POLLY’S PYJAMAS… Part III.

I’ve just got back to the car park, Waitrose supermarket, thank God just a short walk (or hobble and roll in my case) from the surgery. I open the car door and thankfully flop sideways onto the drivers’ seat, there I get my breath for a few seconds before commencing the task of lifting each leg into the foot-well using my hands. I have to do it this way as my leg muscles don’t want to suffer the pain and discomfort of lifting themselves; my arms reluctantly obey, silently enduring their own distress.

Shut the door, I’m in and ready for home, but I rest easy for a while; I just need to gather my thoughts a minute, run through this in my head, try to make some sense of it all.

A few months back all seemed well, at least on the health front. True, I was still carrying the burden of grief for my late wife, but I had at least come to accept that it was always going to be with me no matter what and that my life was meant to go forwards regardless.

Elaine has gone and she is not coming back-fact! But I can’t be sure that fact has fully sunk into me or indeed if it ever actually will. There is something within that will always deny and resist it I know that, but time and life are thankfully bringing to a close my everyday grieving, it has to stop or it will corrode away at the new things in my world. But the overall grief of such a loss will always be there; it was born directly into my life and can only die with me.

Elaine didn’t want to be forgotten, and she also wanted me to be happy. I reckon she knew me well enough to know that I would never forget her but I also know that she would have worried that her death would leave me in such a depth of despair that I wouldn’t be able to get out of it. That I would allow myself to be dragged deeper and deeper into a well of misery and grief and die of a broken heart, if not by more direct action.

The thought would have appalled her.

She would have seen it as her fault; that if it wasn’t for ‘her’ cancer being the cause of such torture, I would have been able to live my life in greater happiness. I honestly believe that she loved me so deeply that, if given the choice, she would have seriously considered changing fate so as we never met and I would have the chance to meet and love someone else and live a ‘normal’ family life.

Well Fuck That Darling!!

I wouldn’t change a damn thing. To lose one second of us would be a loss beyond words, and though how I have felt inside and struggled to stay afloat these last few years since she died, I know she was worth it all, and more. I would change nothing, and implore her not to either. I cannot imagine how in any way I could have known greater, or equal, happiness alongside someone else.   

We were two sides to the same coin, supporting each other in all that the tides of life washed up against us and also enjoying the sunshine moments when the calm set in. Constantly there for each other we both eventually came to understand that it was going to be this way, for us, to the very end.

Our adventures at work or play may have been tame to many peoples understanding, but they were ours, lived and enjoyed or endured together, and it’s that last word that counts the most-together.

But where does all this leave me now sat here with sodding Polly’s Pyjamas to contend with? How, or perhaps why, have I ended up like a latter day Long John Silver with fucking Polly sat on my shoulder for at least the next couple of years or so?

When Marilyn and I looked-up Polymyalgia two nights ago and came across the list of likely causes, prolonged periods of stress (often due to bereavement) jumped out at us. When the doctor mentioned it again this afternoon as a possible factor I said I knew where I would place my money, the look on his face told me his stake would lie there too.

Elaine would hate that this has happened to me. She would see it as a direct evolvement of her illness and her fault again. Almost as if the hated cancer had not fully died but had dived into the dressing-up box, bided its time, and was now striking out from the grave, her grave, seeking to bring me down in a new guise.

I’m not sure that an illness can reason like that, but maybe fate can, or at least one possible fate out of many; possible if it’s allowed to that is.

And now have I been the one who has allowed it that chance?

It’s dawning on me that I have been living in a world dominated by stress for a long time now, but before I’ve never been forced to face-up to the fact.

My time with Elaine became fully loaded with the stress factor. The constant worry of cancer being present or retuning. The 24/7 struggle to try and prevent it doing so, and the fight to crush it once more if/when it did; just for the whole bloody cycle to repeat itself again and again.

I don’t think either Elaine, or myself, fully understood just what a strain this put on us. Not on us as a couple you understand, because as I said above we always supported each other, but as individuals I think we never did actually appreciate the toll it all took at the time; and since she died it has eaten away at me still and become a sort of creeping silent partner that has grown within and has now found a physical presence of its own-Polly!

I suppose it has to break-out somehow. If the mind and spirit refuse to go under then perhaps the strain on the body becomes so great that stress takes the form of physical symptoms morphing into a new condition of its own making.

I’m only guessing here but the idea seems to hold more than a drop of water to me.

Well over a decade ago now when Elaine was undergoing double chemo’ treatment with some really powerful drugs, she had also to take steroids to reduce the inflammation being caused. This combination produced a ‘Perfect Storm’ within her. The steroids amplified the anxiety she was struggling with to a huge extent and she underwent panic attacks and stress levels right off the scale.

I suffered too. Watching the one you love fighting to control a living hell every day and genuinely fearing for their sanity, with so little you can do to ease it, made me a knotted ball of tension, that only alcohol knew how to relieve.

I drank quite heavily in the evenings and at night time after Elaine had gone to bed, which was always early. I couldn’t concentrate on reading (which I love) so sat glass or bottle in hand staring unseeingly at the TV and glancing at the ceiling, knowing my wife was lying just above battling demons that I could only imagine, whilst trying to attain the holy grail of sleep.

Many months later when she thankfully was near recovered that stress within me manifested physically as dreadful stomach cramps, acid reflux and diarrhoea on a daily basis. After many tests and several cameras down the throat, it was attributed to the somewhat vague condition of IBS.

I had to keep a food diary for two years and be careful as to what I ate as so many things triggered it off-strangely alcohol was one thing which had a calming effect! It eventually subsided down but even today there are foods which I dare not risk if you get my meaning.

I came to understand that it was most likely due to the stress proclaiming itself in a physical form after being held within for so long, after all, I could not be ill when I had to be as strong as possible whilst she need me to be, but when that need eased…..

It looks to me as I sit here now, that Polly is born of the same mould as that IBS was.

Elaine’s death has been bad enough to contend with, I knew it would be, but never could have guessed at the scale of that contention. Nor could I have guessed at just how difficult it was going to be to carry-on living without her.

Likewise, up until now, I haven’t given any thought to the stress this has all put me under. I suppose I should have seen this bastard coming down the line but somehow I think admitting to stress is seen as admitting to a form of avoidable weakness that is to be dismissed as not a real condition; I think now I have confirmation that it is.

Well its’ showed itself at last and now hopefully I have the ammunition at hand to shoot Polly down in full flight.

 My eyes alight on the bag of drugs, my ammo, on the seat beside me. The doc’ has told me to take a half dose of the steroids right away then start the full dose (40mg) tomorrow. He’s hopeful of a quick reduction to these crippling pains that have racked me constantly for so long now and I hope to God he’s right.

I open up the bag then one of the many boxes of steroid tablets and evict four of the tiny white pills from their foil home.

There is a bottle of water in the car and I gingerly reach over for it. It’s a few days old but what the hell I can’t make myself any more ill by drinking a little of it down I’m sure of that. The reason it’s there is for me to be able to get painkillers down my throat when needed, they have been my constant companions for a long time now.

I pause a moment and think. Without those painkillers and the anti-inflammatories how the hell would I have gotten through these last weeks of misery? Though they could not dispel the torment completely they at least did manage to dull it enough for painful survival to continue.

I think harder still. How would I have gotten this far since losing Elaine, were it not for those handful of loyal friends who have been close for me in the darkest of moments, times when quite frankly I could have easily, and possibly gratefully, welcomed an end to it all. They too may not have been able to dispel my torment but they have dulled it and given me the chance to survive it and live on.

There is no pill, that I’m aware of, that can fill the void of my bereavement, only anewed life can do that.

My love for Elaine didn’t die with her, it will always exist, with me and with her wherever she is, but new love has found me now and played its part- and continues to do so- in reconstructing my life and my world.

I am beyond fortunate that Marilyn wants to be part of that world. She more than anything else has kept me afloat and being loved and having someone to love is, I recognise once more, the greatest treasure in this life.

I hope she wants to stick around after I start on these little pills, I know they can and will affect my temperament, this may not be so easy but Polly’s got to take flight and bugger-off once and for all, so here goes.

I pop the four horsemen into my mouth and follow up with a big swig of the brackish water, three go down but one bastard sticks to the roof of my mouth and starts to dissolve. A couple more swigs and it chases after its brothers leaving me a very unpleasant bitterness to contend with, not entirely due to the water.

Well it’s started, got a bit of a long road ahead I reckon, but the longest journey starts with a single step and all that, and I’m on my way now.

It’s a shorter journey home for me first, and I start the engine wondering if I’ll be lifting my legs back in tomorrow.

See you soon…..