His subject was not a stage volunteer. He had suffered a stroke.
Sunset in the highveld
'Functus officio vincero'(If I do my duty, I shall overcome.)
I should be a Medical Insurance Company's dream client.
Of the 53 years odd I have been breathing in the germ laden atmosphere we live in, and riding a variety of 2 wheeled apparati, I have yet to claim anything off medical aid. Given that kind of credit rating I should qualify for huge benefits at virtually no cost. Not so, it seems. Medical funds are run by accountants, not doctors, so I am, in fact, their worst kind of client - I waited too long to start paying off the inevitable dread disease or life support scenario that is the essential part of any insurance marketing scam.
"Imagine if you were to lose everything!?" ... "Come home one day and find you've been cleaned out! Remember this is South Africa, it happens all the time!...Even worse, you are crippled, maimed, unable to work, you have to sell everything you own to pay for the medical expenses....it's either that or ending up in a state hospital...have you any idea how bad they are!"
My good and brotherly friend, Geoff, 'The Flashman', Goldswain, in a long lost moment of sheer inspiration, once told me...."Insuring your possessions is like gambling. You are putting a monthly bet down on losing all your stuff. Now, if it gets stolen, you win, if it doesn't, you lose. It seems to me to be a far better bet to bet on winning! Instead of wasting all that money, hoping to lose, it's far more sensible and fun to go down to the local Casino once a month and put it all on the craps table. You never know, you might win a mill!
"That's all very well", think I, "but what happens if you get BROKEN INTO while DOWN at the Casino?"
"Easy", smiles Geoff, "Replace the stuff you lost with your winnings from the Casino...or get HP or a loan and pay off new stuff.....it will be a hell of a lot cheaper than having paid the premiums all those months. And, once you have paid it off, that's it! Of course, you must make sure that you can get credit at short notice. So go and open an Edgars and few other accounts and be a model client. Get a credit card and pay it off religiously on time.
As casual predications have it, many come true and so it was that one fine day I returned home to find that I had been cleaned out SA style. Yes, everything was luto...gone. The furniture, cups, saucers, stove, fridge, burglar guards, light fittings, taps (water pouring out the walls!), hot water geyser and half a million rands worth of video production studio.
It took about 3 seconds of numbness before a feeling of cool liberation fell over me. Ida and I were due to leave for a new life in Kenya in a month or two and I had been wondering what on earth I was going to do with a house full of possessions.
Naturally, there was some emotional stuff that went, but really only the hard copies of the memories they evoked anyway. The thieves left a clue as to their identity as no photographs or video tapes were taken. They weren't ethnographic robbers and definitely not soul stealers like me.
So here I am, some years later, not missing anything lost, and with a new digital Nikon, a new Hi-def Sony, a new laptop and a new life. The one thing that has changed is that I have medical insurance...the kind that costs me nothing because, in the eyes of the US government AID policy makers, I am what is known as a significant other and they worked out a while ago that if they can make the significant other happy, then the significant other of the significant other will be happy to work in a strange and remote foreign clime.
Now, at this point, the story deviates a little into the realms of wishful thinking. But for all intensive purposes, it is as real as narratives can be.
I decide that this medical insurance is not to be wasted. I am after all deep in the risk age group that I was warned about all those years ago. But I do need a set of valid symptoms first. Once I start thinking about it they seemed to be everywhere. I certainly have a strange allergy to my work room. After more than 2 hours of laptopping I get short of breath. For a while now I have been waking up at night, my heart pounding and head full of xmas beetles. That all started one day after a deadline chasing all-nighter, and R15000-00s worth of tests later, I was declared as normal as normal can be. 'Must be a subclinical brain infection", said the neuro-surgeon, twisting his left ear quizzically.
The upshot is that I am left with an autonomic stress alarm system. I work too late, sleep too little, worry too much and the xmas carols came back. What a great line! "Sorry, my friend, but that deadline is impossible - it makes my brain buzz."
So off to the doctor I go, and book a flying medical. This is the best deal you can get. Under a thousand rand and they do the lot...x-rays, eye tests, lung function, treadmills, EEGs, finger up the bum, torch up the ears and test tubes of blood galore.
I feel a trifle faint on the treadmill and unwillingly admit it. I guess I am not as young as I used to be. I have borderline performance on the lung function, but the doc reckons it's ok as I have a small chest for my height. I am left with aching lungs, which disturbs me no end.
After a fun afternoon of being turned inside out, I leave with 2 pieces of paper in my hand - the one, a medical certificate permitting me to fly solo in an aeroplane, the second, a prescription, that reads,
*************************************************
To be taken daily for 30 minutes minimum,
for the treatment of cardio-vascular irregularity,
hypotension and chronic incipient diurnal muscular atrophy.
EXERCISE.
Please supply:
1 copy of B S Iyengar's 'Light On Yoga' (or generic)
1 pair running/walking shoes and/or bicycle
1 hour, 3X per week : energetic surf or swim.
8 hours sleep, 7 days a week.
***************************************************
It's a week now since I started the treatment and the first of the symptoms are disappearing. I no longer wake up at midnight with a pounding heart. With the absence of sea or a bicycle here in Polokwane (Northern South Africa) I have changed my prescription to a daily 5km walk or run to and from the hospital.....to see my brother-in-law, Christo. But that is another story.
Now here's the real crunch stuff.
Christo, a few years my senior and blessed with vastly more brain power than I, got a similar doctor's prescription. His read:
'This patient is busy strangling himself to death by being overweight, smoking and not exercising'.
Christo's world and such a prescription didn't match well. After all, he really enjoyed smoking, strict diets turn you into a party pooper and, juggling three jobs, who's got time to walk!
Let's not poopoo this reaction. It is pretty much part of all of us. One fag ain't gonna make a diference...anyway the stress of giving up will kill me sooner. I'm not a gym type and it's clearly far too dangerous to walk in the streets these days. I just need to get to the next level of income, pay off the big stuff, then I can kick back and cruise. Anyway, I dig the stress. That's who I am. The last generation of smokers, the last of the big car drivers.
At this point I have to leave you for a half hour or so as it is time for my medication........a run in the rain? cool!
14h50.............
16h00.............is an hour's run regarded as an overdose? Well, what the heck....running in the rain is kinda addictive. In this town you have to run on the road as the pavements are littered with small broken glass shards from endless nightly drunken revelries in passing cars. This is the Great North Road, linking Cape Town to Cairo and with Zimbabwe just up the drag I can only imagine that those heading north are celebrating the last miles of South Africa's human rights culture and those going the other way, letting out some post Zim stress.
In Nairobi, there are no such shards, few, if any, cigaretted butts and hardly any beggars. This is the kind of world most law abiding citizens want to live in. It's also the kind of world that operates on the continual threat of instant punishment. Take your choice. I'd rather dodge cops than look at dead cigarettes while dodging broken bottles.
Tuesday 4th November 2008
Today is a public holiday in Kenya. In some far west corner, the Obama family is celebrating their name claim to fame. Such is the power of purpose. In January 2009 the new president of the USA is inaugurated and reality kicks in. Facing the biggest economic squeeze of the last 75 years, Obama has committed himself to America first. His predecessor, George Bush will have gone down as the President who provided the most financial aid to Africa ever. Far reaching programs have slowed the relentless tide of HIV and poverty and preferential trade agreements are bearing fruit. But the shadow of Iraq looms large and somber over a world, tired of repetitive non-solutions and appositional cultures. Suddenly it seems that democracy itself is fighting back and shouting, "I can change the world..."
In his victory speech, Obama spoke, "We shall rebuild America, brick by brick, block by block, calloused hand by calloused hand..."
I had planned to have a democracy party on Tuesday. Instead Ida and I found ourselves in a place called Polokwane on the South African side of that North Road to Cairo. This is familiar home Africa to us. If you are out of town, the sun goes down over the hills. Walking back from the hospital, it hangs like a blood red soccer ball at the end of Thabo Mbeki Street.
Polokwane is not a big city. If you stand on top of your car almost anywhere you can see the African bush. It is a place where you can really see the successes of a liberated South Africa. Nuveau riche black diamonds in sandy 4x4s slide past ruddy-faced farmers in mutual acceptance of their historically fractured world. A few hours up the well tarred highway is Zimbabwe, same soil, same rain, same people, different leaders.
I absolutely love technology. It is the blinking LEDs that allow me to see into the soul of Christo, who now inhabits a world of reflections and impressions. As I gaze at the vital signs monitor, the blood pressure readings in red become the best way we can gauge from moment to moment what he feels. Here is rare honesty. No lies from the rapid rise when Ida says she has to leave, no lies from the gradual lowering when, into his good ear, she sings softly.
This came from from no book, no medical tome on how to do it. It comes from talking to Mozart, from being interested in the Sanskrit words for Yoga poses, from joining an internet chat group all about scents.
An old Moody Blues song rang, "Between the eyes and ears there lies, the sound of colour and the light of a sigh...."
And it is precisely there that we are now venturing....
The legendary Norwegian explorer, Thor Heyerdahl, whom I once had the adventure of sharing a week with and interviewing, wrote, 'The last great remaining unknown for mankind, is that area behind the human eye, the unexplored territory known as the human mind....for this is where all our hopes and fears reside and it draws them from the deepest recesses of our evolutionary past.' (paraphrased)
Wednesday 5th November 2008
Ida has an extraordinary nose. Tailor made with scent sensors somewhere between a human and a Bassett hound she transcends her native love for perfume with a terrier like ability to find and stick to a story. This journalistic bravado spreads much wider though - well into times like we are immersed in now. It is as though her entire being is buzzing with the need to understand and bring resolution to this sudden and heightened space shared in a remote town on the bottom of Africa by a disparate group of people.....whose lives and emotions have all been edged together by a common and extraordinary experience of one Christo Jooste.
For here is a man who with a laconic grin and gravely grey hair will constantly remind his legal and business partner, Tar Omar, that 'Remember, my man, we have nothing to fear...I have a high IQ!'.
We gather in what is for all the world like a hastily convened war room, drinking coffee after our meagre half hour visits 3 times a day, and laugh and mourn with smiles at this classic man who fears nothing except to confront his own mortality.
Then there is the Neuro-surgeon, one Dr Viljoen, whose consulting room has a huge framed photograph of his 6 purely white daughters, all dressed in pure white flowing garb and taken against a slightly off white photo-backdrop, for contrast. On the other wall, a commitment of his life to Jesus, all of which makes me very confused for this is not a man of discernable compassion, though clearly profound technical ability. So Ida and I, scurry around, securing favour and brain scan reports from radiologists and receptionists and then, like medical detectives, we put the pieces together, running on instinct and Google.
Then today we downsized to the family doctor who is a real live human being clearly delighted to meet Christo's young sister and asking endless questions about how the patient's 86 year old Father-in-law ("He and Christo are such big friends!") and what can he do for Antoinette, Christo's wife.
Mannie (Dr Kruger) says, "This is biggest stroke I have seen in 16 years of practice. It is as though he took a bullet in the brain". He then listened carefully to all our slightly informed lay queries and said, "Anytime, anytime, my door is open. No matter what your impressions are, tell me and I will feed them to the Neuro-surgeon and internist."
Filled with a renewed co-operative spirit we headed off to the 15h00 visit. A delicate dance taking place in ICU beween the need to oxygenate the recovering brain and avoid ventilator induced pneumonia. Today he was entirely off sedation and when Ida held his hand and gently spoke to him, he half opened both eyes, took her in and strained upwards towards her clearly trying to kiss her. What a moment, what a leap!
An ICU sister joined us later and told him to move his leg....He shook his head and closed his eyes repeatedly. After she left, he opened his eyes, loked at Ida and cheekily wiggled his leg.
Friday the 14th November 2008
With Christo hovering between ICU and High Care, Ida and I drove the micro Kia Piccanto back to Durban - 1000 kms in a red microcar. The last time we took this road I was driving and we had a rather vigourous collision with a Khudu. For the unititated that's a 1 ton antelope whose sole purpose in life seems to be to leap into the gap between a car's headlights....and also to be turned into fine South African biltong (jerky, for my US readers). Often these two events are linked. In our case we ended up with a totalled VW golf and Ida with a hole in the side of her head which, after much medical and surgical intervention was fixed but for quite a while thereafter she walked like a giraffe, with her arms following her legs. Intensive rehabilitation got that right....which brings us back to current events.
Two intense days in Durban, where I get in one good 6 km run on the beach and a leisurely 40 minute walk the next day while Ida is making contact with the best Speech Therapists, the Best Rehab Units, the best step down centres and then fitting them all together. I watch her using the same journalism skills that have made her constantly shine in her field, but this time focussed on her brother's survival. I watch the pieces fall in place as key people find meaning in our mission. A top speech therapist wants to be on Christo's case. She says, "Tell him I need an inspiring patient!" She is excited to hear of his skill in classical languages as this means that his brain has already got the skills to learn a new language at an adult level.
Durban done, we head back to Polokwane via Ida's surrogate mother, Lina.A year or so ago, Lina suddenly started going dowhill. She has been badly injured in a Taxi hijacking incident 5 years before and was treated in the local state hospital (called I think, 'NobodyGivesADamnHere hospital). A few days after getting home her injured leg developed gangrene and was at the point of falling off when Ida and I managed to get Lina to McCord Hospital in Durban. A good mixture of humanity, spiritual love and good medical standards got Lina back on the road again, with an unshakable belief in McCords.
Such is the nature of health care access in South Africa, that when, a few years later, Lina finds herself confused and unable to see, her family take her to a local doctor, who informs her that she has extremely high blood sugar levels and gives her an elaborate prescription for a variety of impressive sounding tablets........all of which turn out to be sleeping tablets or pain killers.
If I were an omnipresent, omniscient being, I would have this beast of a doctor struck off every medical registry in existance....no, I would hang him upside down till he was dizzy and then give him a prescription to lower his blood pressure so when he got up he would get even more dizzy.....
Either way, by the time we were called, Lina was in a near diabetic coma, which strangely enough wasn't responding to the pain killers.
McCords to the rescue again, springboarding Lina and us into a journey of discovery into the ifs and buts of type 2 diabetes.
In every family there is a saint, and Lina's grandson, Julayi, is he. In the last year he has earned the title 'Dr Sithole' for his empassioned and steadfast managment of Lina's diabetes. Armed with a blood glucometer and an impressive sense of duty, this young man is single handedly bringing health and smiles to his grandmother.
We left Lina's at nightfall and headed into the mother of all storms. 500kms from Durban the the savage weather outside was tempered by two dull thuds. Seconds later the battery light blinked on and in the occipital zone of my brain an equally bright light flashed.
"We've got 15 minutes battery, it's pissing with rain. Find a garage..."
As we turned off the freeway to Heidelberg the power steering died. Now, this might not sound like a big thing, but for a first time power steering loser, this could be a cataclysmic event. Imagine barrelling down a winding mountain road, total synchronicity between man, mountain, machine and moment, all held together by a delicate finger on a leather-bound steering wheel.
Next moment you are driving a Massey-Ferguson tractor, 1952 model. In the fraction of a second that it takes the left parietal zone of the brain to send a radical increase of motor pressure to the right hand, the car simply takes the next bend as a straight line. Hopefully the straight line leads onto the offramp to Heidelberg.
Being a travelling WIlberry, I packed blankets and coffee so our night spent in the SUV was nothing other than yet another night under canvas. While I slept like a babe, Ida was on the blower juggling the 3 roadside assist insurances. The bottom line was:
1) Kia Raodside assist - up to maggots. The operator read her mantra of what to do and they only pay the first R500 of the tow.
2) A.A. membership - Great! Got a tow driver to follow us in the rain to find accommodation (all full!) and then reminded us that we should also consider Ida's short term insurance.
3) Bingo! - Santam road assist, which Ida has just cancelled from next month. Brilliant service! The operator searched for solutions, offerred us sympathy, arranged a tow van, kept calling for updates and got us to the nearest Kia dealer who repaired the broken alternator bolt and belt and got us on the road again.
Friday 14th November 2008
The mission today is to get Christo to Pretoria. Ida has done her magic and convinced the best speech therapist in the land to change her locum to enable her to treat Christo. How she does it I don't know. It's a kind of mixture of charm and bravado. Recently in Kenya, John Githongo, the anti-corruption campaigner who had fled the country under threat, returned. The press was baying for interviews but his minders would have none of it.
His car arrived at the Hilton.
His body guards hustled him through the foyer, ploughing through a mob of journos. The lift is waiting, hands pushing hands with microphones and cameras away. The doors close with brutal finality....on a pair of cute black slip-on sandals with a strap across the bridge. The steel door shuddered on the lily white foot and Ida's voice sliced through the commotion, "Internews! We train journalists in democracy. Are you going to help us with it?"
For a moment the world stopped and then John Githongo reached into his pocket and stretched out to Ida. "There's my card, contact me."
Tuesday 18th November 2008
Wanda Nel comes highly recommended by the grand m'ams of Speech therapy in this part of the world. We redlined through to her via Clara Cummings, who at over 70 years old has a reputation for being able to teach the dead to speak.
On her way to meet us at the hospital this morning, Wanda had a collision with another driver who shot a red light. The front of her car is smashed. She is shattered, but unhurt. We will meet her on Friday now. She is our new ally and friend.
In the cafe, I have just been chatting to Izak, who is also in rehab here. He lost the front of his right foot and broke multiple bones when he hit a car on his Suzuki GS650. Now he is full of stories and smiles as we compare bike accident scars and stories. He is best friends with Juanita, an adorable 10 year old whose smile lingers long after it leaves her slightly sad face, older in life than the years it belies. She was flung off the motorcycle on which her father died. She has been here for over 6 months and is just starting to learn to walk again.
Such is Life.
Monday was a gamble, the real thing when. Not the theoretical sort I like to believe in when it comes to insurance. It was clear that it was a good idea to get Christo to a big city hospital with a specialist stroke unit as soon as possible. To me he seemed almost too weak to travel. Antoinette, his wife, wanted him there on Friday, to get the rehab started. Ida was determined to be there at his side whatever happened.
Monday found me travelling at a leisurely pace on the back roads to Pretoria. Ida was in the ambo with Christo, Pretoria in sight.
From the inside of an ambo there isn't much to see, only to experience how cool the two paramedics were with their calm efficiency and laid back CD.
I, on the other hand become a soporific missile when on a toll road. It's the twists and farm stalls that keep me awake on what we in South Africa, whimsically call 'the alternative route'. I call it the 'liberated route'. All the speed freaks, the deadliners, the wheelers and dealers and general other misanthropes of society take the road more travelled, leaving me to meander through a lost world of frontier towns with names like 'Molly The Model'. When my Dad drove us up this way for our biannual holidays on the family farm, this was the last stretch. Nylstroom, Naboomspruit and then, always at sundown, Potgietersrus, for hamburgers at the Grand Tearoom. Then it was 64 miles to the Magalakwena river, where the tar ends and the real adventure starts. 30 years after the holidays tailed off and my grandfather having given up farming years before at the age of 95, I took a drive to the area with my daughter, Sarah.
The same wide and unpopulated dirt road still cut across the veld past the Matula hills to disappear into the northern border with old Bechuanaland.
Sarah was 16 and ripe for her first driving lesson. So I gave her a few tips about gear changes and strode down the road, camera in hand.
The last I saw of her was the back of my car heading off to 'old Bechuanaland', no red stoplights in sight.
These days Naboomspruit is called Modimolli, so I had the novel experience of discovering a whole lot of places I had never been to before from my childhood. I even stored a few roadside tea rooms and shady trees in my Nokia GPS in the belief that it will get me to return another day, with more time to explore and less of a destination.
At Eugene Marais I found a tired Ida, a tired Antoinette and a very tired Christo. Ida and I found a hilltop B&B, cheap, close and with a farm green pool. Antoinette took several smoke breaks and Christo just had everyone mildly depressed as it wasn't clear how to rehabilitate a sleeping man.
There was some light relief however as every so often he would open his eyes wide and stare at the unfortunate man in the next bed. If I had gone to sleep as an advocate preparing for high court appearance and then the next moment woken up next to a very distressed and confused Chinese man with tubes coming out of his body, I would have seriously thought I was a prisoner in the Dali museum.
On the shiny side, the still functional areas of Christo's brain are clearly playing dominoes in a fragmented space.
From the outside, looking in, it is both fascinating and alien. We are watching a master chess player with an IQ of 170 put his conciousness on one engine.
Tuesday 18th November 2008
We have fallen in love with our B&B.
I emerge from the room to such a view of the city that I hug the maid who has come to clean the room.
The same lady, Harriette, serves us breakfast and asks us if we are from Holland or Germany.
"No, South Africa. Why?"
"You can't be South Africans, you are too nice," she replies. Here, we have never had nice people. Everyone treats us badly. Especially the Afrikaans people and people from Durban. Most people still remember us as kaffirs. For me, it is alright. I just hold on and try to understand. But the young people! Eish....They don't accept this."
Ida replies in Zulu and Harriet grins all the way back to the kitchen. We hear her telling her 2IC, Mildred, about these whites. Mildred says that we must be lying, but Harriet assures her that she saw our name and it is 'Jooste', definitely Afrikaans.
Christo Jooste comes from a long line of good brains. His grandmother, ouma Toetie, was so obviously bright that her Dominee father (Dutch reformed Church Preacher), felt she would be a life wasted on pursuing what then was expected and permitted of women in conservative South African society of the late 1800s. So, using his influence and connections, he humbly requested of the college of the then (and still) premier university of the land, that his daiughter be permitted to attend lectures in a purely observational capacity. It is thus that in those times only men were permitted to formal tertiary institutions and, in the acceptance of his request, a long standing tradition of pushing the boundaries started in their family.
Soon after her arrival at Stellenbosch University in the Cape of Good Hope, Toetie attracted the attention of a young theology student, who ingratiated himself with her father with a promise to protect and help her during her visits to the campus and studies in Theology, Greek, Latin and classics. To this day a student photograph exists of rows and rows of male theology students an in one corner, a short and most pretty young lady, with the daintiest of hats.
Toetie and Murray Jooste married soon after his graduation as a Dominee. They had 4 sons, Felix, Roussouw, Marius and Rene. Today, only Rene is still alive. At Felix's funeral, a young Christo Jooste described his late father, Felix, as 'a walking encyclopedia'.
Christo had a special place in his being for Oupa Murray (his grandad). He talks with a remembering smile of the endless chess games he and Oupa Murray had, one move at a time, by long distance telephone call. I have never been much of a chess player. Or rather, when I play, it rapidly descends into a sudden death strategy. Bored with the idea of planning ahead I move, move by moment by move, and inevitably manage to get myself and the game terminated rather rapidly. Accepting defeat gracefully I secretly am glad that I got out of this endless labyrynth of matrix-like planning. The same goes for Rubiks cubes and Sidoku. My entire relationship with a Rubiks cube has been to take it apart to see how it works.
(Millie Helen Gerty Braam)
But back to the present.
Thursday 20th Novemember 2008
A lot has happened in the last few days of elastic emotions and new awarenesses.
The first 24 hours at Eugene Marais Hospital saw an almost continually sleeping Christo, seemingly far more than had been before. One of the lessons we can continually learn from modern medicine is that there are many explanations for any one malady. There's a dictum called 'Occam's Razor' that tells us that the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct. In this case we were all so focussed on the drowziness as a symptom of the brain injury that we never considered the far more obvious one - maybe he was flattened by a fever or such?
It turned out that he indeed had brought three infections with him from Polokwane, a lung infection (not surprizing), a bladder infection (ouch!) and a local infection at the IV entry point. One other thing about western medicine is that once they know where to look they can rapidly analyse and treat most situations. By the next morning, Christo's body was a host to some pretty strong anti-biotics and another medical battle was soon won.
On the morning of the 19th we arrived, feeling quite deflated. Had we done the right thing to move him? Where were we going?
We were greeted in the ward by an empty bed and a breathless sister, "He's gone....he's not here! He's in the gym."
Sure enough, there he was, the big guy in a wheelchair looking for all the world like a brooding Marlon Brando.
We were now in a whole new ball game. Now we could do some straight talking with Christo.
At the best of times Christo's eyes sit prominently in his head. He is a man of pauses and facial expressions, sometimes bordering on the socially inept. But always that brain, that incisive moment. Once when boarding an aeroplane he was asked whether he had any sharp objects with hi..he replied with an emphatic, "Yes!".
Taken aback, the security person half barked back, "WHAT DO you have?".
A pause........then......a quizzical angle of the eyebrows.....and....."My mind....I have a sharp mind."
His index finger was clearly pointed at me. Both eyes, half open but checking me out. Then he looked left and looked right and spiralled his hand like a corkscrew.
What does he want? I moved my body. No.....He shook his head. Waved his hand from left to right. I walked to the left...he watched me closely.....I turned, walked to the right...Was he checking his own spacial acuity? It is common for Left brain stroke sufferers to have right field visual cutoff. He seemed satisfied and slumped back into tiredness. I walked close to him. His face looked up and left arm raised in a welcoming hug. I melted into the circle he had made and he hugged me.
First he needs to be assessed. Is he stable enough to start rehab? I am aware of the original reasons why he is here. There is always the risk of another stroke, heart attack and severe depression. We learn of the labile emotions that stroke sufferers experience in these early days. We are also understanding how long a process this will be.....months, years.
'The Gym' is a not inappropriate euphemism for the rehab room. Each morning it is a melting pot of humans at their best. The therapists are good, engaging and professional. The gym members are all pushing their limits, no trendoids here!
I've already made friends in the Gym and corridors of Eugene Marais Hospital. There's Izak who had his right foot torn off in a motorbike accident, has a great family and is is the inevitable guy in teh ward who wheelchairs around cheering up all and sundry. 10 year old Juanita was thrown off the back of her Dad's motorcycle in the collision that lost her a father.
Mr Yap, the oriental chap next to Christo, suffered sever brain damage after a heart attack. He leaves to go home today. I am silent in the enormity of what his quietly attentive wife faces in the future.
There's an old joke that describes the husband and wife in their living room, watching TV, beer in hand and TV dinner, dutifully served. They are watching a hospital drama and he turns to her and says, "If I ever end up being kept alive by pipes and tubes and bottles and can't feed myself, please promise me that you will disconnect me from them all and let me die rather."
"Sure,", she said, and walked over to him, took away his tobacco pipe, his beer and the tray of food.
"What are you doing!?"
"Exactly what you asked me to.....I'm taking away the pipe and bottle that keeps you alive and you can get your own food from now on."
Sometimes it is clear that he understands us. And we then have these conversations with him where he is trying so hard to speak. The words are literally glued to his contorting mouth, unable to fly free. Once or twice he seemed to get it spontaneously right. Imelda is a staff member from the University where Christo teaches. They have a connection. "He's the only person who notices when I have had my hair done!"
In the first week after his stroke, Imelda visited him. She told him that we wanted to see him again in "that smart new shirt and striped tie"...He gave a very skew smirk and the words, "and the red one?" bubbled out of his quivering mouth. He had got a red tie for his wedding anniversary and it was his clear favourite.
Friday 21st November 2008
It is 4-30 on a cool and breezy aftrernoon in Pretoria. They say we should have been here when the Jacarandas were out. From where I am in a paved courtyard between the wards, I can see several varieties of African trees, a band of living green between the uniform blue sky and the builders' pink hospital walls. Yet, even this all seems harmonious, an outside reflection of the synergy that the people inside the hospital have created.
Unlike Polokwane, we are allowed to stay with Christo all day if we like. In fact they actively encourage family support.
Over the last year I held have come to know a dear friend who works in the synthesis and harmony between 2 worlds, often held separate.
Patrice Repar is an assistant professor in Music and Internal Medicine at the University of New Mexico and, having already shared a creative workshop with her in the beginning of this year, she was the first person I knew we should call for support and inspiration in our journey ahead.
SInce then, we have become Skype mates and I have watched as Patrice and Ida have connected on a deep creative level.
A year ago several of us met for an experiential and planning workshop in the North East of S. Africa where we Sang and drew, cried and twirled, shared feelings and wondered where allt his was going. I long ago learnt that seeds well planted, always grow, but when and where is always uncertain.
So it is that seeds planted in Ngwavuma are now budding as I tentatively feel the artist in me champing at the bit to engage with the challenge that Christo has thrown at us.
Between 2004 ande 2006 a study was done with 60 stroke patients in Helsinki. The results of it were to show that stroke sufferers who had been exposed to 2 hours of music daily were likely to recover up to 100% more than those not.
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/131/3/866
The study can be downloaded at the above site.
With this in mind we are hoping to find ways of letting CHristo have music in his life.....Ida leaves for Nairobi in 3 days. Her work, Internews Network, has been extraordinarily supportive in facilitating and indeed encouraging her to prioritize her brother's situation, but now her own responsibilities beckon and it is my time to step into the gap.
That is not easy. Barely an hour ago I was sitting with CHristo, he in a wheelchair, uncomfortable and sad.
Yesterday he had a feeding pipe fitted into his stomach.
WHile I was with him, he pulled the feed pipe off and plugged its end. Then he strarted to try to pull the actual plug from his stomach. CLearly this would be counterproductive. We had a tussle of wills and no shortage of hand wrestling before I managed to persuade him not to do himself any further damage. I understand how his emotions and frustration will soar and sink. I understand how frustrating it all is. I also know that I have no uncertain duty to see that the rightb things are done now that he is in a crisis that mostly comes from his own stubborn insistance on getting his own way.
After all, it is Christo who says..."Functus officio vincero."
Ida is curled up next to her brother.
I am curled up with my laptop on the opposite bed where Mrs Khalo used to lie.
Japie (Mr Yap) has his mouth open and eyes shut.
It's Tea Time! The Tea lady bounces in, susses out the scene, looks at Ida and Christo sleeping sooo peacefully and says, "Tea of Coffee?".
Christo's eyes open for just long enough to maybe consider the absurdity of it all, turn to wonder why Japie is so quiet, give a snort and go back to sleep.
Earlier today, our friend, Izak was discharged. He brought cake for all and sundry, including Chrsisto. Boet's face lit up and he stretched his good hand in expectation...then, with perfect timing, gave a whimsical sneer, waved the cake away and pointed to the pipe into his stomach.
Still in the ward. Earlier Ida started to show signs of wear and tears and retired to the foyer. An elderly sister saw her crying and came over to her, put her arms around her and said to her in Zulu, "Don't you cry, my child, all with be alright, it's in the Lord's hands...."
Spurred on by this partially succesful escape attempt, Christo decides to give us the most tangible evidence yet of his resolve and fighting spirit. WIth an almighty effort he looks at us and then his right leg lifts.....and then again.
I call the night sister to somehow bear witness to this. But Christo just smiles at her....he is now tired.
Sunday 23rd November 2008
I don't think a battlefield could paint a sadder scene. I have been holding witness for a week now in ward 3 at Eugene Marais hospital.
It is evening and visiting time. Ida and I have set up office on the 4th bed. She is talking via Skype to Patrice...far away. In the far corner here, Christo is using his still useful left hand to help the nurse attach the oxygen mask. He does it with the resignation of a tired soldier, accepting that there will be no more violent conflicts for an able and angry body for him. In the bed next to him Mrs Yap smiles gently at me as she talks in Chinese to Mr Yap, who wildly rages against the dying of the light without ever seeming to know, or care, who won or who lost.Next to us, old and blue-eyed Mrs Olive Levick, stares at a nowhere somewhere between her son, who is holding his head in his hands on the bedside and the care with which his wife is feeding her a liquid sustenance.
Mrs Yap has opened a small tupperware of beads and baubles, turns, smiles at me and then continues her beading. I stand up and look over her shoulder. She is carefully stringing one white bead after another on a tightly wound necklace. Amongst the pile of expectant white beads are three blood red ones. They are not being used, yet.
I read this week how music makes miracles of recovery with stroke patients. I take the mp3 layer from my pocket, plug the earphones in and listen to a ripped CD called Siempre. The tracks are marked 1...2....3...4 and it is in a language I don't understand. But for a while it protects me from reality.
Western Medicine, Time and Camping.
It's been a week since Ida left for Nairobi. Occasionally in life we are blessed with a sence of congruency when a whole bunch of previous threads come together in a tightly bound rope.
Some decades back, I was living in a block of flats overlooking a half busy side road, marked by a large concrete island with several grass patches and a forlorn tree. In the daytime it was awash with itinerant cars fighting for parking at the adjacent shopping mall. But by night, it was just a side street, the concrete island, home to several African ladies, who daily plied their trade of unnecessary necessities from the same pavements on which their children grew up. I am sure they had a distant home to go to, but for now, they were, urban campers. At least that was the term given to them by my friend and philosophical war correspondent, Simon Stanford as he looked over their lives one day, from my balcony.
Those words rang well with me and started a thought in my head. What if I could do the same? Camp in the city in a way that neither attracted nor detracted from the urban equilibrium that made it attractive in the first place. That would surely liberate a whole lot of monthly expenses like rent, utilities, legal costs of combating bad neighbours and the possibility of your sea view becoming an apartment block. It didn't take me long to realize that my cultural version of the concrete pavement was a camper van and then and there I decided to find (a cheap) one at all costs. While I was thinking these thoughts, Simon was busy recalling his typical urban camping experiences. Once, riding his Triumph motorcycle up from the Eastern Cape (where his family farm was) he hit the quintessential South African rain storm. That's where everything goes instantaneously invisible from a solid sheet of water. If you manage to stop your vehicle it is almost impossible to find the road side. He felt his way along the tar till he felt the kerb and then pushed the bike onto the grass and making a rough shelter with an old groundsheet, he crept under the machine for a sodden night. In the morning he awoke to the roar of traffic, imminently close. He was perched on a narrow grass divide in the middle of a freeway. In that moment many stories must have been born in the later memories of passing motorists about the crazy biker who camped in the middle of the motorway.
My dream of urban camping never left me but it took some years before I found the suitable accommodation. It came in the form of the 'Combat Wombat' a blue surfer VW kombi van which I got in exchange for a 9mm Browning Parabellum. The designation of this infamous weapon comes from the Latin 'Si Pacem Voles, para bellum'. - If you want Peace, then prepare for war. In those days, South Africa was a very much safer place and one could feasibly sleep in the middle of freeways with the confidence of waking up, so the Browning had never been used in anger or instincy, instead had taught me a lot about how tin cans jump in the air. But I reckoned that I could get a lot more Peace out of Urban Camping, so I swapped it for the 'Wombat'.
Lat week I was shopping around for a tent to replace my lost and loved one of many journeys and adventures. The tent of choice is unfortunately on available in red, which is great for snow bound explorers who want to be seen, but terrible for bush trekkers who want to disappear by night. SO it was with the kombi. Blue with a large white wave painted on the side was not the best urban cammo. SO I headed down to the local paint shop with about $3-00 in my wallet.
"I am looking for 5 litres of cheap, exterior house paint, in olive green, please."
'Certainly, Sir. What are the walls made of?"
"Metal. It is a car."
"You can't paint a car with house paint. You must use auto-enamel."
"Yes, I can. If it is good enough for a house in the rain, it will work on a car."
"Maybe, Sir, but it will not look very good. Auto paint makes your car shine, house paint is rough and dull."
"I wasn't intending to be seen. Thank you, how much is that one?"
R15 rand later (2$) I walked out with 5 litres of olive green paint which I brush painted over the surfer and continued to use for the life of the car, touching it up whenever she got a little scruffy. By night she disappeared in the bush. In the city, she looked like she had just come to town for a day or two after a long trek overland. Just the image I wanted.
I then welded on burglar guards, replaced the aged locks with hasps and staples and padlocks, threw a foam mattress and curtains in the back and was ready to rock.
Those early days of living in Wombat were some of my absolute best. I was the departmental contingency plan at the University of Natal's COmputer Science dept, for the fact that I knew a little bit about a lot of things and could be happily seconded to everything from some programming to technical maintenance to overhauling the Professor's motorcycle. I was in heaven, sleeping at night in the University car park in Wombat and fiddling with computers in the day.
An old friend, one half-Canadian, Stuart Rolland, an eccentric chap, would come to town of a weekend from his personal piece of African cliff overlooking the legendary 'Valley of a 1000 Hills' inland from Durban. He would sleep the night in his Toyota Corolla, my neighbour in the Physics car park. Before dawn we were usually up and down to the University gym for our wake up swim and shower. Life was good but was to get even better soon.Stuart invited me to relocate to his piece of paradise. The only challenge was whether Wombat would make it up the hill. By this time I had a sizeable Kawasaki Z750 and so for the next months, I lived on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a river valley, and commuted to work on a black Kawasaki. Getting home in the evenings was a totally renewable joy. It was always just before sunset and I filled with the energy of a winter's ride, would often arrive home to find a three legged pot of hot veg curry over a lazy and slow fire, all prepared in anticipation of my sharing the sunset with Stuart and maybe the itinerant French chef from across the road.
In these halcyon days of unprecedented happiness I learnt how to feel at home no matter where I was. I learnt the art of contentment with few resources....and I developed a deep yearning for urban camping.
It was now 1986. I had met and fallen in love with the mother of my now 23 year old daughter, Sarah. When Kathryn was pregnant she headed back to the Cape Town of her family and I followed a month or two later, a monumental journey in the WOmbat. I had bicycle and canoe on the roof and a Heath Robinson solar shower system rigged up. I was king of the road and never in a hurry. Impressively, Wombat made it all the way to Cape Town, but for the last 100 metres, when the bottome dropped out of the engine, spilling boiling oil all over the road outside Kate's parent's house as I shuddered in, the van destined not to move again without a total engine replacement. (Actually, I did manage to start her just once more, and kept the engine going long enough to move her to the VW engine shop.
WIth her new heart transplant, I had visions of unlimited travels and adventures, so I spent a long and cold winter in the windy car park of our apartment in the lee of Table Mountain, turning WOmbat into a home suitable for a family expedition to the hinterland. Sarah Emma Smith had been born by then and was my able companion for many a long morning, cutting and welding and just gazing at my dream taking shape. I rigged up an ingenious device to keep her happy and develop her sense of rhythm at the same time. A piece of string tied to my big toe would pass through the window to where her pram was and as I soldered and worked, I would rock her gently in time to the rolling table cloth over the mountain. I would like to think that her results that she has just received from her first year Uni exams at Uni of Cape Town are a result of these early inputs, but maybe, just maybe, there is also some genetic precursors as well. (Wow! She got firsts in Film Studies and German and Seconds in Religious Studies and Linguistics....). I wonder whether a penchant for urban camping is genetic or nurture?
Being a bit of an inside-out person, I completed the WOmbat refit and then suggested that, as we had had the baby, maybe going on honeymoon and then getting married (in that order) could be fun. So we packed our baby and bags and headed up the slow back road to an uncertain but exciting future in KwaZulu-Natal, land of Heaven.
Some years later, Sarah and I composed a ditty for ourselves.....
"Dad and daughterNo-one oughtaTell us what to do!
If we meet youWe will greet youNo matter where or who!
Freeways, flyways,Highways, byways,We'll take them if we must.
But, if we want to go to where to,We'll leave a trail of dust."
Now, you are wondering what all that has to do with 'Western Medicine, Time and Camping'.
Simple. All the delights and skills I learnt to love over the years are what allow me to be effective and happy here in Pretoria. Over the years, I have realized that Time, not Money, is my currency. I am the only person who can be here, indefinitely, with Christo. Being a happy travelling Wilberry, with all my media equipment and survival necessities in my backpack I am happily effective wherever I may be, a skill from my Wombat years. In this case, the sunset view B&B. What a find! It costs us R150 ($15) a day for an ample room with a panoramic sunset view of the city. This includes such a huge breakfast that I can save enough of it to not only eat handsomely for the rest of the day but even build up a stock! I bought a second hand mountain bike yesterday and am now riding up and down and around between my hill and the hospital, discovering another world city as is only possible on 2 wheels. Ida is content and she and Antoinette are informed of CHristo's progress. CHristo and I are making new friends and getting back into shape together. Could Life be better?
Well, yes, Boet could start talking again!
Nuff sed. I must go to the hospital, meet the Speech Therapist, Wanda, and take some pix of the surrounds to show Boet this afternoon. He is, after all, the only person who has no idea of what this place looks like!.
