I was in Montreal at the
time. I was staying at the Ritz Carlton and I had some time between meetings.
It was about 6:00 p.m. UK time when I phoned Liz to see how she was. She didn’t answer. I let it
ring because I knew she rarely went out in the evening. Finally she picked up.
She sounded sleepy, and I apologised, thinking I had woken her from a nap.
In a slow and slurred
voice, she said: “I think I’ve just had one of those things.”
I knew what she meant. She had
had a seizure. “Darling,” I said. “Put the phone down and go and lie down. I’ll
call Kristen. Do it now, sweetheart. I’ll wait till you hang up.”
She didn’t hang up.
“Hang up, sweetheart,” I
urged. “Then I can call Kristen.”
“Yes,” she said. Still she
didn’t hang up.
“Liz, put the phone down, Put
it down, sweetheart. Then I can call Kristen.”
After what seemed an age,
she put the phone down.
I took the next plane home.
There were two tumours this
time. MRI scans revealed that they had grown at the extremities of the tumour they
had removed in Orlando. They were removed at Southampton General Hospital three
weeks later. As before, the family was there for her.
I managed to get us a
meeting with the head of the surgical team while Liz was in the recovery room.
He was a Nigerian in his early to mid-fifties: a consultant, which meant we
were to call him Mister. He was a nice man; kindly and approachable, and he
answered every question we threw at him. When I told him that the American
surgeons had said that Liz shouldn’t have any more problems, he said: “I’m
afraid your wife is one of the unfortunate ten percent who have the kind of
tumour, that – while benign – can grow again in different places within the
skull. This kind of cancer …”
His use of the C-word
brought a collective gasp from the family. None of us had ever thought of the
most important person in our lives as having cancer.
“Are you saying my mother
has cancer?” my son Greg asked.
“Not cancer as we tend to
think of the word,” the Nigerian replied. “And certainly not the type that will
spread through her body, but it is a form of cancer. Her tumours have so far
been lying on the meninges, but I have to warn you that it is not beyond the
bounds of possibility that further tumours will grow, and that they might
ultimately invade the brain itself.”
From the moment Liz opened
her mouth to speak I knew things would never be the same again, because her
speech was gobbledegook. She could get words out, but they were the wrong words
and they were in the wrong order. She made no sense whatsoever.
Ron understood when I said
I was going to have to pack it all in and stay home and look after Liz, and he told me he would make sure I got all the money due to me. He wished Liz and I
luck.
I let my secretary go and
gave notice on my office. Then I settled down with Liz to await whatever life
threw at us next.
Extract from my book WILL YOU TELL HER, OR SHALL I? A true story. My story. The story of how I lived with the ten-year terminal illness of my wife. Available on www.booksthepublishersmissed.com
Twitter: Maximillian19
FB facebook.com/Booksthepublishersmissedcomn
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