My Broken Heart (75 Days In The NHS) by MARK BARRY. 75 Rhyming Poems (With Photos) About A Heart Attack, A Quadruple Bipass, Angina, Piles, Fruity Pots, Nurses, Doctors and Being Given A Second Chance...

MY BROKEN HEART (75 Days In The NHS)

 

75th Anniversary of the NHS (2023)

           

"I'm a Catholic Boy. Redeemed through pain and not through joy..."

The lyrics to a Jim Carroll song from 1980 ran through my head the night it struck. 

And that the front door was only a few more paces away...a few more and I'd be home.

In truth - and unlike our better halves - most men have an irrational fear of physical pain. We will do anything to avoid it. Exercise in a good case in point. We know instinctively that if we don't do the requisite amount of cycling, swimming or even walking distances on occasion (anything that isn't watching tele, surfing the net or sitting in a strategically placed stereo-imaged recliner), we will eventually inflict on ourselves a whole shitload of pain. And all of this avalanche of hurt will come to us at a time in our lives when we’re least able to cope it. We know all this. But like the dumb schmucks men are - we avoid it. 

"A stroke doctor will be here to see you soon..."

I remember two things clearly - the chill that statement instilled in me as the nurse said it (the years of Chocolate Digestives, Salt and Vinegar Crisps and Peppermint Creams was over) - and looking up at the two shuffling Ambulance men on either side of my wheelchair. They'd craftily conned me - deliberately not saying that word as they screamed through the rush hour traffic. And I also remember being sappily taken aback - cheated like a child denied an ice-cream cone on a seaside pier. You see while women can call on monthlies and childbirth as real instances of proper agony - men haven't a clue about screaming - and like to keep it that way. In fact men will avoid pain like they avoid paying taxes, responsibility or bolshy in-laws. 

 

And that's where this book of 75 poems comes in - because in many ways "My Broken Heart (75 Days In The NHS)" is about what happens to you when you avoid a little discomfort, when you shirk your health, when time simply runs out and you literally have to man up or you're going to die - inside and out. 

Because of a right-sided carotid and dissected artery complication (needed to heal) - my quadruple bypass operation had to wait 3 months from its diagnosis date (2 Nov 2012). This meant that when I entered Whipps Cross Hospital on Friday 28 November 2012 expecting the big saw on my chest plate within days - the surgeons and consultants gradually decided that I had to wait until 2 February 2013 before they’d attempt such a dangerous operation. This meant I'd be monitored and kept alive by drugs and care. 70 days of pain in the British National Health Service followed by a bypass and recovery. Nice.

I'll freely admit that I properly broke down twice - and came close to losing it completely on many other days when the closed-in spaces and the wait and the pain were becoming too much. And though it was understandable - I still wince at the thought of me becoming so creepy-needy in hospital - crying behind the Side Room door like a big girl's blouse at visiting children making too much noise. And it's true that nurses can save your sanity with a cup of tea and a biscuit on more than one occasion and are endowed with a well of kindness that seems inexhaustible and at times inexplicable.

But there were the belly laughs too, characters you meet, bonds you make, my family and friends mucking in like troopers and the extraordinary array of staff working their asses off and constantly lifting up your spirits (no praise is enough). 

On the night I left St. Barts Hospital in the City of London - 75 days after my internment - it was four below outside - absolute brass monkeys. I remember I thought my lungs would explode at all that air. And I remember sitting in our car with my lovely wife Mary Ann on that almost surreal journey - finally on our way home to see the kids - the skyline and neons of old London now so beautiful and new. Again another song leapt into my consciousness – the jubilant "In God's Country" by U2 from their magnificent "The Joshua Tree" album. 

 

"Desert sky...we need new dreams tonight..."

I remember thinking the sappy Irishman is being given a second chance.

And can I rhyme Altoids with Haemorrhoids and get away with it?

"MY BROKEN HEART (75 Days In The NHS)" by MARK BARRY - A Book Of 75 Rhyming Verses Now Available As A PAPERBACK and DOWNLOAD ON AMAZON...NHS 75th Anniversary...

MY BROKEN HEART (75 Days In The NHS)

 

75th Anniversary of the NHS (2023)

This is a direct link to the download on Amazon UK
(it can be downloaded to most PCs and devices - the Kindle software is free)

Paperback Version is £9.95

 

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00H2LZKHI

Here are the gory details... 

“My Broken Heart (75 Days In The NHS)” is a series of 75 rhyming verses (one poem for each day) accompanied by photographs of a unique experience I don’t recommend you emulate (a heart attack with a right-sided carotid artery complication).

I was 54 when it happened. Despite a serious cycling regime to and from the West End of London (over 100 miles a week) - a history of ischemic heart disease on my Mum’s side and a lifetime of cream-cakes, greasy chips and chewy snacks in cinemas on my side - had finally caught up with literally over-sized Dubliner’s ticker. Angina blocked arteries led to a stroke which required a full-on open heart quadruple bypass operation. To add serious insult to a life-threatening injury - I’d also been diagnosed with a dissected and carotid artery in early November 2012 (bulging vein on your head, neck spasms) which would take 3 months to heal. So even though I got into the British Cardiovascular repair system on 28 Nov 2012 - I had to wait until 5 February 2013 for the actual operation - 70 days of physical pain and mental torture leading up to 5 more days of post-op agony (and many more months recovering). It was doubly cruel because my Angina was continuing to deteriorate and hurt on a daily and nightly basis. So my stay in two British hospitals (Whipps Cross in East London and St. Barts in the City of London) became a marathon and something of an emotional nightmare. 

The average sinner will spend only 6 or 7 days in the Cardio Ward of a British hospital so they don’t really get any time to dwell on the brutality of what’s about to happen to them (a nurse actually told me the less knowledge you have the better). In truth I had far too much time on my hands and far too many mental demons to deal with and dissipate. Mistakes made - unfulfilled promise - putting my family under the cosh at this late stage in my life - the money problems I'd leave behind. But - and I mean this - the whole experience was also oddly cathartic - joyful even - and strangely releasing in ways. A lot of love pours down on you when your life’s in danger - people come out of the woodwork. The chatty side-stepping stops and they tell you to your face that they really do like you - and don’t die you careless stupid fucker. My dedications page (as you can imagine) is very long. 

I kept notes on a daily basis - experiencing great British characters, unintentionally witty moments, low and high points and even epiphanies. Over the duration you're subjected to MRI scans, Endo-Cardiogram checks, ECG monitors, CTI scans, cannulas in your veins, electrodes on your chest, constipation, suppositories up your bum, catheters up your willy, the decibels of non-stop monitors, squirts of liquid morphine, sprays of Glyceryl Trinitrate and an industrial-sized Barber's Shaver on your legs. And this is before the operation. 

The pictures are almost all mine and are from the real world and wards. Bryan Taylor is real (RIP) - the singing Jamaican porter - Ali the helpful orderly - the fantastic nurses and doctors - the unkillable Geordie - the opportunistic Jewish Mum - the ultra-efficient German ambulance crew who kept getting lost - church bells chiming on the hour like a beacon of hope on dreary days...all real. Long-term hospital is like this - full of frights and nut-jobs and jaunts to machines in wheelchairs and drugs and blood tests and urine and endless bug killer gel on your hands and cold toilet seats and professionalism generally saving your life. But mostly it’s about mental will - the sheer bloodymindedness you need to live - to see it through - to rejoin your family and savour that second chance sublime. 

And besides - you have to admire a man who rhymes Altoids with Haemorrhoids.

And his consistent use of the word fuck as an adjective.

All in all money well spent by the nutty British and The National Health Service on a dodgy Catholic immigrant. (The Daily Mail will be pleased).

Enjoy - I know I didn't.

AVAILABLE in PAPERBACK on AMAZON 

 

 

Here are 5 examples with their photos...

                           NURSES

Nurse Margaret places my patch in the morning

Alternating between each shoulder blade - 

Deponit 5 gives me daytime relief from Angina

Clearing out tubes not making the grade - 

Nurse Oni hauls laundry off the InvaCare Mattress   

Then swishes with a Clinell Sanitising wipe -

She then folds a flap into the end of my linen sheet 

So my feet don’t slip out or get cold at night - 

Nurse Zara administers my nightly stomach injection

It leaves a line of bruises below the waist -

But she raises a ridge of skin so the stabbing pain

Is kept to a minimum and evenly displaced - 

Nurse Morris gets me an extra blanket at ten p.m. 

Because these crittall windows let in cold -

Sister Frances visits to see if I’m mentally coping   

Leaves me leaflets so my resolve will hold -

Given cigarettes to calm his nerves in World War II

Old English Bill is a still a Hampstead gent -

Nurse Rajani helps him through a racking coughing fit

Fluffing his pillows after an exhausting vent -

Another Nurse drops off a tea and two custard creams  

To diabetic Sid whose feeling lonely and glum - 

Nurses - I watch their everyday dedication and constancy 

And am completely...and humbly...overcome...

               STUFF and NONSENSE

My generation has some God-awful clothing     

Fashion crimes we’ve used and abused -

Tucked away in our cabinets is an Afghan coat   

Sat on top of two scuffed-up Jesus shoes -

We scatter talcum Powder in battered slippers 

Keeping the pong of stinky feet at bay - 

We wear body-length robes in fetching colours  

Pocket those bugger-filled tissues away -

Richard huffs at the plot of “The Da Vinci Code” 

Edward constantly twirls his wedding ring -

Raj looks at photos of his children on his mobile  

And smiles when their ring-tones ping -

John’s got his Dickens and William Wordsworth 

Likes his writers to be British old-school -

Charles is obsessed with politics in the newspapers 

Whacks the photo of another Liberal fool -

We blitz our cabinets with love and home-thoughts 

Position family photos and get-well cards - 

Some have an iPhone, an iPod and mini headphones 

The whole techno nine and a half yards -

Jonathan has sent me a box of pliable earwax squares 

An Olympus Voice Recorder from Mary Ann -

Cathy has sent me an Irish author’s new book to read

And there’s spiral jotters from my sister Fran -

People come pouring out of the human woodwork

When your dicky heart’s in genuine danger -

I carry their talismans around with me for good luck

They’re my Tonto and I’m The Lone Ranger - 

It’s amazing how dependent on objects you become  

Defined by old habits and nonsensical stuff - 

But when your very life hangs in the medical balance 

No amount of love's ammunition is ever enough...

  DENNIS THE MENACE and GNASHER

There’s a beaming Polish Gent in Bed Number 12

Chipper as a breakfast platter full of kippers -
Each day he cartwheels left and slips gingerly into   

His Dennis The Menace & Gnasher slippers - 

“I’ve not had a bowel movement since Wednesday!”

He announces to all with odd European glee -

Then proceeds to flick through snaps on his Nokia   

Of his equally cute/contented posse of three - 

But his face truly explodes when his wife comes in  

And they proper giggle like two newly weds - 

Dangling his upbeat pair of personalised footwear

As they chinwag by the raised hospital beds -

Happily his lab-tests prove he’ll get away with stents 

And won’t need the wiry sawed-open chest -

I watch him hug his proud-as-punch wife and children  

Come visiting Daddy in their Sunday best...

                         REMINDERS

There's a picture of our Dino with lovely Georgia

A special-needs girl who is now his friend -
He’s in a tailored-suit and she’s in a prom-dress
Eating cake on the grass at evening’s end -

It’s a thrill to think that each has found a love
A buddy to see them through this life -
And even though they’re so naive and vulnerable
They can share their confusion and strife -  

You see our first-born is hand-flapping Autistic
He’s twenty-two but a child in his mind -
So any self-expression is proper gold dust for us
Pages, drawings and scribbles he’s signed -

Dean wrote me a homemade Father’s Day Card
Visited when my nerves were in tatters -
I now keep his heroic efforts on my bedside cabinet
To remind me of what really matters... 

(For our son, The Beautiful Dean)

                        PISSING FOR ENGLAND

A highly animated gastroenterologist comes into the I.T.C.

Asking after Mr Barry and his marvellous bladder -

Apparently I’ve displaced an unheard of 23 litres of urine 

Pissing for England in an equally pleased catheter  -

You wake up and realise there’s lots of paraphernalia attached 

Plastic tubes are stuck in every available hole -

There’s four colour-coded electrodes connected to your heart 

And a length of wire buried like a fleshy mole - 

You blow out that copper line that seems over forty-foot long 

Looks like a sci-fi prop from The Matrix set -

Then they begin to kickstart the parts of your lithesome body 

They’ve properly violated and thoroughly upset -

There’s a circular wad of tubing rammed up your flaccid willy

And every time your battered bladder opens it stings -

You feel like Golem coughing up all manner of odious phlegm 

With breath like an Ork in The Lord Of The Rings - 

They break open three suppositories up the crack of my arse

To help my bowels sonically connect with a toilet pan -

I’m down in X-Ray when I decorate the loo with sniffy piping 

Stretching from wee Bognor Regis to mainland Japan -

A nurse pulls the curtain round and tells me its time to extract  

The four wires that would have given my ticker a start -

But the yellow one gets stuck on the way out and she exclaims 

“I’ll just give this one a wee bit of a yank sweetheart!” 

A surgeon arrives in the evening looking genuinely Godlike  

Tells me the operation was a full-on success story -

Asks if I’m feeling better - I tell him - “I’m David Bowie Mate! 

Banging Aladdin Sane and ready for Hunky Dory!”