Bed 12

By Alison Murdoch, Dr Phil Hammond and Dr Ava Easton

What do you do when the most important person in your life is about to die?

Who can help you?

How do you keep going?

When Alison Murdoch's husband catches viral encephalitis and falls into a life-threatening coma, everything changes. 'Bed 12' is a survival guide to the world of acute medicine, and a poignant and darkly comic account of what it's like to fight for someone's life.

Over the course of a summer, machines beep and clatter, medical staff come and go, and family and friends of varying beliefs offer well-intentioned advice. For someone unfamiliar with hospitals, death and dying, the insights of Buddhism assume a greater relevance than ever before. This book is an astute, profound and uplifting insight into how to cope with despair, heartache and the unknown.

'The object of my concern—or rather the entire focus of my current existence—is now lying in Bed 12.'

'Riveting!'
Dr Bob Grove, former Chief Executive, the Centre for Mental Health



REVIEWS

''Bed 12' is a love letter to the NHS, and the everyday acts of kindness that keep it afloat ...
this is a precious gem of a book.'
Dr Phil Hammond, NHS doctor, writer, broadcaster and comedian

'A powerfully moving book revealing the healing power that resides within the minds and hearts of each one of us.'
Thupten Jinpa, principal English translator to the Dalai Lama

'A fascinating and inspiring read for anyone who has experienced the serious illness of a friend or relative,
or who wonders about their own mortality.'
Professor Clare Gerada MBE

'This is a miraculous story told with great humanity.'
The Rt Revd & Rt Hon Richard Chartres KCVO DD FSA, Bishop of London (1995-2017)

'A remarkable achievement. Bed 12 contains so much
from which those of us providing intensive care could and should learn.'
Richard Beale, Professor of Intensive Care Medicine, Guys's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

'It should be on the reading list for all nurses and doctors.'
Dr Bob Grove, former Chief Executive, the Centre for Mental Health

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hikari Press
• Release date: May 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9780995647817

Book preview

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WEEK ONE

EMERGENCY

CHAPTER 1

The ambulance

It is 2.30pm on a sunny Monday afternoon in July. I wouldn’t normally be at home, but I have an urgent document to write and there will be less distraction away from the office. I’ve been staring at a computer screen since the beginning of the day and decide to enjoy a few minutes of fresh air before making myself a late lunch. So I’m standing on our front path in South London when I suddenly look up to see my 58-year-old husband open the gate with the unsteadiness of a man in his mid-eighties. I gasp. I’ve never seen him look like that before. His eyes are half-closed, his skin pale and his movements painfully slow, but I can’t pinpoint why he is so dramatically changed. It’s just an immediate wordless knowledge that something is dreadfully wrong.

I run to open the door, and ease him onto the sofa. What’s happened?! He is drawing short strange breaths and can only manage a few words. Fell ill in Winchester … came back early. Did you take a taxi from the station? No. Have you had anything to drink? Yes. Have you had anything to eat? No. I pull off his shoes and leave him there to rest, returning to the kitchen to prepare my lunch. I’m trying to keep anxiety at arm’s length while I collect my thoughts. Within less than a minute it’s clear that chopping salad is a ridiculous thing to be doing and that I need to get Simon into bed. So I cajole him up our two flights of stairs, standing behind him on each step in case he slips.

I only realise how serious things are when we reach the bedroom. Simon falls rigid and wordless across the bed, from left to right. When I try to undo his belt buckle, he screams. You have to tell me what is going on and where the pain is! I respond. Silence. I know I’m married to a bit of a drama queen, but this is extreme. I repeat, very slowly and loudly: Unless you speak to me I’m going to call an ambulance. Silence. It dawns on me that this is now what I am going to do. To call an ambulance for my husband feels like crossing a line, breaking a taboo.

I dash downstairs for the cordless phone, then back to the bedroom. I get through immediately, noticing how strange my voice sounds, and forcing patience at all the banal questions. The operator tells me that an ambulance is on its way, to collect together any medicines that Simon uses, and to get household pets out of the way. I look down at Simon. His cat Zampano has insinuated himself into the crook of his master’s inert arm, and my cat Mina is pacing fretfully around his feet. This is a family affair, and they aren’t going anywhere.

A few minutes later I hear an ambulance siren in the distance and realise with a start that this time it is for us. Our bedroom is suddenly full of uniforms and medical equipment. When Simon is asked for our address he answers with a stream of delirious nonsense. OK, so this really is serious. Putting his arms around their shoulders, the ambulance team half-carry him downstairs without even bothering to put his shoes on. Simon has aged well—his mane of curly hair now pepper-grey, his features stronger than before. In his characteristic black jeans and an open-necked white linen shirt he looks like a wounded Byronic hero. Behind them, I move quickly to scoop up the kinds of sensible items that might be needed for an overnight stay in hospital: dressing gown, reading glasses and book for Simon, and laptop and working papers for me, so that my busy schedule won’t be unduly disrupted.

The inside of the ambulance is a self-sufficient and scaled-down version of a hospital workstation. We are stationary on the street outside our house, yet strangely isolated from the world outside. More tests are done, in a frustratingly measured and methodical way. The obvious diagnosis is a stroke but Simon’s blood pressure is fine. After what seems like a month we’re on our way. I phone the office quickly to explain that I will miss a late afternoon appointment, and ask the ambulance crew where we are going. St Thomas’. One of the best hospitals in the world—great! By now Simon is almost unconscious. I wonder why there is no siren and fret at how slowly the traffic lights change.

When we arrive at the hospital Simon is lifted into a clunky type of wheelchair that I’ve never seen before and we hurry into the Accident & Emergency department. He is asked to clench his hands. He clearly thinks he is doing this but nothing happens. The gravity of what is unfolding begins to sink in.

CHAPTER 2

Prelude

Where do ideas come from? Years ago I had a foreboding that one day Simon would go to work in the morning and never come back. Ever since, I’ve tried to be there on the doorstep to watch him head off on his bicycle and to make a wish and a prayer for his safe return.

We are both tired when the emergency happens, but that’s nothing unusual. We don’t have children but we each work at least six days a week running small charities, with the accompanying pressures of raising funds, supporting over-worked staff and juggling countless out-of-hours commitments. However, we’re going away the following Saturday with wonderful plans for the whole of August: hosting my mother-in-law’s ninetieth birthday in Devon, then flying to Galicia for a friend’s wedding, followed by a lazy ten-day meander with a tent along the northern coast of Spain. From Bilbao Simon will return to work and I’ll continue on to a programme of teachings by the Dalai Lama in Toulouse, followed by the first international conference organised by the charity that I work for. It’s a plan that brings together all the ingredients we love—family, friends and celebration; spontaneity and fresh air; outer and inner adventure.

I’ve noticed before that whenever I’m about to go away life speeds up and becomes a race to get everything done, right up to the huge sigh of relief when I actually board the bus, car, train or plane. For me, the week ahead felt challenging but do-able, plotted out to the nth degree and under the strict control of lists and priorities. Simon would typically tackle his tasks in a different way. Definitely no lists, just a chaotic whole-hearted engagement with all the people and issues that come his way and a willingness to work late into the evening to do the rest.

It isn’t unknown for us to stay up all night before a holiday to clear our emails. Yet whenever someone tells me that we work too hard, I respond that we relax hard as well. Our first honeymoon was to Hungary, which for a host of unfathomable reasons is Simon’s favourite country. I found it such hard going that the following year I organised what became known as ‘the revenge honeymoon’ to my own favourite country, Tibet. My heart yearns for a simple English country church, said Simon ungratefully, as we exited from yet another fantastically-decorated temple in which he’d watched his new wife pore over rows of statues with the distinctive smell of over-ripe butter. My mother later remarked that the fact we’d survived that trip together gave her some optimism that our marriage would also endure.

Before he met me Simon was in the habit of taking long-distance cycle trips—from Nice to Barcelona, from Bucharest to Budapest, and most memorably from Sofia to Istanbul. The last of those journeys had been interrupted by the loss of his bike, when thieves decided to saw down the tree to which it had been chained. Just before his fiftieth birthday, Simon was inspired by Satish Kumar’s book No Destination to make a longer journey, this time on foot. He saw this as the interval between Act 1 and Act 2 of his life, and since there was nowhere he particularly wanted to walk to, he decided to walk home to me and the cats. As a lover of Hungary, his plan was simply to fly to Budapest, follow the Danube north and then turn west at Krakow.

Simon’s solitary pilgrimage across some of the most historically rich landscapes of Northern Europe took three and a half months, and when we met up in Calais I hardly recognised this whippet-thin and introspective man wearing frayed and faded clothes, topped by a beard straight out of a wilderness movie. From my side, my initial admiration at the carefree romanticism of setting off without a map, sleeping rough in the woods and making a solitary crossing of the snow-bound Tatra mountains had turned to mild irritation at the hotel and opera bills that I was expected to pay as he walked his way across the Weimar Republic, paying homage at the shrines of his heroes Bach, Beethoven and Goethe.

This time, our departure on holiday was complicated by Simon having been ill the preceding weekend, with the kind of flu virus that often results from being a bit run down. On the Friday evening he’d organised the kind of romantic evening that we didn’t often have time for these days. The early stages of our relationship were full of riddles and clues about where and when to meet that could easily land me inappropriately dressed and ill-equipped at the wrong end of London or even of Europe. Lunch in an interesting city, followed by a voyage to where the mountains meet the sea coupled with a deliberately misleading bring your grey watercolour paints was all the advance information I received for a surprise summer holiday in Sardinia, reached via a flight to Genoa and an overnight ferry crossing. I was glad that I’d decided to pack my bathing costume, just in case.

The invitation that previous Friday had been relatively simple: 138 Kennington Park Road, 7pm. I looked up the address online and found it to be the White Bear pub theatre not far from our house. Simon’s unpunctuality is so habitual and extreme that he’s jokingly known as The Late Mr Simon Keyes, but on this occasion when he turned up late and ordered a soft drink I could see he wasn’t feeling well. At the interval we decided to go home and get an early night. The next day he stayed in bed while I met my mother and niece for lunch, and on the Sunday he felt so much better that we went to a matinee at the National Theatre. We both remember this being a particularly sweet and special day, as if tinged with golden light. In the evening, he cleaned the bathroom while I mowed the lawn.

On the Monday morning Simon had slept badly and was feeling off colour again. He didn’t have a temperature, just aches, pains and a headache. I sat down with him on the sofa. Don’t go to work. I have to, there’s a meeting I can’t miss in Winchester. You won’t achieve anything feeling like this. Can you postpone it? No. Can someone else go instead? No. With a sigh, I gave him a tall glass of fizzy vitamin C and a bowl of muesli with yoghurt and fresh fruit, both of which he left untouched. Half an hour later I watched him disappear round the corner on his bike, noticing a bit more of a wobble than usual.

CHAPTER 3

A&E

Things go rapidly downhill as soon as we arrive at A&E. When Simon is asked to stick out his tongue, as he had done for the ambulance staff less than an hour before, he can no longer do this. Without a hint of NHS delay he is wheeled straight into a cubicle where a huddle of white-coated doctors cluster around his trolley bed. I am pleasantly surprised to find that most of the time I am allowed to listen in. Every now and again I am asked to leave and the blue curtains are drawn around the cubicle to conceal what’s happening inside. These are the worst moments.

Afterwards, the doctors use euphemisms such as agitated and combative. Actually, it looks and feels like something out of The Exorcist. Simon is now completely delirious, writhing from side to side and pulling back in agony whenever someone touches him. When the medical team try to make him swallow an aspirin he spits it across the room. At one point it takes several uniformed men to hold him down and his screams echo down the corridors. When his blood pressure drops to 60 over 40, a beeper goes off and eight people rush around the bed and slam an oxygen mask on his face. I am blessed with an almost complete lack of medical knowledge, and only find out later how serious this could have been.

Everyone is extremely kind to me, bringing me hot drinks in polystyrene cups and offering me a mobile phone should I wish to make calls from ‘Room A’ next door. A more seasoned hospital visitor might have taken this as a message that something particularly dramatic and worrying was going on. Sometimes I have no choice but to leave the cubicle, when the distress of seeing Simon