London 15 November 2005
Michael and I meet at West Drayton, a town on the western rim of Greater London. It’s mid afternoon and already half-dark, the low sky depressing and heavy. Both of us hunch into our thick jackets. Well before peak-time, it is easy to find seats on the purple Piccadilly-line train. Michael stretches out his long legs in front of him – the I-pod plugged into his ears. We don't talk; he listens to his music. The stress, of facing likely death is all too clear on his young pensive face.
This is our second visit to the famous London Royal Marsden Cancer Hospital, a short distance from Kensington South , down Fullham Street/Road.. More familiar with the surrounds the second time round, we walk up the wide steps leading into a spacious entrance area and take the passage to the right. Michael, in pain, makes himself comfortable on one of the two big sofa’s. We are glad to see Gordon, who is working in London city, arrive and meet up with us straight after work. In the corner of the waiting room are the the water coolers, and over there and there are cancer patients and family – most lost in their own thoughts. This is no Disneyland. Between these four walls the days and hours and outcomes hang suspended.
Michael’s appointment is one of the last of the day. If only he was not so desperately ill that he is assured that his appointment is of indefinite length. Dr Seddon speaks in slow and deliberate words, her eyes, kind. Some of the medical facts are beyond our comprehension but more significantly “Michael has cancer and is going to die” proves to be the ultimate data beyond comprehension. The clinical picture looks grim. Dr Seddon looks Michael in the eye – she is talking with him, we, the parents, are also welcome. We listen, supportingly. Ewing’s Sarcoma grows at a fast tempo. More words. Words we do not want to hear: "tumour deposits","uncontrolled cancer growth". Repressed shudders. "Lesions” – this sounds like a tear – later we look up the exact meanings on the internet dictionary. Further grading is required. Another tumor staging and another tremor rolls through us all.
What is the best way forward - is there a way forward? Is there an escape route, a way away, far away from the active volcano rim?
One minute everything drags in slow motion, like swimming under water. Then again everything is moving at break-neck speed, bouncing along rough white-water rapids. Michael wants to live – he is holding on with white knuckled determination. He is so young and he just wants to stay alive. What’s the use to psyche ourselves up and tell each other that everything will be just fine. There are realities to face. There is no getting away from it. We are tormented by disappointment and distress, doubts and fears as Dr Seddon, explains some factors of Michael's life-ending illness, with diminishing hope, fading medical solution. Is this the wave that is going to take Michael down? Noooo, don't let it be!
Michael shows Dr Seddon the new painful lump on one of his left ribs. She carefully examines and a little later, with tremendous compassion, say the dreaded "metastasis" word. These are defining moments, but we don’t want to hear the definition. These facts and figures trurn into our personal fiery realities and suffocating anxieties. There is talk of a very major operation, which would result in Michael having to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Sensitive and soft-spoken Dr Seddon's words clang in our ears. "Morbidity" ratchets up the fear. For Michael, the basic instinct to stay alive is still a powerful force. As he expressed it later to Isabelle: "If I have a choice between life and legs, I choose life!"
(Pray for Drs who daily deliver shattering diagnosis. Dr Seddon was brilliant)
Dr Seddon does not drag things out, yet Michael and us are given as much time as we need. Our Michael wants to live, but was running out of options. Is there even a thread of fragile hope to which he and us can cling? We are hanging onto Dr Seddons’s words, but we were free-falling. What is our son doing here??!! He should be at work, or chilling with his friends or surfing, or checking his car out – he should not be having this deeply worried look on his dear young face. Dr Seddon talks in her even voice. We steel ourselves. Michael is still embracing life: legs or life? Life! It is like watching an accident in slow motion, helpless to stop it. We too, are desperate for Michael to survive.
If only we all could become helium-filled and drift off, float far away, from the cancer, from these words, these finalities, drift, drift, up, away.
Outside the old hospital, the air is bitingly cold. Blue Christmas fairy lights are twinkling cutely. People hurrying on to somewhere. We catch the number 12 bus from Chelsea to Kensington South tube station. It’s peak hour. Zillions of commuters, Londoners and tourists scurry around. Michael tells us he HAS to buy cigarettes. Did our son take long deep drags, or small, nervous staccato puffs? We don't know, he refused to smoke in front of us. Told us he respects us too much. We said, no, don’t worry, Michael! He said, he has never smoked in front of us, since a teenager, and he wasn't going to do so now, out of respect. We appreciate his sentiment, but just want to take the unspeakable tension, the apprehension and the deepest of anxieties, that of facing death, from our beloved son.
Together Michael, Gordon and I catch a tube train to Waterloo to meet a friend at a pub on the other side of the river. What happened next, was a first – and a last - in our 10 years of countless London city visits. As the three of us approached the foot of the Tube escalator, a young man held out a leaflet to us. I just knew this was not an advertisement for a West End show or a restaurant ad and received it. As we stepped onto the escalator, his words startled us: "Jesus heals the broken-hearted". How could he have known? Gordon and I look normal – well more or less! Michael is just a young adult man, due to turn 27 in a few days’ time – we did not know,then, that he had as little as 10 weeks to live. We have never before or since been handed a Christian leaflet on the tubes. Yet this unknown young man tells parents and an adult son in the London Underground: “Jesus heals the broken-hearted”. Three ordinary faces in the crowd but oh - our hearts in tatters. “Jesus heals the broken-hearted”.
Outside the train station, we catch a typical double-decker red London bus, and make our way up the narrow steep steps, clinging to the rail as the driver pulls off. From the upper-deck bus window we stare at the stunning classic night sights of floodlit Westminster Abbey, white like a ghost. On our right, as we approach Westminster Bridge, a brilliantly glowing Big Ben, London’s best-known landmark, spectacular with clock faces illuminated. The golden reflections of the Westminster Palace are dancing with the dark Thames. The London Eye, deep purple, on the left is turning slowly with tourists - maybe a man is proposing to a woman! But this is no sightseeing tour. There is Gordon , the dad, making urgent calls to Isabelle and Liesl, in Germany and South Africa, sad to tell them of their brother's lastest devastating news. Siblings' broken hearts.... Michael is phoning his friends and I am taking a few photos. The whole upper deck belongs to Gordon and I and Michael and to our rippling shock and deep, deep pain. In retrospect this was a strange thing. Just us, in the empty upper bus, been taken past world-class illuminated tourist icons, scared. How many times have we not dashed up the bus steps in years past – laughing – hoping to find a seat right in the front – full of the thrill of a world city! Not tonight. Tonight we wonder what it means for our son to face death. Is it to let go of the future?
Michael’s friend is waiting at the Waterloo pub on the other side of the Thames. While dad and son order something to eat and drink, we share the shattering news and weep together.
