Pray for miracles

On Coping #7

I sit at your hospital bedside.

It’s January, 2024.

You’ve been admitted with acute back pain and a swollen stomach.

.

All through November and December you withstood the mounting pain until even the 3am baths couldn’t get you through the night.

We thought it was because you spent so long lying down having treatment in Mexico.

But we find out the tumours have grown and multiplied.

You have more cancer in your lungs and your bowel and in your liver, including one tumor that is now 9 cm long. And three pockets of liquid in your stomach.

You are on morphine and paracetamol and soon, because of a spiking temperature, steroids and antibiotics.

.

I sit and look out at The Shard.

We eat the Ramen you requested and it is delicious.

I show you some trousers I’ve just bought. You like them.

We talk about who is picking up who from school while I am here.

You ask about my day at work.

You put your headphones on and watch a program on your iPad.

I open my laptop and send some emails.

I hold your hand.

.

After they have come to take your temperature and inform you it is too high for you to leave, you say that your body is telling you to stay in the hospital and that I should go home and so I get back in the car drive down the A2 to put the kids to bed.

.

It is torrential.

Some of the worst rain I’ve ever driven through.

I guess that’s pathetic fallacy for you.

.

As I pull onto the driveway I get a message from a friend.

“I’ve just heard. Is there anything I can do?” she writes.

I turn off the engine.

I text back.

.

“Pray for miracles” I say.

Previous > On Coping #6: Takes a village | Next > On Coping #8: Hold my hand

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On Coping is my story of surviving on the sidelines of cancer. It begins in 2022 with On Coping #1, written the day after my 41st birthday. The day my wife Imogen, the mother of my three children, was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.  It’s the story of what happened next. Read from the start.

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