There Will Be Time Before Last Orders
The weather, like my mood, was unsettled this morning. I walked along the bank of the river that cuts my city in two. I was on my way to an appointment—a meet and greet at a recently opened doctor’s surgery. I was being interviewed by a doctor new to the area to see if I was a good match for her GP surgery. I already have a GP, but they are located in another city over an hour away by car.
This new doctor is a 45-minute walk away from my apartment, so it is definitely more convenient. After meeting them, I thought the new doctor would work for me. However, I was not sure about the setup of her office, which seemed to be bordering on private healthcare, as it was connected to a pharmacy that wanted my prescriptions transferred to them. So, I waver and will do so until next week. But I need someone close at hand as I age and my comorbidities become more lethal in their intent to hasten my best-before date.
In two weeks, I have an appointment for my annual CT scan to check for cancer recurrence. Going into my sixth year of it, it still causes me anxiety. Less for finding signs of cancer and more because it indicates whether the disease in my lungs has progressed or stayed the same.
This morning, when I mentioned to the new doctor that it was believed to be NSIP, a sad trombone look came over her face. It’s bad but not that bad.
As Prufrock says:
“There will be time... Time yet for a hundred indecisions. And for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of a toast and tea.”
This lung disease is always progressive, which is a polite way of saying terminal. But there are new drugs now that can slow it. I am betting on eight more years of relatively good breathing.
I am still asymptomatic because I walk at least nine kilometres every day without breathlessness. Genetic inheritance is a different matter and gives me reason for concern. Interstitial Lung Disease runs across my family tree as chins once did for the Habsburgs.
At his end, my dad’s lungs were enmeshed in fibrosis. Doctors found my dad’s fibrosis during an examination for something else when he was 87. I only learned about it because I was asked to hand-deliver his medical files to a hospital emergency department. When I questioned his GP about the fibrosis, his response was, “Don’t tell him because there is nothing that can be done. So don’t worry about it.” Good advice, although it didn’t stop me from worrying about him.
This new doctor asked if there was anything else that I thought might be of concern regarding my health. I told her that being poor was probably the gravest threat to my longevity. The doctor thanked me for my honesty, and that was added to her notes.
But my question has always been: What made Chekhov, both as doctor and writer, so empathetic? Was it his nature, or was it because he knew he was dying from TB?
Everything feels tenuous when poor. A wrong move, a missed payment or just one more illness, and you are out on your arse living with rough sleepers.
Societal poverty is more efficient than any tyrant’s secret police as long as it is combined with the politics of hate that targets outsiders, different faiths, refugees, migrants and those on subsistence state benefits.
My financial situation is unlikely to change much because of age and declining health, which are reasons to be culled in today’s economy. Getting my pension in two years will help. If I can expand or at least maintain my Substack subscriber base, that will also keep me afloat.
There was purpose found in all this penury. As long as I can finish the work I started with my father, then I have played an admirable role with my dance to the music of time.
The Green and Pleasant Land is complete. Next week, when my head is clear, I will begin the paperwork necessary before sending it to my father’s old publisher, Icon Books. I had hoped Corbyn would have written a foreword to it, but my query was never answered. Could just be his gatekeepers. Who knows? And who really cares?
This summer, I will complete the last of my father’s works, Life On The Never, Never. It’s about post-war England from 1948 to 1953, and his emigration to Canada is portrayed in marvellous working-class colours.
Along with Love Among the Ruins, the three books make a beautiful history of the working class from 1923 to the rise of the Welfare State in 1953, which allowed every citizen to enjoy the fruits of a nation’s prosperity. After that, I will write more books myself until I can’t. It’s all about legacy now and not living. Poverty will be my constant companion for the allotted time I have left. It’s not that I am not bright or industrious. It is just that I have illnesses and am now sixty-two.
Outside of writing, I have few employment opportunities considering my chronic comorbidities.
So, I write because it gives me the sense, whether true or not, that I am defiant against my fate. I think that, at least unlike my ancestors who died in horrible poverty, I can bang the side of my prison walls with words and say, “I am mad as hell, and I will not go quietly.”
Yet the times are bleak for you and me. I am up against the wall with my rent. I am a few hundred Canadian dollars shy of making it, with two days left. I feel nervous about what happens next if I don’t find the cash. Still, until I can no longer, I will continue.
Take care,
John