest times in your life, but honestly they are warm, generous and gifted. No wonder the Etruscans had such a powerful civilization. I am sure we shall return and spend the time to get to know the area and the people better.

As you can tell, I am feeling much better. It’s just a matter time now, I hope, and taking care of myself. And I can do that at home with my family better than anywhere. Thank you all for your support. I am not planning on going very far once I am back, but our home is open to any who care to visit.

Buona notte.

Hi All! I am continuing to improve, but the doctors are being cagey about when they think it is safe for me to be discharged.

Len asked whether I had tried on my corset. Yes, I have tried it on and found that I am as yet far too swollen to tolerate it. I hope I shall be able to close my trousers when I travel, but maybe the best I can hope for is to bring the two sides of the fly zipper within kissing distance and cover the gap by wearing my shirt outside my belt — a practice I normally eschew as being too Lower Eastside.

Len also wondered if there was any possibility that my hernia operation seven weeks ago had precipitated this. In short, no connection, but read on for the back story of my illness. It is a cautionary tale as lots of people have diverticular disease without knowing it. I, for one.

When I arrived at the small hospital at Sansepolcro in such distress, the doctors diagnosed immediately that I had peritonitis. This was demonstrated easily by classic tests, such as pressing down on the belly in a non-excruciating spot, then releasing the pressure quickly. The result is that the peritoneum (the wall of the abdominal cavity) rebounds and that the patient, who is expecting pain only from the pressure of the hand, screams in agony as the infected and über-sensitive peritoneum registers its protest when the hand is suddenly removed. Been there, done that.

This infection is almost invariably fatal if not caught quickly. My mother died of it in 1997, when antibiotic barrages were less successfully and immediate surgery almost always essential to survival. She couldn’t face surgery because of her low blood pressure, so she died within 24 hours, curled up and tiny in her bed, and comatose on morphine. Nowadays, surgery is often necessary, too, but a more conservative approach using very powerful modern antibiotics, unavailable even in 1997, can often bring down the infection. But it can only effect a cure if the root cause has been removed, in my case, as shown by a CT scan, a burst diverticulum, or neutralized. My perforation had closed by the time I presented myself at the hospital, but its purulent contents had infected my whole peritoneum.

The CT scan showed, too, that I had undiagnosed diverticular disease. The diverticula that give the disease its name are little openings in the smooth intestinal wall leading to a nodule on the surface of the colon. Like little pimples that haven’t yet burst. These trap the contents of the colon, cause pain, sometimes blood in the stool, and other minor symptoms. Such a condition is called diverticulosis.

When one of the diverticula becomes inflamed or infected, it may cause severe pain and fever. This is called diverticulitis, and urgent treatment is needed.

If the diverticula burst and their septic contents get into the sterile environment inside the abdominal wall, the result is sometimes cataclysmic peritonitis, which I had.

My CT scans showed that the diverticula had stopped leaking, hence my bowel was perforated but ‘closed’. The damage, however, was too great for the antibiotics to overcome without taking more time than was considered safe.

Monday’s operation to remove the diseased portion of the colon took away my fever instantly. So, it had nothing to do with my hernia operation and everything to do with diverticulosis. Its causes are unknown but it is a very common disease for Europeans, especially older ones.

I now know quite a few people who have it, including several younger ones. The compounding piece in my puzzle was that my burst diverticula were on a portion of the colon known as “high pressure”— a region stressed by the movement forward of contents from the stomach up the line pressing against contents stacking up in the bowel below. These are the diverticula most likely to burst, but not everyone with the disease develops diverticula there. I did. I also have them in a section of intestine closer to my stomach, but the surgeon says it is not worth bothering about them as they rarely if ever cause problems in that location.

No problem with the hernia, then, but serious disappointment that a colonoscopy followed by a full colon CT scan I had a couple of years ago failed to show anything. It was ordered because I had blood in my stool and cramps — classic symptoms of the disease. They are so set on finding cancer or pre-cancerous lesions that I sometimes wonder if they miss other potential killers.

Anyway, I was told that my innards were in great order and that I need not burden the tax payer for at least another five years. Ha! Make sure you ask about diverticulosis if you are having a colonoscopy!

Every day here brings something different. Today, on the upside, it was clean underwear and a lovely new housecoat from Doe. I washed my hair and cleaned myself from top to thigh (the toes are a little hard to reach) and felt like a new man. The bathroom sink is interesting. The spigot delivers a sputtering stream of barely tepid water about two feet above a shallow, plugless bowl. The result is water splashing everywhere — on the walls, floors and not least over the clean dressings the nurses had just put over my incisions. Nevertheless, I felt refreshed and ready to face the world.

The other thing that happened today was that they removed the drain from my diaphragm. That was no fun! Lying on the bed surrounded by doctors I felt like a fish gasping for air so much did it hurt. The lady doctor must have pulled out a good nine inches of tubing buried across my upper abdominal cavity, below the diaphragm. They had seen this so many times before they were able to joke among themselves while I lay there gasping. “But I am a musician,” I remonstrated, “I need that muscle to project a good low bass singing voice and to sustain my sound on the tuba.” They laughed. So much for Italians and music. Or maybe the only appreciate tenors and violinists.

Anyway, I’m rambling now. Things are progressing but it is now not at all sure that I’ll be ready to leave the hospital on Monday. The Chief, Roberto Letti (Trapper) thinks it may be premature. Lots can still go wrong. Frankly, I don’t much care if I stay another day or two as long as I have the prospect of home to look forward to, so institutionalized have I become. Just bring me another tea and fluff the pillow, and I’ll see you in the morning. And make sure the Fulham, Arsenal and Tottenham games are recorded over the weekend (Emma has it all under control, I’m sure).

British Air, on the other hand, does care when I fly. They have finally helped Doe this morning, but they were unwilling to work with our insurers, Sun Life, directly. Even this morning they wanted Doe to book my flight herself while on the phone. The doctors were at hand so she talked with them and they said Monday was now doubtful for my discharge, so maybe Wednesday would be the earliest flight I could take home. Again, I am happy to let BA sort it out with the hospital and the insurance company. BA will make money, whatever.

So that’s my morning chat for today. Now for another stroll around the halls and then a good read. I have to finish “The Emperor of All Maladies” by tonight so that Doe can return it to its place in our host’s bookcase. Footnote: I have just had to wash my brand new housecoat as the bloody contents of my remaining abdominal drainage bottle spilled out and down my leg. One of my five doctors on morning rounds had failed to close the plug after she had reconnected it. Some things are best left to nursing staff! They have to clean up after the doctors anyway.

Doe, Doug and Marilyn have left on their return flight to Canada via Heathrow.

It’s been a tough day. Soreness, suppuration, and sadness at Doe’s departure. And, of course, Hilde, our talismanic cancer survivor who finally succumbed to the disease.

I have spent time today looking at the few pictures I have with me from this summer’s holiday in Maine. Hilde is in some of them, looking vital, feisty even, and very much part of the group. I can picture her now, nattering to Brenda or chiding Fred. The whole Ocean Park beach thing is unimaginable without her. And so, as the group itself diminishes, the myth of OOB grows, sustaining us while we count the sleeps to another jaunt. We are fewer in number: children leave home and start new affiliations, old’uns can’t make the trip anymore, etc., etc., but Hilde was a lynch pin for the group and it’s hard to imagine it can ever be the same without her.

I finished the book “The Emperor of All Maladies” yesterday. The biography of cancer. What a story! Hilde was on my mind as I read it. I recalled the Home League Secretary in Kitchener who was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after I arrived in the late seventies. She died within months, leaving a bewildered little boy and a shattered husband. By all accounts, Hilde managed her cancer against difficult odds with indomitable spirit, and somehow was graced with a longer span than many, including women close to her. There is, however, little comfort in that: a death out of its time, whether expected or not, is always intolerable.

Cuba Missile Crisis Fifty years ago I went up to the moors near Plymouth, to Shaugh Bridge on the edge of Dartmoor, where the River Plym merges with the Meavy. My companion was a close friend, Graham Bellamy, who was a policeman at the time. Graham said that all civilian police were on alert to leave the city (an important naval and nuclear submarine base) and head for the moors. There they were to shelter behind the massive granite tors until the expected nuclear attack was over. They would be permitted to move back into the city to help the suffering or keep order only until the colour of the device he would be wearing changed. Then they would have to wait until the radiation had lowered sufficiently for them to advance again, little by little, until, perhaps weeks later, they reached the City of Plymouth.

I reasonably asked “What about me?” Graham went on to tell me that large military nuclear shelters were there for key naval staff, and that the Civil Defence had built a bunker for the government folks, but that the rest of us would have to look to our own resources.

We learned of those resources in a crash course at school. Josiah Moore, our old art teacher at grammar school, had learned his craft repairing stained glass windows in the shattered cities of Northern France after the First World War. We were all senior prefects, but he, as the school master assigned as record keeper of our small group, was the one to tell us the various measures the government had in place to protect us. He read from the pamphlet, distributed to all staff, that whitewashing the windows would protect us from the glare of the blast. So would looking away, I figured.

He also had to demonstrate the crouch position under the desks that we were to assume should the unthinkable happen. Then he had to share with us the dismal news that, because we were over 18, we could expect to be “called up”. Having just avoided the draft by a year, I and my cohort were not at all a happy bunch. All in all, not much of a resource against 50 megatons of hydrogen bomb exploding down the street.

As the crisis reached its height classes were abandoned and we listened to the radio most of the day. It was almost a live commentary. When the ship carrying missiles turned around everyone cheered and the whole city seemed to relax with a collective sigh of relief. I remember ships’ horns bellowing in the harbour. It was almost like a New Year. And, of course, it was.

Josiah Moore is long dead. I had the privilege of working with him as a teacher for a short time before he retired in 1973. After his retirement I sometimes went to his house — he lived in the same part of Plymouth as I did. Over his lifetime he had built, no, crafted practically every item in his house: the furniture, the balustrade, the window hangings, the paintings on the walls, the table lamps, everything. And it was all exquisitely fashioned, in a sort of refined arts and crafts style. The dining table where we sat carried a pot thrown by him and the sideboard a sculpture of his in marble. He had even replaced some window glass with stained glass, his first love. And nobody knew! Except Josiah and his wife. And me.

I could write and write, but I am going to read myself to sleep now.

Hi all!

I realized early as a child the great benefit of fixed gift-giving days, like Christmas and birthdays. One might expect gifts on other days, like the visit of an out-of-town relative or at Easter, but set against the assurance of bounty on those unmovable days of obligation, the expectation that anything much would come on other special occasions, however worthy, was more dimly yet still hopefully sustained.What really got to me, though, were those arbitrary accessions to requests that said good things were going to happen in the indeterminate but near future. “When may I go over to David’s house?” — “When you’re good and ready”, or “When you’ve cleaned your room”. The most devastating answer given to not-so-outlandish boyhood requests was, “When the cows come home”. We didn’t have cows.They were at best promises to consider a new toy, or other boon, when it was convenient to do so. Commitments weren’t made beyond that, and time was rarely of the essence. At worst, they were excuses to cause the fulfilment of such requests to be advanced interminably into the future, perhaps even until new circumstances rendered the original request obsolete.

Over the past few days here in the hospital the only important question for me has been, “When may I go home?” The answers are more considered than those given to my childhood asks, but their effect is the same.

That’s an awfully long-winded way to tell you that the date of my discharge is not fixed and has been moved further into the future each time I have asked in recent days. Monday was the date for discharge suggested last Friday, Tuesday on Saturday and Sunday, and today it has been “another three or four days, possibly”. Which takes us until next weekend.

They have good reasons, no doubt, but having them does little to cheer my spirits. These disappointments, the sadness I felt as Doe had to return to Canada without me, and the sense of loss at Hilde’s passing, contrived to stem the gush of words from my iPhone for the weekend. Now I’m back!

My condition continues to improve, so if that’s all you wanted to know, you may move on to your next email now. If you want to have an admittedly one-sided chat, then stay out and let me tell you something about the Kafkaesque world I now inhabit. Time for a hymn:

The trivial round, the common task
Would furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves, a road
To bring us daily nearer God.

Surely nowhere is the trivial round more important than in the life of a someone in an institution like a hospital — or a prison.

At six in the morning the crackling glare of the overhead fluorescent light and the thrust of a digital thermometer into my ear wakes me up (although I am invariably alert and waiting). A cursory glance by the nurse at the surgical dressings and the light goes out again. That’s when I get up. I perform my comprehensive morning ablutions and dry off using paper towels (like tableware and cutlery, you have to bring your own towels to the hospital, and I didn’t) and change into clean underwear.

At seven breakfast is served: a small package of biscotti and a tub of jam. Lemon-infused tea is poured out of large aluminum kettles. My new blue ceramic mug stands ready and I ask them to fill the small thermos that Doe also bought me. That will keep me going until lunch.

By now dawn has broken. After a quick walk around the surgical wards (I generally do three circuits) I return and sit at the window reading messages, or writing them, and drinking tea while a parade of nurses, now off feeding duty, check BP, sometimes draw blood, give meds and make the bed.

The last visitor before nine is the cleaning lady in her pink striped jacket. She dusts and sweeps in preparation for morning rounds.

The doctors take time with every patient and seem to engage with each other and with the nursing staff more freely than I have noticed elsewhere. According to one doctor it’s because their nationalized health system doesn’t allow for huge wage differences from top to bottom, so authority comes more from intellect and capability than from status.

While the doctors are around the bed the surgical dressings are removed, incisions swabbed with iodine, and fresh dressings applied. I have two incisions and two drains. This is also the time when tubes are removed and catheters pulled. This is the job of the nursing staff, and they do it well. Sometimes the doctors want to “have a go” themselves, and that can be painful. They also look for any signs of infection and sensitivity (“Ha dolore? Qui?”), order tests, check with colleagues in other disciplines (in my case, cardiology), practice their English, and come to a decision about the following 24 hours’ care before moving on.

The time before lunch passes by quickly, with nurses collecting more blood samples or fulfilling the doctors’ orders in various ways. This is when I go walking again and then settle down to read by the window. The corridors are bright and well aired. Each morning the windows are opened wide and the whole place feels freshened by the cool October air.

One oddity: all the clocks in the building show the same time, about twenty to eight, throughout the day. That confused me very much when I was in recovery from my surgery. The nurse said it was 9:25, almost 18 hours since I went under. After dozing I looked up at the clock in the ICU and saw that it was twenty to eight. Did I lose another ten hours somewhere? It puts me in mind of Rupert Brookes’s poem of 100 years ago — The Old Vicarage, Grantchester — where he recalls fondly the broken church clock in the village he once lived in with these famous lines:

Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

(I have been reciting Brooke to myself for almost a week now, but it was The Soldier that seized my depth-of-sickness imagination. Grantchester is much more à propos, though, as Rupert wrote it when he was in Berlin, a long way from the Fens, and feeling very homesick.)

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons.

After lunch a volunteer often comes by and offers to get things for you. My Italian isn’t good enough to figure out everything on offer, but I did make out newspapers and magazines. I wish they could give me WiFi. On Sunday the priest comes by. I would have been happy to talk to the one who visited me yesterday. His French and English were excellent, and I was feeling the need of comfort — a rare opening in my carapace. His only question, however, was “Are you a Catholic?” When I said I wasn’t he smiled and left the room quickly, wishing me a good day. An opportunity lost for him, but one I seized to spend the morning in the company of The Kings’ Singers on iTunes, followed by Elgar, Delius and Butterworth. I am strangely transported by the latter’s “The Banks of Green Willow”, whose haunting opening, so Debussy-like yet so very English, takes my spirit to a tranquil place where everything is alright, even if it’s not.

Lunch is a modest affair. For me, semolina soup, mixed with some olive oil, and potato purée followed by a small container of crushed apple. On my postprandial excursion around the ward I sneak looks at what the others are eating, but it’s all much the same. I am not being singled out. Bland is in!

Other doctors may come by in the afternoon, especially if they are from different departments with their own morning rounds. Today a cardiologist came to see me and confirmed that my ECG was fine and that my blood tests were showing no “heart fever”. Don’t really know what that means, but I was glad of the good news anyway.

More cleaning in the afternoon from a different crew. Today a workman fixed the rolling external shutter on my window. All very efficient and not at all what I expected.

A late afternoon stroll around the ward, more BP and temperature-checking, more medicines and jabs, more blood work. They put in a new IV today now that my inflamed forearms have settled down. Earlier today they were drawing blood from the back of my hand, almost at the knuckles.

I usually sleep a little in the afternoon. I have been aching a lot in the past two days, especially after eating an increased diet and putting more energy into my walks, so I find a lazy saunter around the ward to visit my friend Maurizio after lunch, followed by rest, usually sitting by the window, works well.

If the pain (in my shoulder, go figure!) gets to me, I’ll lie on the bed where it soon passes, but I don’t like to get in the bed until later in the evening. Then supper comes. Always the same as lunch, and just as eagerly looked forward to.

After supper I read and walk until bedtime, when I send my emails. And so the long day is ordered by such little graces. Goodnight to all my friends who have been so sustaining for me. See you soon, certainly before the cows come home. Buona notte!

Here’s a stanza from an old anthology of fun rhymes I first came upon as a schoolboy, called “Verse and Verse”:

I had written to Aunt Maud
Who was on a trip abroad,
When I heard she’d died of cramp
Just too late to save the stamp.

I am glad to say it does not describe the circumstances of those of you who have so kindly sent me messages and wishes for a speedy recovery. Unlike Maud’s, my news is all good, so you didn’t waste your digital stamps.

My last tube was withdrawn this morning by one of the doctors. It was a very unpleasant experience as eight days had passed since the operation and the tube had formed, in the doctor’s accurate but understated English, “adhesions”. I know something of such tubes, but I wasn’t prepared for the utter agony caused by the tug to free this one. To my embarrassment I shouted, or rather barked, in pain in front of the roomful of staff, and fully expected to see a length of innards attached to the end of the plastic when it finally pulled clear. But no, all was well. “Adhesions”, explained the doctor with a smile. “My bladder has been pulled six inches out of place,” I countered. He didn’t understand. But he knew what I meant. He’d had to do this before. Fortunately, I hadn’t.

So there is very little standing between me and a return to Canada now, except for blood work that has to show a clotting factor suitable for my mechanical heart valve. It took several days to get it sorted after my last surgery in August, but these guys already started the Warfarin beside my twice daily Heparin shots yesterday. So, all in all, a good day.

A good day, too, for my professional geographer friend, Maurizio, who called by to say farewell as he was going home this afternoon. He also went home last week, on Monday, just as they were taking me off to surgery. “Auguri!” he called to me then, which means good luck. (Strange how old Latin words are still used. “Salve!” is another.) Well my fortune held on that occasion better than his and he was back on the ward later in the week with an infection. Thank God for antibiotics!

I have read all my modern novels and, not being able to download more without WiFi (I didn’t bring my Kindle, just the iPad Kindle reader), I have resorted to some 19th century novels that I was familiar with as far as storyline but have always wanted to read in their entirety. Tonight I finished Wilkie Collins’s “The Woman in White”, which kept me engrossed to the last page. I had also downloaded some early Agatha Christie stories, and one of those is next before I return to Collins’s “Moonstone”. This, I hope, will be on the flight home. Thanks again for everyone’s support.

Sleep well! Salve!

Today has been a strength-building day. In other words, I’ve been bone idle. It’s been a chosen rather than enforced idleness. The addition of a little meat to my diet at lunch and dinner has made me ravenous. Saving Emma’s sensitivities, I could eat a horse. Reflecting on my cutlets at lunch and supper today, I wonder if in fact I did.

One of the nurses cruelly described for me the famous Bistecca alla Fiorentina (Florentine porterhouse steak) produced from the region’s Chianina cattle, which graze around Arezzo. The steak is served as a speciality in several restaurants around here, but I’ll have to come back next year to enjoy it. The Chianina breed produces large animals. Their porterhouse steaks can weigh 2-3 kilos and are very tender. The Bistecca alla Fiorentina is a thickly cut porterhouse, simply cooked, often on an open grill, using no more than rosemary, salt and olive oil to bring out the intense flavor. The restaurants here charge some 30 euros per kilo, which I thought reasonable considering prices for sirloin at The Keg.

Anyway, apart from fantasizing about food and all the concoctions I’ll prepare when I’m out of here and have a gut ready to deal with them, I’ve been listening to music and reading most of the day. What a boon an iPhone is for carrying music around with you! So far today I have listened to three short sermons spoken by William Booth, General Coutts’s address at the unveiling of the Booth plaque in Westminster Abbey, lots of brass band music (from James Williams and the Diffster’s 1954 recording of the cornet duet “Deliverance” to Joe Alessi and Fodens Band in Bram Tovey’s “Lincoln Tunnel Cabaret”), and now, in the evening, some bucolic Vaughan Williams is restoring an orderly calm as I wind down (except I don’t remember winding up).

My literary offering this evening is “The Windmill”, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (Isn’t it hard to think of the poet Longfellow without Rodney Dangerfield’s tacky line in “Back to School” coming to mind?) I remember it because it was chosen in 1956 for my high school’s competition for reciting poetry. Everyone had to participate, memorizing the poem before reciting it — in front of the class in the preliminary rounds, then in front of the whole school in the finals. Here’s the first stanza. (I honestly don’t remember the others, but I do remember the gist —or grist?— of the poem.)

Behold! a giant am I!
Aloft here in my tower,
With my granite jaws I devour
The maize, and the wheat, and the rye,
And grind them into flour.

My preoccupation with food today clearly suggested these lines to me. I can almost picture myself standing on the rock, face to the wind, and saying “Bring it on! Stuff it in! There’s room in my belly for whatever you can throw at it.”

Despite my best efforts I was runner-up to Alec Yearling in this competition. In fact, in anything to do with English I was his perennial runner-up.  I have not borne a grudge these 56 years. Much!

So now you’ve put up with my discursive chatting, here’s the news on my health. Sometimes severe bacterial infections such as I have had can leave secondary infections lurking in mechanical heart valves, such as I have. Left undealt with, these can cause life-threatening illnesses, so the hospital, as well as monitoring my blood, is now is doing some further tests to ensure that I don’t leave here with undetected bacteria growing fur around the mechanics that, literally, make me tick. Important among them is an echocardiograph, which was to have been done today but has now had to be rescheduled for tomorrow. If that shows no developing problem, and providing I continue my present progress in my anti-coagulation therapy, they will release me from hospital on Friday or Saturday for travel to Canada. I shall need to take care of myself for a while but there’s no reason why I may not eventually enjoy a full recovery.

This information is from the quartet of medicos (or is that medici?) who visited me today. (Notice how the number is falling: as many as eight around the bed at the height of my sickness, four this morning, and only three this evening. Must be doing well!) Anyway, that’s my missive for tonight. General Linda Bond’s pastoral letter reached me today. I wonder, will mine reach her? Thanks for your prayers and good wishes! Let’s be done with this sickness already!

Good night!

Twelve days and counting in an Italian hospital. The fever from my infection has all gone, but my cabin fever is raging.The news today is that the cardiologist has declared my heart fit for traveling. with no trace of infection or damage. “You can fly!” she said. “I may leap tall buildings but I still need a plane to get home,” I replied. (Whoosh! Straight over her head!)But I’m still here. The sticking point is my INR (the measure of the speed at which my blood clots). I expressed my frustration tonight at the slowness of the progress towards the target number, but the internist was firm that they could not increase my dose more rapidly because of the risk of hemorrhage after such major surgery. I explained how they recently got it back quickly in Canada by starting me on a higher than usual dosage and then reducing it to my normal dose when the correct level was reached, but all he could say was that such an approach was contra-indicated pharmacologically in this case because of the risks it would expose me to.

So, I won’t be leaving tomorrow. I’m hoping Saturday, but my confidence is not high. A day of mixed blessings, then. One thing I was able to do was wander down to the news stand in the hospital’s entrance hall to buy a paper and a cup of tea. How daring! My chief surgeon had given me the okay after this morning’s rounds but I guess he hadn’t told the nursing staff. I got some strange looks on my return. Not speaking more than a few words of Italian has its advantages, however: you can’t ask for permission and they don’t waste their breath scolding you.

Thanks to all my friends for being there for me! I sometimes wish they could have been here for me, instead, but in a topsy-turvy way I have come to realize that this experience has, in an odd way, been a gift — a blessing even. Doug says I shall dine out on it for years, and he’s right in thinking I’ll have a lot of stories to tell. But apart from that, I shall never forget my fortnight in Tuscany, having done nothing more than walk around the historic part of the village we stayed in and then spend 12 days looking out of my hospital window, across the roofs, to the distant hills where that village lies. I’ll do the sights next time; this time, I’ll cherish the time I have had to meet wonderful people and see their life-saving skills in action.

Tonight’s literary offering is a sonnet that has been close to my heart ever since I first read it at university. It is for my daughter Emma and any others of you who love the French language as I do. (Emma — I bet your M. Nunes knows this poem well.) It struck me as particularly apt as it tells of the homesickness of the writer when he is stuck in Italy and despairing of returning to the bosom of his family. The rather ugly translation is entirely mine (I had to have something to do this afternoon!). If you can, stick with the French. It’s late medieval but very accessible. I have annotated the classical or more obscure references (in brackets) in the translation.

Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage,
Ou comme cestuy-là qui conquit la toison,
Et puis est retourné, plein d’usage et raison,
Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son âge !
Quand reverrai-je, hélas, de mon petit village
Fumer la cheminée, et en quelle saison
Reverrai-je le clos de ma pauvre maison,
Qui m’est une province, et beaucoup davantage ?
Plus me plaît le séjour qu’ont bâti mes aïeux,
Que des palais Romains le front audacieux,
Plus que le marbre dur me plaît l’ardoise fine :
Plus mon Loir gaulois, que le Tibre latin,
Plus mon petit Liré, que le mont Palatin,
Et plus que l’air marin la doulceur angevine.

Joachim Du Bellay (1522-1560) Translation:

Happy the one who, like Ulysses, has made a fine journey,
Or like he who won the fleece (Jason and the Golden Fleece)
And then came home, knowing and wise,
To live out his days among his own folk.
When shall I see, alas, the smoking chimneys
Of my little village, and in what season
Shall I see the walled garden around my little house,
Which to me is a whole province — and much more besides?
The dwelling my forefathers built means more to me
Than the daring facades of Roman palaces,
And thin slate pleases me more than hard marble:
More my Gallic Loire river than the Latin Tiber, (the river near his home in France rather than Rome’s famous Tiber)
More my little Liré, than the Palatine Hill, (same again, only hills this time)
And more than sea air the sweetness of Anjou (a province of France).

And the same goes for my home in Toronto!

Looking out on the grey skies this morning and knowing rain was in the offing, I felt very discouraged. It was the first cloudy day since I have been this room, and it quite upset my little routine of setting out my toast and jam on the window sill and eating breakfast while watching the sun come up and spread its light over the city.

The sun no doubt came up but remained hidden for most of the day. It showed itself at lunchtime during my second spoonful of soup but disappeared again before the end of the meal. The steady rain in the late afternoon on top of the visit from the doctors this morning telling me that I wasn’t ready to leave for at least another day or two, cast a pall over my day.

The place in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress called the Slough of Despond seemed to be where I was at. (Slough is also a city in England, not far from where Marjory Kerr works. Awful name: not bad place.)

Then, a sign that I was not, after all, sinking in the mire! On my perambulation around the corridors I saw that the wall clocks, which had been fixed at twenty to eight for a week, were now displaying the correct time. I stood and watched, and, surely enough, the hands were moving. Time is no longer at a standstill here in San Donato’s; things are happening!

Next I received a visit from our good friend Giuseppe, which brightened my day further. He brought with him soap and towels, and asked the staff if I might use their shower (the patients’ one isn’t working). After almost two weeks of washing myself bit by dirty bit in any out-of-the-way sink I could find, I felt I needed one. Sadly, they didn’t say yes, but I can at least dry myself properly when I do sneak into the lockable washroom down the hall and get naked. It’s not easy to use my own wash basin for a complete lathering as it is situated in the unlockable connecting corridor between my room and another, which has been at various times occupied by elderly men and a teenaged girl. These poorly folk can and have interrupted me at inopportune moments. There is a shower head in the lockable but shared toilet stall, however, but while I understand its function it has yet to be a useful tool in my hands. I have swamped the floor with water more often than the target, and there’s no floor drain.

So the day has turned out not to be so bleak. In fact, “now in the evening as shadows fall” I am at peace and much more content to let things take their course than I was earlier. I know people are doing their very best for me. So I move on from Bunyan’s Slough of Despond to his Valley of Humiliation, where the song of the shepherd boy to Christiana (Christian’s wife) and her children reaches my ears:

I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much:
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because Thou savest such.

Let’s hope the mellow mood lasts!

Thanks for all your support!

Today’s news from Arezzo, Italy, is no more encouraging than yesterday’s. It may now be Tuesday before the hospital discharges me but we are hoping for Monday. My abdomen is healing well, the doctors assure me, but cardiology has still not pronounced me fit for travel because of the clotting issue.Meanwhile, this morning’s storm, complete with thunder and lightning, has passed, leaving a heavy sky and the hills obscured by clouds. The hills are a nice touch. If I were a composer I might do something with them. I remember Ernst Rance telling us young musicians many years ago how he composed the tune Ochills when on holiday in Scotland. Looking out of the window of his lodgings he saw the contour of the Ochil Hills against the sky, traced the outline on a sheet of manuscript, and notated it. I think my hills would produce an odd sort of melody line, but I’m sure Len could do something with it.

Now for the poetry. The first poem I had to learn was in Primary School. Actually, it was a class project, with each of the 35 or so boys and girls having to learn a few couplets of Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin. Then we all lined up in the right order and recited the poem. I remember my lines perfectly well because the first word expresses so beautifully my reaction to the news that I wouldn’t be discharged tomorrow:

Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks’ own ladles…

Isn’t “Rats” a great word? I am fortunate to have gone to school when I did and to have been made to learn such apt stuff.

I started school in Pembroke, Ontario, when I was five, but we didn’t do real schoolwork until I arrived back in England when I was six, in November 1950. Cattedown Infants’ School had been heavily bombed. Our classrooms were in a part of the building that was still roofed over, but we used to grab our little mats morning and afternoon to go over to the main part of the building, then open to the sky, to do our exercises, or what was then called PT. It is a telling sign of the times that the policeman who in my day came to school to warn us of unexploded ordnance and bombs (there were still lots around), and road safety, now talks to children about accepting rides from strangers, and road safety. Gordon Bain knows a lot more about the blitz than I do. His home was blasted; mine just got burnt because the Germans mostly dropped fire bombs in our part of town. (One exception was a night in March 1944 when my mother was nearly killed nursing me in the Anderson shelter behind the house. A high explosive bomb, intended for the railway tracks in the cutting behind our house, sent shrapnel through the turf wall, parting her scalp but not her skull.)

The fires started by the incendiaries in the schools had destroyed the text books, so, instead, we had to copy down into our notebooks everything the teacher wrote on the blackboard. The teacher did have one of those gelatin duplicators, where you wrote in a special ink, rolled it on the gelatin tray, then made copies in a sort of offset lithography. It was called a hectograph, I think. It was too messy and not really practical. More important, it was only a notice-making device and not a way to teach thirty-odd kids to write.

As each day had to begin with an act of worship and there were no hymn books, more often than not we had to write down and learn the next day’s hymn. Imagine what a bunch of seven-year-olds nowadays would make of having to start their day with: “New every morning is the love/Our wakening and uprising prove;/Through sleep and darkness safely brought,/Restored to life and power and thought.” etc., etc. I expect the choice of hymns had been made by those who only a few years before had not known whether or not they would make it through the night because of the bombing.

To us kids in those days, who had become aware of the bombing in the wake of the war but otherwise remembered nothing of its horrors, writing out these words was just another chore. To me now, the recollection of words such as these, and others, is a blessing, even if I don’t share their Victorian worldview.

We wrote with school-issue, scratchy, steel-nibbed pens that splattered like crazy on the upstroke in right-handed penmanship. Heaven help you if you were left-handed! You were sure to blot your copy book. (This was the reason, I am quite sure, why teachers so strongly tried to make everyone right-handed.) It was only at grammar school that children who could afford one were allowed to use a fountain pen (much better for the left-handers).

In primary school I loved to listen to the teacher read us Worzel Gummidge stories. He was a scarecrow with interchangeable heads: a turnip, a swede and a mangel wurzel (the scarecrow, not the teacher). In Canada we have rutabagas and turnips; in the Devon of my youth we ate swedes. Never other Scandinavians, mind you, only swedes. Mangel wurzels, by the way, were animal fodder.

I would be listening to a Sherlock Holmes story, or some such, right now, and enjoying it as much as Mr Gummidge if I had not deleted all the audio books on my iPhone to make room for photos. Instead, I have to read the stories, which is becoming more challenging since my reading glasses fell apart irreparably this afternoon. (My bifocals have the same prescription, but the lens is not quite in the right position for comfortable reading in bed. But I shall make do, and remember to be thankful I have them.)

It’s been nice to have so many emails. Answering them really does help pass the time and make me feel closer to home. Keep them coming! You can stop when I’m at home. I’ll stop writing then, too. What more incentive could anyone need to get me back to Canada in a hurry?

Salve a tutti!

I arrived in hospital 15 days ago when it was still shirt-sleeve weather. Fall — at least, our Canadian version of it — seemed a long way off. Well, today it feels as if autumn has come and gone, and winter has set in. There’s a real chill in the air. The `’Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” of Keats’s ode To Autumn seems far distant. (That’s all the poetry for tonight.)It may be because the central heating isn’t on in the hospital, or because I have to wash in cold water, or because the wide corridors of this huge hospital are sometimes opened to the outside air, but I have found it hard to stay warm all day. Doe bought me a lovely woolen cardigan before she left, and I am wearing that as I write.

It is evening now. The sun has long ago set on a damp and mostly overcast day, which has seemed all the shorter because the clocks have gone back an hour here. Even the hall clocks — the ones that used to be broken — have all lost 60 minutes simultaneously, and now confidently and accurately declare the new winter hour.

I use an app on my iPhone for my private devotions. It’s basically the Anglican prayer book organized by four daily offices and dates. It is called iPray. Reading the morning office for Proper 25 before breakfast, I rejoiced to discover that in Western Christendom today is the feast of Sts Simon and Jude. St Simon (the zealous disciple) is the patron saint of tanners. Not much for me there, except that I feel my belly has had a real leathering in recent days. Not so with St Jude, though, who is, supposedly, the disciple Thaddeus. Through this nickname (from a root word implying hearty and generous) he came to be known as the patron saint of lost causes. His name is also that of the makers of my artificial heart valve: St Jude’s Medical. For obvious reasons. This has to be a good omen! The very prosthesis that has been at the root of the delays putting off my departure has its own saint’s day — and today is it! My cause cannot be entirely lost.

As if through the unrequested intercession of this handy saint, the doctor who came by this morning upped my Warfarin medication dramatically. This, after what sounded like strong words over his cell phone with the medico in cardiology who had been keeping the dose so low. At a stroke he also reduced my heparin to two single jabs a day, instead of two double shots. (My nurses have been entertaining themselves by trying to do both needles at the same time.) Now I’m back to the warfarin dose I used to take in Canada, so tomorrow, instead of creeping up by .05 and .01, I hope we shall see begin to see a definite improvement. Thanks, St Jude!

I did get a smile from the doctor when I asked him, “E possibile aumentar il mio INR di processi mentali?” (“Is it possible to raise my INR by thought processes?”) He thought that was hilarious and went off down the corridor repeating it to himself and the nursing staff. Little did he know that it had taken me an age to figure out how to say that. Now he thinks I was fooling them and could speak Italian all along.

I have been reading Doug Taylor’s “Arse Over Teakettle”, the first in his Toronto Trilogy. (Yes, our own Doug Taylor of Earlscourt/Yorkminster. You should check out his books on Amazon.ca. At least three are available on Kindle, too. I know, because I have them.) This book tells of a boy’s early years in Toronto and the struggles of his parents to make their way. Although I am only up to the bit where he starts school, I see much that I can relate to in his description of the city in the forties. His early boyhood there on Lauder Avenue is much like mine on Glenforeest in Bedford Park a few years later. I look forward to reading the rest, and his other memoirs/stories, in the coming weeks.

Finally, a word of explanation and a confession. These long letters are really not for the people who receive them. They are for me. Writing them is a way for me to stay focussed on the world outside my predicament here, by objectifying what’s happening to me in hospital and by chatting about other, mostly trivial, things. They are a way to grasp hold of the normal in this Kafkaesque world, which, for me, now seems to be repeating itself day in and day out like Groundhog Day in the eponymous movie. Recalling poetry and foreign languages (I promise some Latin in my next one, just for Bill), doing crosswords (I completed the BBC History Magazine one and sent it off for a prize!), answering your emails, all these things are keeping my mind alert and not allowing depression to take a hold for more than the brief period of self-pity I allow myself each morning. So thank you for helping me in this way. The doctors can fix up my body, but I need you guys to help keep me from depression. I hope to be heading home in a day or two. Right into the storm!

Good night from Arezzo.

I’m still here in hospital in Italy — 16 days now — with an INR too low to permit me to fly. Disappointed as I may be at not being discharged, I have been told by our insurers that the East Coast storms have disrupted flight schedules so much that it would be difficult to get me on a plane to Toronto right now. So I carry on.The right literary allusion has to be from the very first Shakespeare play I had to study at school, and one which, according to Emma, is still part of the curriculum: Macbeth. It is Macbeth’s soliloquy on learning of the death of his wife, towards the end of the play when he himself will soon meet his own violent end:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;

Well, it’s maybe not as bad as that here, but those few lines do capture something of my mood.

I promised a bit of Latin for my friend Bill, who had to study it at school, so here goes. About ten years ago when I was working at THQ I was asked by Lt-Colonel Peter Wood to come up with a suitable Latin motto for the international auditors, who travel around the world making sure SA money is properly accounted for. Basing the motto on 1 Corinthians 6:20, which says in the Vulgate ’empti enim estis pretio’ (‘for you have been bought at a price’) I came up with “Pretio Empti Sumus” — “We have been bought at a price!” I am quite sure it was never used, but it was good Latin and might have got a laugh. Of course, that was before the Andersen/Enron accounting scandal and aat a time when we honestly thought all accountants were incorruptible.

I went for a walk outside today. It wasn’t a great success and I came back chastened and quite tired. To while away the rest of the afternoon and to make my self-pity more constructive I sat down and wrote a poem until it became dark. If I were punctuation this operation would have changed me from a colon into a semi-colon, so that’s what I decided to write about. Here goes: The ballad of the semi-colon

I once was a colon, well stacked
In a vertical symmetry others lacked.
Never forward, as your common slash,
Or full of myself, like an em or en dash,
I still pointed ahead, where a list might unfold,
Or a consecutive phrase as yet untold.
Dot over perfect dot, once highly rated,
Now to a comma I’m half-‘viscerated.
My nether portion once was whole;
Gutted now, it’s little more than a hole.
And nobody knows how I construe.
A separator where a comma won’t do?
Two contrasting thoughts, with me at their heart,
Instead of a period, to set them apart?
O for the certainty of a Strunk & White!
(Why can’t somebody get it right?)
And yet, a simple thought brings cheer
And a moral for those with ears to hear:
A period without a comma to top
Becomes the final, feared full stop
That marks the end, with no going-on.
No thanks! I’d rather be a semi-colon.

Good night and thanks for your support.

Seventeen days, and getting closer to the door, but not discharged yet! Maybe tomorrow or maybe the next day. So nothing has changed, except the need is more pressing to get home in time for Emma’s birthday on the 3rd.My stay in hospital here is now a day or two longer than my hospitalization after my heart attack in 1989, but still short of the four weeks I spent in hospital in August, 1961. I had torn a cartilage playing soccer earlier in the year, but I was able to put off surgery until the summer holidays, when my track and field activities were over.The operation went well, but my knee became infected during surgery and I had to stay in Mount Gould hospital in Plymouth for what seemed ages, especially as I was moved into an isolation ward while they drained the knee. Internet and email was way in the future, but we had books — and each other, when I wasn’t in isolation.

The building was in fact an old fever hospital converted to orthopedic use. It had been built overlooking the estuary of the river Plym and a long, sweeping meadow sloped down from the building, allowing cool, moist air coming down the river valley from Dartmoor to reach the hospital. The windows all along the meadow side would open to the floor to allow the beds to be wheeled out onto the verandah during the hottest nights. That summer we begged the nurses to let us sleep outside every night.

Almost all the patients were young lads like me. Some had had motorcycle accidents, or were in traction after climbing or other mishaps. There was one older man, a farmer who had fallen into a circular saw that was running off his traction engine. He was now having his leg reconstructed.

We had lots of fun, probably because no one was really poorly, just beat up and in a variety of casts and slings. How different from the general surgical ward in this hospital, where there are a lot of very sick people!

I had my friends around the ward and my books for entertainment but the thing I enjoyed most was the pillow loudspeaker, linked into the hospital radio network. During my time in hospital that August the Berlin wall was being built. I remember listening to the reports on the BBC as the East Germans effectively imprisoned their nation. Of course I was anxious about the possibility of war with the Soviet Union, but call-up for me would have been a year away as I was not yet 18.

Reminiscences over, fast forward more than 50 years to October 30, 2012. After establishing the world record for underwear worn on consecutive days, I took a full bag of wash this afternoon to the handy little laundromat I discovered on my outing yesterday. Quite unknown to me, however, Doe had arranged for our friend Giuseppe to come by and pick up my dirty clothes and get them washed — as a surprise.

He arrived at the hospital just as I was doing the wash down the road. Luckily, as he was leaving, a little disappointed that I wasn’t around, I met him in the lobby and we took tea together, or, rather, I took tea and he had a coffee.

Like yesterday, I felt chilled during my short walk outside. The temperature when I woke this morning was below freezing and the puddles on the flat roof my room overlooks were sheets of ice. The hospital now turns the radiators on during the evening, so it is warmer in my room than last week, but there is still no hot water.

My early morning routine now includes the best approximation of a shower my abdominal stitches permit, thanks to the towels Giuseppe brought me on the weekend. The shower is in the spacious but glacial wheelchair bathroom across the corridor from me.

After shivering my way through morning ablutions I can’t wait to get back to my room and huddle over the hot-water radiator while it is still warm. This morning I was given extra jam with my breakfast biscotti, and as I ate it at the pink marble window sill, with my slippered feet all toasty and tucked under the radiator, I couldn’t help but think of another Ogden Nash rhyme that I learned at school. Remember the Aunt Maud one earlier? Well, this is just as cute. Some of my friends will have heard it before, but here goes:

Last night when Billy wore his best sash,
He fell in the fire and was burnt to an ash;
Now, even though the room grows chilly,
I haven’t the heart to poke poor Billy.

So I have named my little radiator Billy.

Another big fillip for me today was the addition of a panino (bread roll) to my diet and ‘real’ meat instead of hamburger. Finally some variety! The customary semolina soup was replaced by a thin, somewhat flavourless broth with tiny bits of pasta lurking in it, and my puréed potatoes this evening by chopped boiled potatoes and sliced carrots in olive oil. What a welcome change after eight consecutive days of semolina soup! My meat at lunch was two thin slices of roast pork in a watery gravy. This evening it was a whole chicken leg — boiled, I suspect, but quite tasty. So, just as I am about to leave they play the food card, doubtless hoping I’ll want to stay and enjoy more of this cuccina Toscana.

Ciao!

Happy Halloween to all little beasties everywhere! What’s more important, I wish Emma the best of luck tomorrow (she’ll know what I mean). So I’m still here. But it’s getting closer — I can feel it in my bones. Remember the old Buddy Holly song, “Ev’ry day it’s a-getting closer, going faster than a roller-coaster…”? I’m keeping my fingers crossed for discharge tomorrow, a night in a hotel and a flight on Friday. It may be a day later, but things look promising for tomorrow.Enforced idleness, as many of you know who have experienced it, can be a very fruitful time. It’s not only a time for reflection and introspection, but also a time to make plans and build hopes for a more active future. We all need to step away from our busy lives from time to time. As the poet Davies said,

What is this world if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows…

Well, enough already! Get me out of here and back on life’s wonderful carousel! No more of this standing and staring nonsense. I’m done with it. Through. Finito. TAKE ME HOME!

Whew! That feels better.

My daughter Gillian asked if I had brought my sketch book with me. Well, yes, I did bring it. I take it everywhere but never use it. The sketching ability I once had has atrophied through lack of use (parable of the talents anyone?), just as desuetude has eliminated so many of my other, more marginal skills. But because Gill urged me to draw, even badly, I gave it a go this morning.

The nurses and doctors look after your medical needs in this hospital but your family takes care of anything personal, like washing the dishes, providing clean clothes, and more. Some of the men on this floor have their wives with them to take care of them all day and through the night. (I haven’t seen it the other way around, but here as elsewhere the women usually outlive their men.) One abiding impression I shall take with me is the sight of elderly ladies standing sentinel-like at the bedsides of their ailing husbands or children. For example, the signora down the corridor from me wears black and looks dour, with her hair severely pulled back from her pale face into a tight mass of darkly dyed curls. In the evening and early morning, through the doorway of the dimly lit room, you get more a sense of her presence than an actual sighting. Something like this sketch.

Think of the recent creepy movie “The Woman in Black” and you get the idea.

One person who left a strong impression on me, although I barely recall the brief time I was with him, was the anesthetist responsible for my care during surgery.

When I first saw him in the corridor outside the operating theatre he appeared to be coming in from a smoking break. He certainly reeked of tobacco. His was overweight and had somewhat coarse features, which, combined with his brusque manner and rough voice — “Apri la bocca! Hai la dentiera o protesi?” (“Open your mouth! Do you have any false teeth or dentures?”) — made me think he was an orderly who worked part-time here when he wasn’t running a butcher’s stall in the local market. In fact, as I learned later when chatting to a doctor who befriended me, he was their top guy. I guess anesthetists don’t need much of a bedside manner, but he certainly made the time pass pleasantly enough while they cut me up. I’d hire him again any day.

Anyway, here’s my sketch of his face emerging neckless from his green scrubs as he was holding the mask over my nose and looking at the monitors across my prone body. It’s probably nothing like him, but it’s how I think he looked the last time I saw him. (Looking at the drawing again, there’s a bit of a medieval Pope about him.)

Maybe I’ll draw some more before I leave Italy, but somehow I doubt it. The camera is so much easier! So here Is a snap of myself today.

I think I look somewhat battle-weary around the eyes, but I am in good spirits and looking forward to putting some distance between me and this life of enforced idleness… at least until the weekend soccer once more drags me to the couch at home. If I can’t write again tomorrow, all the best on Friday night to our singers. Apologize to Linda on my behalf for not making it.