Thanks to Wee-sis, she and I finally made it to Islay together for the first time since we left the island in 1961. My last visit to the island where we were born was over twenty years ago although Wee-sis has been going more recently.
I spent the weeks before we went terrified I wouldn’t be able to go because cancer cells would suddenly multiply or my throat would stop working or something. In fact the worst that happened was a filling coming out (M&S salted caramel Florentines – delicious but not recommended if you have dodgy fillings). I was able to get an appointment to have a temporary filling put in.
The after our return I had an appointment to meet with the oncologist and tried, mostly successfully, to put it out of my mind and not dwell too much on the decision I knew I had to make sooner rather than later. I’ll do an update on that meeting in my next post.
It was a magical week packed full of memories. It was a week of connections old and new, of friendship, laughter, good food (pizzas by the sea, Indian curries, home cooking and posh restaurant) and drink. We were taken on a mystery tour and picnic (the most amazing potato curry and puris) one day; on another we visited the Singing Sands. We didn’t get to visit all the beaches I remember from my childhood but we managed a few and we watched seals watching us and saw thousands of Barnacle geese.
If you can zoom in on this pic the grey dots are not stones but geese!
The dentist on the island has bought the house Wee-sis and I were born in. He and his wife invited us to see it. Wee-sis doesn’t remember it (she was only three when we left) but I could still recognise the layout of the house – the front hall (which seemed so much smaller than in my memory), the curved staircase, my bedroom, Dad’s office …
In the round church in Bowmore, where we were christened, we found our names on the Cradle Rolls on display.
Cradle Rolls in Kilarrow Parish Church, Bowmore, IslayInterior of the church known as ‘The Round Church’.The main central pillar of the church is of timber. The Order of the British Empire awarded to the Rev Donald Caskie, born in Bowmore. He was minister of the Scots Kirk in Paris when the Germans invaded in 1940 and stayed to help British Civilians escape. He later helped British and Allied service personnel escape (for which he received the OBE) until he was captured by the Gestapo. A German padre saved him from being executed. His autobiography (1951) is called The Tartan Pimpernel. He died in 1983 and is buried in the church cemetery.
And I found the name of my best childhood friend, born two days before me.
Friends reunited after 60 years
She and I were the first babies the new doctor on the island delivered. She and her family left Islay some years after we did but she has relatives still living on the island and visits regularly. We managed to meet for the first time in sixty years. We would need days, probably months, to catch up properly on our respective histories.
Pizza by the sea night – cooked in a pizza oven in a garden overlooking Loch IndaalCows because why not?The Singing SandsThey have a lot in common – sheep and geese. Carraig Fhada Lighthouse, near The Singing Sands
It was a wonderful trip but exhausting. Towards the end I was definitely flagging and had to turn down an invitation to a girls’ night party, which I’d been looking forward. However, my energy levels had dipped too low. I also dropped out of a walk with Wee-sis and her dog because I was concerned I might not manage the return part. I cried as I made my way back to the car, hoping anyone seeing me would think it was the wind bringing tears to my eyes.
It was an emotional week with a feeling of a circle being completed and a final farewell made.
Kildalton Cross, one of the finest. most complete Early Christian crosses in Scotland.
Saturday, 31 July: I’ve not yet quite got into the swing of regular blogging after my break and was shocked to find over a week had gone since I last posted.
On Wednesday, 20 July I had the ultrasound on the lump on my neck, which turned out to be three small lymph nodes, suspicious enough in appearance for the doctor to decide to do a biopsy. He said in the lab they will be looking to see if the cells are cancerous or not. If there are cancerous cells he thinks the oncologist will want to look at treatment options.
I’m not sure when I’ll hear the result and I so hate the waiting. Since the tumour in my lung was discovered last July, there have been endless periods of waiting – during which my imagination runs riot, scaring myself stupid with ‘what ifs’. Funny they never include a ‘what if, there’s a totally innocuous reason for the dodgy lymph nodes and all’s well! No, it’s what if the cancer is back, what of it has spread to …. (name every organ in the body) or …?
In the meantime, since Saturday, 16 July I’ve had a painful right calf. I initially assumed I’d pulled a muscle but not only did the pain become more painful, the leg began to feel hot. When, on Wednesday night, I asked the DH if one leg looked bigger than the other he insisted on taking me to A&E. Two hours later, the doctor said someone would call me next morning to come in for an ultrasound on my leg for a suspected deep vein thrombosis (DVT).
The ultrasound was done on Friday (all the slots for the next day had already been taken by the time the A&E doctor put through the request – it was about 2am by then) and the DVT was confirmed. By this time my right ankle had vanished into the general puffiness, my shin was hot with skin so red and shiny it looked like it might just burst open and it was painful.
As the ultrasound request came from A&E it was to there the report was to be sent and I guided back to A&E. Things became slightly bizarre then. First, I was surprised to be called into the triage nurse’s room where she asked me what had brought me to A&E this morning. I explained I’d just had an ultrasound which confirmed a DVT and the report – I pointed to the computer – should according to the radiologist, be there and I was to see a doctor. The nurse maintained she’d never heard of such a system and sent me out to wait.
Bandit the cat inspecting the dead patch of lawn!Deciding dead lawns are too exhausting to think about!
It wasn’t long before I was called by a doctor, who must have received the report, and who showed me to a bay. He excused himself, saying he’d back in two minutes. A nurse came in and asked if I’d mind moving to a different bay. As she started to push the bed out the door ‘my’ doctor returned to ask where she was going with his patient. “Two bays down,” she replied, “as it will be easier to carry out her eye procedure there.”
This year the DH managed to prevent the delphiniums snapping off in the wind.
Luckily, the confusion was soon sorted out (and it soon would have been anyway the moment someone tried to get anywhere near my eyes!) and after an examination I was prescribed Dalteparin injections. The doctor said a nurse would come to administer the first one and teach me how to do it. Sometime later, saying the nurse was ‘too busy’, he returned to give me the injection (can’t say it constituted a teaching session). The prescription pad was finished and he said he didn’t know how long I’d have to wait until a new one appeared but I could leave if I wanted, with three injections, and call my GP practice to ask for more. I said I’d leave.
My GP was able to write up a prescription for more injections so I’m now stocked up for a few weeks – though I still need to be shown properly how to administer the jags myself. The DH, fortunately, is very competent but if I want to go away by myself I need to learn.
On Monday, 26 July I was taken aback when my oncologist phoned me. It’s only the second time she’s ever called. The biopsy report hasn’t come through, of course, but she’d been informed about the lump and the biopsy and the DVT. She is arranging for me to have a CT scan as soon as possible so she can see exactly what’s going on. And so, I wait.
I hope by this time next week I’ll have news of results.
Wednesday, March 03: My appointment with the oncologist was on Monday morning. I felt bad when the receptionist asked if I was coughing or had any other signs of Covid but I wasn’t going to miss the chance of seeing the oncologist so I shook my head.
When I mentioned it to the oncologist, she said they’d do a Covid test just to be sure. I agreed as long as someone carried it out as I know there is no way on earth I could shove an extra-long cotton bud down my throat to meet my tonsils, nor up my nose towards my brain. The specialist nurse said he’d do it. I did wonder if that might be the end of our barely-begun relationship. It was good to meet the person who has so far been a voice on the phone – can’t really say what he looks like because as we (I) were running late this morning, I left the house without my glasses so couldn’t see very much.
My list of questions wasn’t really very long: Is the breathlessness and the cough symptoms of a side effuck such as pneumonitis? If so, what’s the treatment, how long will I have it and what’s the prognosis?
As it was too early to have the scan done, I’d assumed this consultation would be a bit of a formality. Oh, no. The consultant did a thorough examination, including a fair bit of prodding at my neck. My blood pressure was very high and though she did say it was possibly because of seeing her, I should check it over the next few days. Oxygen levels were 100% so then she had me marching me up and down the corridor with her to check the levels of breathlessness and pulse rate.
It was as we were about to go back into the consultation room, she asked me about my friend, Sue – floodgates opened. She was apologetic about the timing of her question but as she said, when I’d stemmed the flow of tears, “There are no words.” Probably the best things she could say.
I explained we were going to meet with a mutual friend, Barb from Arran but currently locked down in Florence, on Zoom that afternoon, so she sent me off to get an X ray done immediately as sometimes there can be a wait and she wanted me to be on time. The specialist nurse did the Covid test (almost painless), and I had an armful of bloods taken.
The oncologist thought she might have felt a swollen lymph node in my neck – but couldn’t say for sure if it was that or if it was inflammation from the radiation. As she doesn’t like not being sure, she has decided bring forward the scan to see what’s going on.
Yesterday, the Covid test came back negative so I asked the specialist nurse what else could be causing the breathlessness and the cough if it’s not Covid and not pneumonitis. Is it, in fact, the tumour tweaking its tail? Is it growing instead of shrinking? Blocking my airways as it did before chemotherapy reduced it? He said there was a possibility of scarring of the lung tissue. That would be permanent. I’d always be breathless.
Today, specialist nurse said the bloods were all good apart from raised C-reactive protein (CRP) and would I mind arranging a urine test. That’s gone off for testing. I do think they should give you the label to attach to the sample container after it has been filled – and dried. Just a thought.
I’m a bit more worried than I was first thing on Monday morning before the consultation. It seems to have been such a medical-focussed couple of days and it seems a lot more things could be not going quite right.
As for the fatigue – “rest, don’t try to do too much” – so the contents of the larder will remain all over the kitchen worktops for now. And she thinks a two-mile walk is a bit ambitious. Better to do shorter walks and not get so tired. Oh, and on top of all that, I’ve been summoned for a mammogram!
I thought I’d provide some random snapshots from my second tour of the clinics in Afghanistan, in particular some of the problems we faced while travelling. We left on May 01, 1990 in two vehicles. I was in the Mobile Team vehicle along with Dr Epco, a doctor from Holland who was going to spend several months in the clinic in Lal, Jon and Jawad, the driver from Hussain’s clinic. In the other vehicle, Moosa from the field hospital in Jaghoray was returning after finding an organisation willing to sponsor the hospital.
We’d only reached the border town of Badani when we had to hire a replacement jeep and driver because without four wheel drive, the journey would be impossible. Delays waiting for a new driver – who came highly recommended because as a former highway robbery he could guarantee our safety – coupled with a series of punctures and a leaking water tank meant it took almost four days to reach the Mazar Bibi clinic. The hole in the water tank was temporarily but effectively fixed by melting a plastic water jug to use as a sealer. When darkness fell the first night we discovered the second driver had no lights on his vehicle. In the bazaar of Shahjoi, there was no room in any of the hotels – the driver went home, Moosa slept in one jeep, Jawad and I in the other and the rest of the group under a tree. Around 2 am I was awakened by a persistent tapping on the window – two armed mujahideen were demanding car park fees. Jawad paid them and we went back to sleep.
Although travelling could be wearisome the constantly changing landscape makes up for it – from flat, scrub covered desert to rugged mountains to white rockscapes wind-carved into fantastic shapes. Large tortoises, recently awakened from hibernation lumbered across the road – ponderous but determined. The weather was glorious making memories of last year’s battles in the snow fade.
The snow, however, hadn’t finished causing problems for us – or, rather snow-melt, which had turned tiny trickling streams into raging torrents. The road to Malestan was closed so we had to go over the high pass on foot, helped by donkeys, one to carry our belongings and one for us to take turns to ride.
On the return journey, as we went through a village, Epco was riding the donkey. It suddenly put on a great burst of speed and galloped directly into a house. Epco is over six feet tall, extremely thin and at that moment, totally without control of his donkey, lacked any trace of the dignity expected from a foreign doctor.
From Mazar Bibi we headed off, north to Lal-sar-Jangal. In Naoor, where we had to spend a night sleeping outside it was still freezing, despite being the middle of May. We heard conflicting reports about the road conditions, with some people feeling we wouldn’t be able to cross the swollen rivers. We decided to try. At the first river, running high and fast, Jon waded through first to check the depth and solidity of the bottom, decided it was doable and we did it.
This checking the depth was something we all had to take turns to do. The water was freezing. One of my flip flops floated away, watched by a gang of kids who did nothing to rescue it. I threw its partner out the window later.
On one occasion, the road seemed to be quite good – until the first river crossing where it was obvious we couldn’t go through. Back in the bazaar Jon negotiated the hire of a truck on which to load our vehicle. This created great entertainment value for the local people but it worked and we were able to carry on.
In Bonshai (not sure of spelling) even the trucks couldn’t ford the river. Everything coming from the south had to be unloaded – wheat, rice, sugar – and carried across a narrow, ramshackle bridge to the waiting trucks on the other side. Jon measured the bridge, decided there were about four inches on either side of the vehicle and charge across before anyone tried to stop him.
It took seven days to reach Lal and just before we arrived at the clinic, we got stuck in mud. Qurban and Ibrahim came charging down on horseback like a miniature cavalry and lots of people turned out to help. They attached ropes to the front of the vehicle and hauled it out of the mud. We still had the river to ford and a line of men formed up in the water to mark the way for Jon to drive through. The final obstacle was a steep climb up the bank on the far side and again, the ropes were attached, the tug-of-war teams took their places and with much revving of the engine and churning mud and pulling on ropes we were safely up the bank.
The last few yards drive had something of a triumphal entry as everyone jammed into the vehicle or hung onto the sides as we drove – very slowly – to the clinic.
Afghanistan, December 1989: Bamiyan, Sheikh Ali & onwards to Wardak Province
We’d enjoyed our day of playing tourists with very hospitable and friendly mujahideen
We returned to the French clinic to find Ghulam Ali, huddled under his patou, looking more miserable than usual. The room we’d been allocated was like a fridge, the promised stove had not materialised. Ghulam Ali was bored and cold and thoroughly fed up. Jon went off in search of someone to help, and soon a bukhari was installed and we huddled in a circle around it drinking tea, waiting for the temperature to rise.
Shortly after seven o’clock the cook appeared to inform us dinner was ready and, indicating Jon and me, told us to go to the house. I pointed to our fellow travellers and asked, ‘What about them?’ The cook explained food would be brought to the room for the Rahimy, Zahir and Ghulam Ali, but Jon and I were expected to eat with the kharijee – foreigners.
He trotted out. Minutes later he returned and said, this time, in English, ‘Dinner is ready. You go to house.’
I shook my head, ‘No, we all eat together, here.’
The great Buddha of Bamiyan
Looking ruffled, he departed and we sat in an uncomfortable silence. I didn’t know what the other three were thinking about their exclusion from the invitation. Rahimy broke the silence to say, ‘If you want to eat in the house, it’s all right. We don’t mind.’ His hurt expression belied his words.
Before I could reply, the cook shuffled in bearing a tray with three plates of food. Setting it down, he was about to leave, when I remarked, ‘We are five people – there are only three dishes here.’
‘Your dinner is in the house with the foreigners. They have meat.’ He was sounding agitated by our steadfast refusal to go to the house, unsure if we simply did not understand his English, or were being deliberately obstructive. I sat down and began to eat from one of the dishes and the cook went out, slamming the door. He soon returned, with another two dishes, which he dumped unceremoniously on the floor before, shaking his head at the crazy behaviour of foreigners, he departed. We had no meat on our plates.
No Afghan host would invite people to stay the night, and then expect to eat with only a chosen few. I tried to apologise, explaining that in some organisations the expatriates and the local people tended to live separately, but Rahimy’s only comment was, ‘Foreigners are not all the same then, are they?’ I agreed this was true.
By this time Zahir was gasping and wheezing. At first, we were afraid he was having an asthma attack but he shook his head at our concern. Finding the ridiculous situation quite farcical he was giggling helplessly. Once reassured the dreadful sound was laughter, the tension in the room eased instantly and soon we were all laughing together.
Later, the foreign doctor appeared. ‘We wondered if you would like to join us for a drink?’ His eyes slid over the Afghans, coming to rest on Jon. The invitation was, once again, only for us. I indicated our friends.
The doctor shrugged, ‘You can leave them on their own for an hour, can’t you? We don’t let our Afghans use the house.’ We explained we travelled together as a team, sharing everything, and, even before the doctor had left the room, Zahir, deciding the peculiar hospitality of foreigners was too funny for words, dissolved once more into giggles.
Next morning, Rahimy went to beg, buy or steal fodder for the sheep and leaving Ghulam Ali with the doctors, who were happy to operate on his toe, if not to allow him in their home we departed for Sheikh Ali. We made it in three hours.
We climbed up the steep path to the house, the sheep bounding ahead, none the worse for its journey. Hassan and Zohra were in the midst of preparations to go on leave; their first holiday for three years. The sheep, while a welcome gift, had to be rehomed until their return. Zohra and I had little time to talk but I asked about baby Sadiq, whose life had still hung so much in the balance when I last saw him. ‘Oh, he grew. He’s at home now, and his twin brother also survived. Even the grandmother finally began to accept my strange ways were sometimes right.’
We said our goodbyes in the evening as the family were leaving at four am. My cold which had started in Bamiyan was much worse so I was grateful our departure would be at the more civilized time of eight. I crawled into my sleeping bag feeling utterly wretched, awaking in the night, feverish, my head and face gripped in a band of excruciating pain. Jon dosed me with painkillers which allowed me to doze again but I slept fitfully and in the morning was no better. Jon, diagnosing a sinus infection, gave me antibiotics and postponed our departure. I spent the day swaddled in my sleeping bag, obediently swallowing medicines and innumerable cups of tea, feeling much too ill to enjoy the luxury of a day in bed.
Next morning, although my sinuses were still painful and my teeth and jaws ached – even my hair hurt – I decided I was fit to travel. After breakfast we set off for Arif’s clinic in Day Mirdad in Wardak Province, expecting to arrive by late afternoon.
The sky was grey and heavy with snow as we began climbing the pass leading out of the valley. We were soon driving through a snowy landscape, and progress became ever slower as we carefully followed in the tracks of the trucks, which had preceded us. Near the summit, we caught up with the tail of the convoy, inching its way upwards on the treacherous road.
The snow had come sooner than expected, catching the drivers unprepared. They had not yet fitted the huge, heavy chains which allow them to grip the road in snow and ice and several trucks had already stuck fast in the snow and mud.
Jon and Rahimy went to provide some extra muscle power to dig out the trucks. I persuaded Zahir to stay with me in the jeep, afraid the bitterly cold air might start off his asthma, and thankful women were not expected to shovel snow.
We gazed out at a forlorn and mournful landscape in which, apart from ourselves, there was no sign of life.
The first week of November was almost over. It had become extremely cold. The sun, though still shining brightly in a deep blue sky, barely thawed the iced puddles in the compound, before they again froze hard. My daily activities were interspersed by increasingly frequent trips to the latrine – some hundred metres from the compound – as I tried to combat the cold with copious quantities of hot tea. Once I heard Qurban call to me through the dividing wall between the two loos, ‘Would you like your desk and chair brought out here? It would save you an awful lot of walking.’
Escorting the bride to her new home.
The bride is stopped at a barrier until a ‘toll’ is paid.
I’d finished the stock taking and was now spending most mornings working on reports, and in the afternoons I taught English to Qurban’s young brother, Bashir, and Khadeem, the cook’s assistant. Khadeem had leprosy, fortunately discovered in the early stages so he would have no deformities and would soon finish his treatment. His family were poor; his father a landless labourer. Qurban, rather than provide hand-outs from the social budget, had employed Khadeem to work part time in the kitchen. His salary, though small, helped his family survive and Qurban had also enrolled him in the local school.
Both boys were enthusiastic students but Bashir was brighter and quicker to learn. Khadeem, although he tried very hard, could never quite catch up, and sometimes Bashir teased him over his mistakes. After a while a third student surreptitiously joined us, sitting hidden in a corner, listening intently.
Zahir, a leprosy patient, not yet sixteen years old, had many deformities. Not only had he lost his eyebrows, his nose was completely destroyed; only two holes appeared in the middle of his face. His mouth was contorted, and a hole in his palate created a speech defect which made understanding what he said difficult. He always wore a turban, its end pulled tightly across his face to hide his nose and mouth. When eating, he sat as far away from others as possible and, if strangers were present, he didn’t eat at all. His hands and feet were also deformed, the fingers and toes foreshortened. He was staying in the clinic until Jon arrived then we would him with us to Pakistan for reconstructive surgery.
Zahir, keeping his face covered, en route for Pakistan and reconstructive surgery
Finally he plucked up the courage to ask if I would give him lessons. After Bashir and Khadeem’s class was over I spent another half hour with Zahir, who proved to be a willing pupil and quick learner. He had already absorbed words and phrases through listening to the boys, and before long had almost caught up with Khadeem.
In the evenings, after dinner and lessons were over, we often played cards. This helped to round out my vocabulary, which still leaned heavily towards things medical, though not my card playing skills. I frequently felt moved to apologise profusely to whoever had been unlucky enough to partner me. The problem was caused only partly by my ineptitude. The biggest problem lay in my inability to cheat. The others, Aziz and Ibrahim in particular, gave the most obvious signals to each other, indicating which suit to play, or that they had just played their last trump card. Even when I had learned the various signals – the slamming down with force of a card, the eyebrow scratching and ear tugging – I was quite unable to put them into practise myself, to the utter despair of my partner.
As the weather became ever colder, a heater was installed in my tiny room, reducing even further what little space there had been. The mice, I am sure were as grateful as I, for the warmth. The stove was a frightening contraption with a metal box, divided into two compartments. A tap opened to allow kerosene to drip from the tank to the second box and, to get it going I had to throw a lit match inside to ignite the fuel. Often the match fizzled out before anything happened and the temptation to peer inside before trying again was strong, until Ibrahim warned me people had been severely burned doing the same thing when the kerosene suddenly ignited with a whoosh of flames. By bedtime the room was beautifully warm but, apart from removing my socks I slept fully clothed, thermal underwear included, because within minutes of turning off the heater, a bitter chill invaded the room.
General scenery
I began to worry about the snow arriving before Jon did, leaving me stranded in Lal for the winter. I didn’t think I could cope for long with the temperatures. Besides, I was running out of toilet paper, a commodity not stocked in the bazaar. Jon was already several days late and once the snow came I would be well and truly stuck. Ibrahim, Rahimy and the others were quite pleased with this thought, planning all kinds of teaching programmes, convinced they would be speaking fluent English by spring time. They seemed hurt by my lack of enthusiasm about the prospect of five, snowbound months in the clinic.
Every night, I’d retire to my room with only the mice for company trying to feel positive and hopeful. Maybe tomorrow, Jon would arrive? Hope isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially when it isn’t realised and I’d be disappointed all over again at Jon’s non-arrival by the following afternoon.
I calculated by which date I must leave if I was to reach Bamiyan and find transport south to Jaghoray. If I did not meet Jon en route at least Hussain in Jaghoray would be able to find a way for me to get back to Pakistan. Rahimy was to go to Karachi for a training course so he could accompany me – Ibrahim also offered to come as a guide, as did Aziz. Qurban was horrified to discover half his team was preparing to leave in a week or so, especially as he knew they would be unlikely to return before late spring. I promised I would only take Rahimy.
Blue skies and mountains – landscape to fall in love with
Mary Smith's Place 