A Life Less Lost: Chapter 16
...We have devised ways to pass the time and keep his spirits up. I wheel him down, via the lift, to browse in the shop and treat him to magazines and snacks. He drags his drip trolley along like a dog. Or I run him an extravagant bubble bath and stand guard outside the bathroom door to protect his privacy...
Kimm Walker continues her vivid and inspirational account of her teenage son's fight against the most dreaded of all diseases.
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And do visit Kimm's Web site http://kbwalker-lifelesslost.blogspot.com/
It's the third round of chemotherapy and I spend the day by James' bed, as the poison is dripped into his body. We have devised ways to pass the time and keep his spirits up. I wheel him down, via the lift, to browse in the shop and treat him to magazines and snacks. He drags his drip trolley along like a dog. Or I run him an extravagant bubble bath and stand guard outside the bathroom door to protect his privacy (patients are not allowed to lock the door in case of emergency).
If he's well enough, I wheel him round to the hospital school room, where he can use the computers to help his revision. If there's a gap between bags of chemo, we escape from 'hospital world' and sneak out to the cinema for a couple of hours.
Howard arrives on his way home from work so I wearily return to my car to go home to David. There isn't anything like enough parking for the hospital so I've had to abandon my car, along with hundreds of others, on waste land nearby. Shards of glass sparkle in the evening sun. Someone has smashed the window behind the driver's seat. I'm parked under a security camera and the car is alarmed so nothing's been stolen. Apparently, it had just been done for fun.
Parking is one of those irritating problems that add an extra bucketful of stress to an already difficult situation and I fervently wish hospital planners would take this basic need into consideration. I drive home sitting on glass with the wind howling in, but at least it isn't raining. David kindly goes with me to the window repair place where they fit a new window and vacuum out the splinters of glass.
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James' modesty in the face of all the hospital indignities reminds me of when he was preparing to go to high school for the first time. Howard felt it was time to have the 'Father and Son Talk' and arranged for the two of them to spend a day out together. When James realised what his dad had in mind, he panicked, climbed out through the bathroom window and ran up the road in his socks.
Spotting him, our good friends, Pat and Dave, phoned up in alarm to find out what had happened. Once reassured, James and his dad had a lovely day and discussed a wide range of topics, which we hoped would help him in the years to come.
James' reaction seems more understandable once the dynamics of his relationship with Howard are appreciated. When James first started attending the discos his friends seemed to favour for their thirteenth birthday parties, Howard dressed up in the most ridiculous clothes possible and offered to take him to the party.
James nearly died of horror and I had to take him in the end. His dad, dressed more appropriately, arrived early to collect him and, after much heated negotiation, was allowed to wait inside until the party finished. Howard asserts that he watched James dance with a girl, return her to the line of those waiting and say, "Right, whose next?" James denies this.
One of the boys' favourite games as children was to hide in the pitch darkness of their bedrooms, with their friends, and have their dad come looking for them as the Tickle Monster. Howard would make roaring monster noises and they would squeal with delight. James stopped letting us kiss him goodnight, aged six, when Howard and his cousin teased him about his missing milk teeth being the result of kissing girls.
