Personal medical update from Mike M Dear friends, Yesterday evening I returned home from a week-long spell in the Royal London Hospital where last Monday (it now feels ages ago) I underwent a seven-hour long surgery on my lower spine. Have to admit this experience proved just as grinding and demanding as it sounds, but the good news is that Ive survived and should draw tangible benefit from it. What had happened was that the revlimid therapy which I had been taking for more than year – and whose exorbitant expense I had written about - became ineffective, and as a result the myeloma lesion on my spine became active and angry. The pain running up and down the left side was completely doing me in and I was losing the use of my legs. Although there were various risks and difficulties involved with the surgery, it did at least offer the possibility of getting to another period of relative stability and mobility and was therefore worth the effort. For whatever reasons I didnt feel like posting about the surgery before it happened. But now Im through it and on to the other side and in better shape than I might have been, I did want to share the news. As best I can ascertain, what the surgeons did was to cut into my lower back to excise most of the lesion (a tumorous mass protruding from the spinal marrow, which is the site of myeloma activity), thereby freeing the major never from painful impediment. At the same time they did some restorative work on the weakened vertebra, shoring things up with titanium screws, etc. Although the whole area is now sore in the extreme, that devilish left-side stabbing pain which was driving me over the edge has gone. Thats a big relief in itself. I now have at least the prospect of a future where I can live, write, contribute, enjoy. How long that might last no one knows. Prognosis-wise, Ive long since sailed off the myeloma charts. Thats an awkward reality that poses tricky questions of perspective and priority, but todays not the day for dealing with any of those. Todays for watching the Test match in combination with a hefty dose of prescribed pain relief. The cocktail of cricket and oxycodone should do very nicely for the time being. Friends will not be surprised to find me using this whole experience, trying as its been, as another occasion to praise the NHS and the lost gods of British social democracy. For readers in the US, India and elsewhere, let me explain that Ive just received entirely free of charge and without so much as an invoice, claim form or bill, a weeks comprehensive hospital treatment, including all food, a mountain of medications, specialist services from nurses, pharmacists, doctors, occupational and physical therapists, pain consultants, 24-hour High Dependency Unit special bed, not to mention the surgery itself and the variety of staff involved in that complex exercise. And all I was ever asked to do was sign a consent form for the surgery acknowledging the usual risks. At least as far as I as an individual patient am concerned, this treatment took place entirely outside the allegedly inescapable cash nexus, without any reference to the market imperatives that govern most of our lives. To receive it, I was not required to dance the capitalist dance, merely to be a human in need. And it turns out society was perfectly able to afford me this right without falling apart. Sometimes what seems utopian is really just within our reach, a simple practicality, if only were prepared to grasp it. Meanwhile, strapped to the bed or managing my ginger steps around the house, Ive been acutely aware of the continuing horror in Gaza and across Palestine, feeling the same impotent rage felt by so many, re-enforced by the fact that I wasnt able to get to any of the demonstrations against this latest barbaric explosion of Israeli racism. Thanks to all of you who did go on the demos, in London, the US, South Africa, Paris or wherever. You were out there for me along with others physically unable to join in. Mike Marqusee July 28 2014
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 11:37:39 +0000
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