The Kindness of Strangers

After another morning of frantic rushing around, I arrived at the Royal Brompton Hospital in time to spend 15 minutes sitting quietly inside St Luke's Church on the other side of the street. It was an oasis of calm and spiritual comfort. I might go in again tomorrow.

Although he's still homesick and missing Mum terribly, Dad seems to be getting on okay in London. The fluid coming out of his lung lining continues to look clearer, though there is still a tiny tear which is leaking air out from his left lung into the space between the two linings and preventing the lung from fully re-inflating. He continues to eat pretty well, and he told me today that he had walked right to the end of a very long corridor and back with one of the nurses earlier this afternoon and wasn't too puffed. We met Michael, a Macmillan clinical nurse specialist in thoracic oncology at the Royal Brompton, to give him his full credentials. He updated us on what the team in London have done so far, and what they hope to achieve during Dad's stay there. Although he could have an operation to repair the tear it would be preferable if it heals on its own without surgical intervention. Michael explained that this was because surgery always carries risk - this is where Dad's age counts against him. The procedure which was performed last Friday afternoon cleared out all the infected matter stuck in his lung lining, and that should mean the tear stands a much better chance of healing now. Dad and I were both disappointed, however, when Michael told us that this could take a few days - this would mean the stay in London might continue until at least the end of the week, when we were hoping he could return to Colchester tomorrow or Wednesday. So we will have to be patient for a while longer. It has made Dad even more determined to eat and drink as much as he can manage to help the healing process.

I left the hospital at 5.15 p.m., and plunged into the full commuter fray on the underground. Just like a normal evening commute home, strap-hanging with nowhere to sit for half the journey. Except I'm not even getting paid this time, my Mum is all on her own in Essex for the first time in decades, and my Dad has lung cancer in a hospital far from home. All the past 6 weeks of having no life other than going back and forth to hospital every day, and now this week being even harder because of coping with it alone, just got to me on that journey home tonight. Standing in the middle of a crowded Metropolitan Line carriage, I broke down and sobbed. Noticing my distress, one lady gave up her seat for me and another stepped forward to hand me a pack of clean tissues. The first lady whispered "stay strong" before getting off two stops later, and the one who had given me her tissues came and sat down next to me, and put her arm around me. I shall never forget her kindness in literally providing a shoulder to cry on and a listening ear. It struck me then that much of the support I've had in the past couple of months has been from strangers rather than friends that I know in person, and that includes the encouraging comments from some lovely people here on blipfoto whom I've never even met. You know who you are. Carrying on with my daily journal, hard as it is, has been a really important outlet and also a source of strength.

I'm not sure why it's sometimes easier for strangers to give and receive comfort than it is for friends and family - maybe it's precisely because there's no personal history to get in the way and make you feel awkward. But under the present circumstances in the most difficult week of my life so far, I'm very glad of it.