11 - Margaret’s Back Story
Part 3: Anne Ryan’s Parting Gift: 13 September 2024
Within days of Margaret being given her death sentence in
July 2020, I became deadly ill. The main
symptoms were an inability to breathe, a stomach that swelled up like a
football and a cough that began to destroy the line of vertical stitches
I had received when I had an open heart operation in November 2018. There were other minor symptoms such as
continuous hiccups and optical migraines, but in the scheme of things they were
relatively unimportant.
For the final part of 2020, the symptoms came with great
regularity but because I usually got only one symptom at a time – for example,
an inability to breath or cough attack – I coped with this completely
unexpected development.
I often walk in a National Park near Adelaide called
Morialta Park. It is rugged and phone
coverage is patchy on a good day. Because
Morialta is not a good place in which to suddenly develop any health issues, I
knew I was in deadly trouble one Sunday in 2020 when I was deep in the Park and
developed an inability to breathe. I
would be dead before any ambulance crew could even locate me, so I concentrated
on getting myself out of the Park. I
focused all of my attention on breathing in as much air as possible and then placing
one foot in front of another. I simply
refused to stop walking and I refused to just allow myself to die. Eventually, I got myself down to one of the
car parks in Morialta. When I tried to
walk from the bench where I plonked myself down in exhaustion, I was unable to
walk the mere 4 metres to the waiting car.
Anne Ryan was with me that day and said “If I ever find myself in a
tight spot, I hope you are there.”
In February 2021, Anne Ryan became frightened by being in
the company of the dying Margaret and cancelled both me and Margaret. My symptoms then began a combined assault on
my life. The coughing usually woke me up
at about 1.00 am every night. I would
then get out of bed and start Perimeter Prowling around our living room and
kitchen. About 30 minutes of Prowling
usually calmed down the coughing and I could then doze upright on the sofa.
I ceased being able to eat and my weight started dropping
dramatically. During my third and final period
in hospital, my weight reached 73 kilos and my hospital lung function test said
that I had only 43% of normal lung capacity.
During my first spell in hospital, the night duty nurse saved my life by
coming into my room unannounced and placing me on continuous oxygen supply. I remained on bottled oxygen for the next 12
hours continuously. When Margaret
visited me later that morning, I was hobbling through the corridor near the
lifts. She saw an aged, crippled old man
and did not recognize that the aged, crippled old man was in fact her husband.
Margaret’s suffering was significantly increased by months
of worrying whether she would outlive me.
From February 2021 until mid July 2021, it seemed certain that she would
see me dead before the cancer killed her too.
Near the end of my final hospital stay, Dr Aiyappan
diagnosed that my immune system was trying to kill a non existent enemy and in
the absence of a genuine enemy, my immune system was doing its very best to
kill me instead. Since then, I have had
regular injections to suppress my immune system and my body has stopped trying
to kill itself. With the help of the
injections, I was able to help Margaret for the balance of her suffering and
eventual death. I still take the injections
to stay alive.
I had always assumed that my near death experiences were the
result of psychological shock caused by Margaet’s diagnosis. In general terms, I know that "diagnosis”
is correct, but this is really only part of the story. My multiple near death experiences were actually
an unintended Parting Gift from the woman who was once Margaret and my closest
friend.
In about April 2020, just as the Covid restrictions were
being implemented, Anne showed us a wooden chest she had bought in an
Opportunity Shop. It was lined in tin
and had been varnished. I offered to
remove the varnish and sand down the box to make it look like a million
dollars. Within five minutes of starting
the sanding, I realized the varnish was not varnish but a mixture of kerosene
and boot polish called “Easy Wax”. The
easy wax melted as soon as a sander started work on it. It eventually took me about 12 weeks to
finish the sanding. During the sanding
process, I developed the same horrendous cough that cropped up after the
diagnosis.
Cleaning the chest was immensely hard work, but in the end,
I turned it into something beautiful. I
will post a photo of the chest after I get home. The chest was a “home made” one and it had
been constructed out of a native Australian timber called King Billie
Pine.
I mentioned my coughing and other symptoms to my brother a
week before I left Australia. My brother
was horrified at what I told him. King
Billie Pine and some other Australian timbers have developed immensely effective
methods of killing any insect pests that try to eat them. Bill knew 2 carpenters who had developed
similar symptoms to me who had also nearly died when they worked with native
Australian timbers. The only way they
could continue to make furniture with King Billie Pine was by wearing closed
circuit oxygen rebreathers. Bill told me
that a log of King Billie Pine can lie on the ground for up to 2,000 years and
not rot. Even though I had worn dusts
masks while working, I had ingested a large quantity of the anti insect defence
material developed by the King Billie Pine.
The natural defence ”stuff” had given me the coughing attacks while I
was working on Anne’s chest and it had then laid dormant in my body until Margaret
was given her diagnosis. The stress of learning
Margaret’s diagnosis had incited the anti insect defences which now form part
of me. The stuff rose in open revolt
against the imminent death of my wife.
So that was the Parting Gift given to me and Margaret by her
supposed close friend just before she ensured the cancellation of both of us.
Thank you, Anne for your Parting Gift. You did not give Margaret her cancer, but you
did give me an immune system that sees me as the enemy instead of the body it must
protect.
Anne thinks neither Margaret nor I matter, and fails to realise that if we don’t matter, she cannot possibly matter either, because either everybody matters or no one at all matters.
****
The tears would not stop as I wandered through the streets
of Killarney this morning. Margaret and
I had wandered these same streets at least twice and perhaps more.
Thanks once again John for a very interesting and informative snap shot of what both you and Marg were going through during that time. I only knew snippets because of the distance between where you are, and where I am.
ReplyDeleteThanks too Bill for the King Billy Pine info. That seems very sound and logical to me, and explains why John was having so many problems with his health.
Let the tears flow mate, healing comes in many different forms.
Love
Pete