A Dog named Harry

Chapter 2 on Harry's Leslie Smith's journey to his death four years ago.

The sky has an eggshell tint to it this morning. Today’s sun shines with the dull pessimism of an energy-efficient light bulb in a Travel lodge hotel room. Outside, it’s cold, and in my recollection too cold for November but when I read the Tweets from four years ago, a similar cold had descended on my town. 

Still, today's temperature has the frigid anger of January in its lashing wind. 

I did my walk last night, but it was a bitter occasion and even with gloves on, my hands felt frozen solid. By the end of my stroll, I just wanted to be inside my apartment with my back to the portable oil heater. My return to the warm indoors was delayed because behind my apartment I heard a young girl weeping. At first, I thought it was just some kid horsing around in the snow. But the closer I came to her, the more I knew the young girl was in some distress. She appeared to be in sleeping wear. The girl cried the way a ten-year-old does when their heart has been broken. At first, I thought she had been locked out of the apartment. But when I approached her and asked why she was crying the young girl sobbed her dog had broken free of his leash. 

“Get inside,” I told her and “tell your mum what has happened. I will look for your dog.” 

As she opened the back door to the apartment building, I asked, “by the way, what is your dog's name?”

“Harry, she cried out tearfully. 

"If he is called Harry, he will be fine. Harrys are as tough as nails and always survive.”

Not long afterwards, Harry, the dog was reunited with the little girl. I thought as I went into my apartment; Harrys survive until they don’t. 

Four years ago today, my dad's life was running out of him. He was in the hospital and languishing in an emergency room cubicle. He had been there- for twenty-four hours, but his nurses assured me he was; "getting ICU care- just not in the ICU."

I didn't believe them then and I am sure many people in this year 2022 who have loved ones waiting for an ICU bed are as equally worried and suspicious about the quality of care a patient can receive in a healthcare system at the breaking point.  

My dad spent- the years between 2010 and 2018 warning public healthcare was being destroyed by the 1% to sell it off. Here we are in 2022-the moment healthcare stopped working. In 2018 I knew that public healthcare was on the ropes and unlikely to survive the next few years. Just read the tweets because the warnings are all there. 

5:18 AM · Nov 21, 2018

I slept for a couple of hours. But I have that feeling of having flown on a very long and uncomfortable trans-Atlantic flight.

6:49 AM · Nov 22, 2018

He dreamed of Hipperholme last night. It was where my mother; and he let half a house during the summer of 1951 and played croquet on the lawn with friends. (Suburb of Halifax, Yorkshire)

8:17 AM · Nov 22, 2018

Harry's nurse is from Leicester, so she made him a decent cuppa, and he is sipping it through a straw. 

8:53 AM · Nov 22, 2018

With concentrated oxygen being pumped through a tube to him Harry asks me about the #migrantcaravan.

9:12 AM · Nov 22, 2018

Dr says of the treatment of Harry, "we are beginning to right the ship." But adds, "he is very sick." 

(However, at the time, my confidence in him was rather low. He had confused someone else's chart with my dad's but was adamant my father needed to be sent to another hospital to be put in an induced coma and intubated. I pointed out to this doctor that considering my dad had a no-intubation order, it was rather odd that he was being transferred to another hospital. At that moment, the doctor checked his notes and said: “wrong patient,” and stormed off.)

7:43 AM · Nov 21, 2018

24 hours in, Harry is still in the emergency department waiting for an ICU bed- thanks to the politics of austerity in Ontario. 

(Think about this, beds were even scarce to get for ICUs years before the pandemic.)

9:07 AM · Nov 21, 2018

Harry's cough is bone-shattering, and I use a suction device to clear the sputum from his mouth.

(He was just behind a curtain in a cubicle then, and his cough, could be heard at the entrance. He didn’t have any strength left to clear his own spit)

9:52 AM · Nov 21, 2018

Asleep again, Harry's legs jerk and twitch as his mind plays out fitful dreams.

9:53 AM · Nov 21, 2018

I, like so many others, have stood this type of vigil before. When my mum was dying, I bought a CD that had whale sounds and played it for her as she once did this for special needs students that she took care of when she worked at a school as a teacher's aide in the 1970s.

10:05 AM · Nov 21, 2018

The halls in the emergency department are beginning to become full of sick people seeking attention from a healthcare system made anorexic by underfunding.

10:16 AM · Nov 21, 2018

Harry’s BP is 104/59- respiration rate- is now 16, and oxygen sat at 98% on 1 litre of O2. He may be in a fib because his heart rate is up. 

( I could still believe 24 hours into this that my dad would come out of this battered but alive.)

10:31 AM · Nov 21, 2018

What I loved about this voyage I have shared with Harry for these last nine years was when he was on tour, after one of his engagements, we'd have a beer, and I'd make him laugh by telling him something funny. It was just great comradeship.

11:18 AM · Nov 21, 2018

When my mum, in the 1990s, read Angela's Ashes, she said, "That's like your dad's early life, except his had no love in it." And that is why, in these last years, I have tried to make sure that he knew he is loved. 

Left the hospital for a short while- had a shower, changed my clothes and drank a decent cup of tea.

Anyone who tells you that men shouldn't cry is a fool because I'll tell you I wept in the shower this morning as I thought about what I can lose very soon or what I will lose in a short time because Harry is 95. 

3:53 PM · Nov 21, 2018

( A doctor gives Harry permission to have tea and some soft food but will soon retract the order.)

Harry can't eat much. I try to get him to swallow Ensure because solid food is difficult to swallow. He can drink tea from a straw, and if it's from the hospital cafeteria, he cries out like his mother once did, "It's as weak as witches' piss." 

5:50 PM · Nov 21, 2018

After 36 hours in emergency, Harry has finally moved to the ICU. 

(While Harry was in the emergency department behind a curtain, I believe what helped him get into ICU was that news media from around the world were phoning about his condition.)

5:59 PM · Nov 21, 2018·

I haven't been in the waiting room of an ICU unit since my brother's death from pulmonary fibrosis in 2009.

6:08 PM · Nov 21, 2018

In ICU- I've been told that they think Harry is dealing with sepsis. 

6:58 PM · Nov 21, 2018

I remember Christmas Eve 1987 when Harry was 64, my brother Pete was 26 and me 22. It was snowing outside & after my mum went to bed. My dad taught me; and Pete how to dance to swing music; while we drank copious amounts of wine. We stayed up until 6 and faced mum's wrath when she awoke in the morning.

8:31 PM · Nov 22, 2018

Left the hospital, a bitterly cold night, full moon high in the sky-just so damn cold out. They've reduced 1 of his IV blood pressure meds but increased slightly the compressed air that keeps his lungs open. "get some rest lad," Harry says as I leave & then is consumed by coughing.

8:33 PM · Nov 21, 2018

I am signing off now. I need to sleep for a few hours as my brain feels; as thick as treacle. 

11:31 PM · Nov 21, 2018·

Harry is on 50% oxygen fighting a brutal pneumonia, but he didn't need a BiPAP, and his blood pressure is stable with medication. The nurse said, "This man is fighting so hard." 

11:44 PM · Nov 22, 2018

Harry's having a good night so far- and if all goes well, they will drain his lungs tomorrow to help him breathe, as he has a dangerous pneumonia and sepsis. He's alert and frustrated that he can't watch BBC news as it's not available in the hospital. After he was married in Hamburg in 1947, Harry developed sepsis from an infected midge bite. It almost killed him, but the relatively new penicillin saved him. In 2018, he needs a nuclear bomb of antibiotics to battle sepsis, as his doctor describes it.

11:58 PM · Nov

Well, that's it for me. I talked to the ICU nurse, and Harry is asleep and has no changes for the worst. So, I will begin reading the early drafts of his new book on the refugee crisis as he had asked me to and then bed. Goodnight, all.

Thank you for reading this. As Elon Musk is running Twitter- I have no idea how long the platform can survive. It is why I put together on substack the Tweets from the week my father lay dying in a hospital in November 2018. I want to preserve all those thousands of tweets made on the Harry’s Last Stand account because they speak of a time and a place when we could have stopped fascism. It is his history, my history and your history in many ways too. Your solidarity with me as a subscriber to my substack is so appreciated.

Take care, John.