Wednesday Oct 13 2010

Many thanks for the phone call Stef. Lovely to hear your cheerful humour. Hope you got that from me! I still laugh about little Jasmin's radioactive pee! Anyhoo, I promised I would tell you everything and hide nothing, although I may well present it in the manner of Monty Python rather than Mervyn Peake. I did decline an invitation from someone to visit the Teardrop Cafe on Facebook. It's OK to cry, but virtual tears? Yesterday I went with Irene to the Kringloop recycling shop in Beverwijk. It is not just because of my meagre pension and dwindling resources that we go to the kringloop. It is also great fun looking for stuff, and at the moment I am devouring books about painting and painters. There is a risk involved, as such books are popular with other old men who come in out of the rain to salivate over pictures of fat female bodies. There we all are with volumes of  Titian, Rubens, Renoir and  Rembrandt spread over the table. Mountains of heaving bosoms, buttocks, bellies and thighs all trying to hide behind gauzy chiffon and strategic foliage. There is a sharp cough as the fierce Kringloop Lady glares at us through her pointy spectacles, and a fluttering and shuffling of pages until windmills, sunflowers and bowls of fruit surface. Not I, for I am the genuine one, the searcher of form and beauty. Hoping to gain an advantage over my fellow Crejat Academie students.  Rude Nude Lady week is stampeding towards us. We eyeball each other. She looks at 'The Naked Maja' in front of me. I mumble 'Francisco Jose De Goya, 1797. Magnificent  brushwork', but she has already machine-gunned our whole platoon with a withering 'dirty old men' look and muttered her way back to her little office. Not much else to find except a crap novel to read in the bath. This turns out to be a mistake, for as we shall see later, I am not allowed in the bath for months to come. Irene did find a lot of useful things. Suddenly I had the most awful stabbing pain, and went to the furniture section of the kringloop and chose a sofa, a compromise between being clean and being comfortable, and curled up holding my belly. People passing by looked at me as if to say 'They really should do something for these poor, homeless old men'.

Fortunately that eased off, but it returned later and it was a bad night. I took a second sleeping pill but that had no effect at all. When all else fails, have a hot bath! And that I did at 3 am. Wonderful! I'm sorry Stef, but you did say yesterday to be honest and not just be funny for the family. I can't be funny if  I don't feel good, and I will tell you if it gets bad.

Up at the crack of mid-morning for a horizontal shower and a bottle of Astronauts Poo (Tropical Fruit colour) and then off to the hospital to talk to Doctor Proton, the radiology man. There is something scary about radiology, mainly because I don't know anything about it and refuse to look up any of the treatment. I remember a joke from a russian author about sailors in nuclear submarines, whose reactors are not up to the same safety standards as our own dear Tridents. The russian military police were patrolling the pubs for stragglers who had not reported back to their ships. "Anyone from the Northern Fleet here?" There being no reply, the sergeant switches off the lights, and four men glowing in the dark are immediately arrested. Anyway, I will know soon enough, and knowing won't change anything. I liked this man very much. He was direct and honest, not like some of the others who are mentally reading from a prepared script and not looking one in the eye. He was annoyed that the most urgent kidney removal job was apparently planned for mid November. He tore up the letter saying we'll soon see about that! He said he would have to do a rubber glove job, just to get the feel of things as it were. God knows why, there are now masses of scans, photos, maps, cross sections, diagrams, routeplanners and videos of my entrails. Star on YouTube.They have to see if anything can get past in both directions. I'm not sure why anything would want to try. By the way, I hope those miners in Chile are getting out OK. My thoughts are with them. Anyway, it hurts like hell every time. I asked if Bernadet should perhaps leave the room as I found it embarassing. No, because the bed was behind a screen. The screen looked like one side of  a childs cot. I recommend that they put some chicken-wire over the outside to increase the privacy aspect. He said radiation would begin next Wednesday, and would go on 5 days a week for 6 weeks. Will it relieve the pain?. No, it will get worse before it gets better. Some take it better than others. The skin will go red and may 'break'. Oh well, I won't be watching the documentary on Hiroshima on BBC2 tonight.
The next step is to be photographed and marked like a piece of meat so that the martian ray-gun can hit the same spot every day. This means drawing lines on my belly and having four target spots tattoed onto me. And something else. The worse news since this whole thing began on Black Tuesday. NO MORE BATHS. The ink might wear off. The greatest pleasure of my life is snatched from me! There is nothing finer than a good book, a radio, a cup of coffee and a plate of cookies, and Badedas pine-scented steam wafting through the bathroom and turning all the mirrors off. We are sent off to the restaurant to await the artwork. The chairs are knobbly wickerwork and I can feel Doctor Proton's handiwork at every squirm. We will be called if the whole thing can begin earlier. We sit with our lunch (very thin goulash soup for me) waiting for the important announcement. "Bing Bong - two hamburgers with chips - ready!". Eventually to the Art Deco and body-painting. Two nurses await by a large black slab sticking out of a giant round magnet thingy. The tell me to remove everything except my tee-shirt and lie on the cold slab. No, Sir, on your back please. But, they will see, Oh my God, I am totally as it were, hanging in the wind. I am fed into the machine which takes more scans. This is apparently a dummy run. When all the drawing and marking has been done, a real machine will fire up and bombard my nether regions with astro-physics. I emerge from the magnet thing and the two young ladies  position themselves either side of me, magic markers at the ready. They start to draw lines on my belly, getting closer and closer to the public areas. My God, what if I have an erection! I grit my teeth and think of England, and Admiral Lord Nelson. Do your duty, man, and stand firm. Er no, not that. Any erotic fires are quickly put out when the tattoo needles went in to mark the 'reference points'. I should mention that the ladies who divided my belly up into choice cuts with felt tip pens also took a photograph of my face. Why I asked. To make sure you are who you say you are! My God, do they think I will be selling my turns under the Martian Death Ray for a few fivers to freaky thrill seekers?

Back home, where I escape directly through the back door to Irene's little house and leave Bernadet to handle the press conference, as the well-meaning folk of the Hoogeweg burst in for a statement. I know they care, but it would be nice to get one's jacket off and come to terms with things on our own first. I notice that my supply of the laxative Molaxhole has run out. Literally. Fortunately Irene has a vast store of redundant meds which she no long uses.



 Laxatives? Sure, I have Movicolon (how do they think up these names!)  and Grunwalder Nr 1 (Should that not be Nr2) which consists of  the dreaded senna pod which we were given as children every now and again to 'clean us out'.

Anyway, Stef, I hope you won't mind me sharing what you told me last night. Little Jasmin, one and a half years old, is given something to drink and put under a scanner to investigate kidney function. After which she runs around in excitement before her nappy is put back on. A short play.

Stef:   - I'm sorry nurse, my baby has peed on the floor
Nurse - Then you can wipe it up.
Stef    - No, that's your job
Nurse - No way! That's radioactive!

Nothing much until next wednesday, when I shall bring you all up to date on the the Martian Death Ray. Sure to be hot news!

I've just had a brilliant idea! Fill the bath and get in, up to the neck in a giant black bin-bag! Tied up under the arms so I can still get to the taps and the plug, hold the book manipulate the radio, coffee cup and cookies!

Love you all

Bye for now, Dad