Chapter 10 So sad
I never did get to go to that Christmas special party.
During our friendship Valerie and I had gone together to a mobile breast screening unit that came every year to the car park at the Town Hall, to get as she put it, ‘our boobs pressed’ Screening involves placing a breast onto a small platform while another platform descends a squeezes your breast flat so they can get a good x-ray. The plates then tilt and you get squeezed again from side to side. It wasn’t too unpleasant for me with my little breasts, but hers being so big and dense the squeezing proved quite painful and not in a nice way. To cheer her up we used to go afterwards to one of the little coffee shops in North Chingford to pig out on cream cakes and Earl Grey tea.
She had received a couple of call backs for a re-screen in the past, once when a cyst was discovered and treated and again when the image they had got was not clear due to denseness of her breast. So, we weren’t worried when she got a recall to the local hospital, but she was given an immediate referral for a full body scan at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel.
He went with her to Whitechapel but came back alone. She had been admitted for observation and tests. I went with him the next day, taking her some clean nightdresses, cosmetics, etc as of course he hadn’t a clue what a lady needs. She seemed quite upbeat, but when the consultant came to speak to her I was asked to leave. I sat in a corridor for about half an hour with my heart thumping away. When eventually Paul came to find me, I could see he was crying and I knew the worst before he told me. She had a malignant growth in one of her breasts, but the really bad news was that it had metastasised into her lymph glands. They were investigating the possibility of chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment, but an operation was not an option.
She stayed in the hospital and then transferred to a hospice, I spent every day with her. She just faded away. One time she pulled aside her sheets and lifted her nightdress and said “I always wanted to be slim like you, now look at me”. That was the only time I cried in her presence.
Though he converted their garden room into a bedroom for her, with a special bed that rippled gently so she would be comfortable and had booked a specialist nurse, she never came home. She died in the New Year. There were fifteen people at her funeral. None of their 'special friends', I suppose being hedonists they didn’t want to be reminded of their own mortality.
to be continued
During our friendship Valerie and I had gone together to a mobile breast screening unit that came every year to the car park at the Town Hall, to get as she put it, ‘our boobs pressed’ Screening involves placing a breast onto a small platform while another platform descends a squeezes your breast flat so they can get a good x-ray. The plates then tilt and you get squeezed again from side to side. It wasn’t too unpleasant for me with my little breasts, but hers being so big and dense the squeezing proved quite painful and not in a nice way. To cheer her up we used to go afterwards to one of the little coffee shops in North Chingford to pig out on cream cakes and Earl Grey tea.
She had received a couple of call backs for a re-screen in the past, once when a cyst was discovered and treated and again when the image they had got was not clear due to denseness of her breast. So, we weren’t worried when she got a recall to the local hospital, but she was given an immediate referral for a full body scan at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel.
He went with her to Whitechapel but came back alone. She had been admitted for observation and tests. I went with him the next day, taking her some clean nightdresses, cosmetics, etc as of course he hadn’t a clue what a lady needs. She seemed quite upbeat, but when the consultant came to speak to her I was asked to leave. I sat in a corridor for about half an hour with my heart thumping away. When eventually Paul came to find me, I could see he was crying and I knew the worst before he told me. She had a malignant growth in one of her breasts, but the really bad news was that it had metastasised into her lymph glands. They were investigating the possibility of chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment, but an operation was not an option.
She stayed in the hospital and then transferred to a hospice, I spent every day with her. She just faded away. One time she pulled aside her sheets and lifted her nightdress and said “I always wanted to be slim like you, now look at me”. That was the only time I cried in her presence.
Though he converted their garden room into a bedroom for her, with a special bed that rippled gently so she would be comfortable and had booked a specialist nurse, she never came home. She died in the New Year. There were fifteen people at her funeral. None of their 'special friends', I suppose being hedonists they didn’t want to be reminded of their own mortality.
to be continued
6年前
