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I’ve been dealing with a squatter.
Suddenly and without any notice, I had a squatter!
No by-your-leave. Do you mind. May I?
Nothing. They just turned up.
In truth, it needed someone smarter than me to point it out. I hadn’t realised.
It doesn’t matter how tough you are. How clever you think you are and how much you think you know about love, life and rock-n-roll...
... until you sit across the desk and someone you hardly know looks at their screen and then at you and says…
… Mr Lilley, you have cancer… you will never, ever, feel the same.
Even typing those words gives me a chill. Raises the hair on the back of my neck. Starts my life and all its failures and foibles racing past me.
It’s taken an army to prise out my squatter. A battalion of people I’ll never meet and their knowledge and knowhow. A brigade to turn it into action.
Some of them I've come to know by name. Some I have just a passing acquaintance. Some who have seen me in my lowest moments and lifted me up.
I have met fellow travellers, plagued with their own squatter.
All sorts of people… black, brown, white, young, old, rich and others, threadbare and hanging on. Each of us levelled and reduced, lifted and encouraged by our anxiety and our brotherhood.
We met in the bowels of St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London.
Each day, comparing notes, laughing at our indignities. Watching nervously as one-by-one we disappeared behind the great doors of mystery and magic that is radiotherapy… waiting our turn.
The heart pumping moment when your name is called.
Back the next day with more stories and laughter about the side effects and private moments that only fellow travellers can share with each other.
Only know if you’ve been there. Things that can be said to each other and perhaps not even to kith and kin. Hopes, fears and… well… the moments of optimism.
In my journey with my squatter I never once met anyone who was anything but kind. Patient, thoughtful. Everyone...
... anxious to see anxiety was pushed away. The ladies in reception who knew full well why we were there. The nurse who made us ready and the radiographers who lined us up and made sure the machine was calibrated and sighted, like a sniper taking aim at an enemy.
Even the lady in the coffee shop. Particularly the people in Maggie’s, the cancer charity that provides a place to go for explanation, reassurance and decompression. A sit down and a cuppa.
My journey is over and the squatter is evicted. As much as I wouldn’t wish my experience on my worst enemy, such as it was my destiny, I wouldn’t have missed it.
I have met some amazing people. Heroic, patient, skilful and those that have taught me to redefine my humanity and laugh at myself.
Perhaps you will know, now, why in recent months I have railed at the idiots who’ve casually dismissed the NHS as 'broken'.
Ignorant of the effect it might have had on the people whose skill and vocation have been sign-posting my life and the direction of my fellow travellers.
I know... the damage ‘the NHS is broken’ and the braggadocio that fuels it has done to people who know more, work more and achieve more that is worthwhile, in an hour, than most politicians will do in a lifetime.
They know... the damage austerity, senseless reorganisations and lack of investment has put the NHS at the bottom of just about every league-table it once topped.
We all know... it is their discretionary effort and their endeavour that will push, heave, shove and drag the NHS back to where it belongs.
I’ve evicted my squatter. I had the news last week. I thought I’d share it with you. Not because I want people to say ‘well done’ or ‘congratulations’ and they do. As I have done in the past.
The truth is, all I did was turn up. People far cleverer than I did the hard work. Far smarter than me made it happen.
I tell you so that you know the NHS is alive and well and so am I.
Thank you.
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