135 – Circling the Drain, Part 2: 2 January 2025

This is Margaret on the balcony of our holiday house at Robe on Sunday 15 November 2020.  The woman on the right of the photo is Anne Ryan.  Anne Ryan and Sue Chapman both went with us to Robe. In November 2020, Margaret had been given a terminal cancer diagnosis and still thought Anne and Sue were her friends.  So did I.

****

I took this photo at Beachport on Tuesday 17 November 2020.  The short trip to Beachport was the final genuine holiday that Margaret and I had together.  The weather was excellent and her health was still stable even though we knew she was dying

****

I took this photo of a seagull landing in the bushes on Wednesday 18 November 2020 while we were at Robe.

****

As my body continued its circling of the death drain in February and March 2021, I took an allergy test on 11 March 2021 to see if there was an easy answer to my deterioration.  The written report on the test listed in red, those foods, drinks and products which the test confirmed I was now allergic to.  The plan was simple.  If I avoided the products I was allergic to, my symptoms would ease.  

This is the list if items that the test confirmed I was now allergic to. 

Green Vegetables	Fruit	Berries
Beans	Banana	Strawberries
Silverbeet/ Spinach	Cherry	Nuts
Capsicum	Kiwifruit	Cashews
Onion	Passionfruit	Dairy Products
Tomato	Oils and Fats	All cow cheese
Meats	Sunflower oil	All margarine
Beef	Seafood	Milk A2
Chicken	Shellfish	Milk full cream
Duck	Tuna	Milk skim
Lactose Free Products	Milk Alternative	Milk Carnation
Butter coconut	Rice milk	Yoghurt cow, Greek and plain
LF Milk Zymil	Beverages	Herbs Dried and Fresh
Sauces	Tea – all black tea	coriander
Soy Coconut amino non	Stock/ Gravy	Spice/ Condiment
Tomato Paste (All)	Chicken Stock Campbell	Ginger
Sugars/ Sweeteners	Gravox (All)	Mixed spice
Sugar white	Pasta/ Pastry	Cracker/ Crispbread
Syrup Maple	Pasta (Durum wheat)	Mary's Gone crackers GF
Breakfast Cereals	Wheat Noodle	Sao
Cornflakes (All)	Breads Supermarket	Rice crackers
Just Right	White	Vita Weat original
Vita Brits	Wholemeal	Sourdough Bread
Weet Bix	Grain Bread	Bill's Org 100% Spelt SD
Crunchola Apple &Blue	AG Vital bread	Healthybake FH Rye
Free & Low Muesli	Burgen Soy-Lin	Zeally Bay Sourdough
Spelt Bread	Macro Ancient grains sprouted	Gluten Free Bread
Alpine Spelt &Sprout grain	Multigrain bread	Abbots Mixed Seeds GF
Ancient Grain Tigris Spelt	Rye Bread	Bodhi's GF Chia Linseed
Bakers Delight Spelt bread	Burgen Rye bread	Bodhi's GF Yeast free
Bodhi's Dinkle wholegrain	Helgas Light Rye	Naturis GF rice loaf
Healhtybake WM Spelt	Flours	Wraps/ Bases
Kamut bread	Flour Amaranth	Corn tortilla
Chocolate/ Sweeteners	Flour Wheat Plain& Self Raising	GF wraps
Chocolate (Cadbury)	Health Shop Products	Plain wheat wraps
Chocolate (Haigs SA)	Bean Kidney	Common Supplements
Chocolate (Nestle)	Cous Cous	Psyllium
Natural Home Products	Goji Berries	Bath Chemicals
Jojoba oil	Hair Fibres	Shaving Foam Gillette
Kitchen Products	Mixed Feathers	Shaving Gel Nivea
Insect Spray (All	Petrochemicals	Talcum Powder
Miscellaneous	Cigarette Smoke
Heinz Baked Beans Tom Sauce
SPC Baked Beans Tom Sauce

 

****

After living a lifetime of never being allergic to anything, my body had now become allergic to a vast array of foods and other products that I had used all of my life.

****

I started writing a daily diary of my symptoms on Wednesday 24 March.  I kept writing the diary until Tuesday 18 May.  This is an unedited copy of my diary entries for 24, 26 and 29 March.  Wherever possible, I made the diary entries as the events happened.

Life in March 2021 was brutally hard.

Symptom	Wednesday 24 March 2021	Friday 26 March 2021	Monday 29 March 2021
Asthma	Ventolin puffer used at about 6:00 pm	Ventolin puffer used at about 12:50 am Friday 26 March 2021 and again later in the afternoon that day	No breathing difficulties in morning; breath constriction in early afternoon requiring Ventolin inhaler; noticeable breath restriction from about 7:00 pm onward
Persistent Cough	Persistent all day – suppressed by cough mixture	Horrible – unable to sleep from 12:50 am to about 3:30 am because of the cough; cough continued throughout the day	Severe cough in early morning and afternoon requiring cough mixture; cough persisted throughout afternoon and evening
Reflux	No change	No change	No change
Sinus/ Hay Fever	Constant sneezing/ running nose throughout day	Moderate sneezing and runny nose throughout the afternoon and evening	Sneezing attack at 6:30 am; more sneezing at 8:00 am; took Loratadine pill; symptoms continued but muted by antihistamine
Sleep Disorders	Slept until 12:10 am Thursday 25 March, did 30 minutes of perimeter prowls, then slept 3:00 am to 6:15 am Thursday	Took sleeping pill at about 10:20 pm and dozed on sofa until 3:30 am Saturday 27 March 2021; then slept in bed until 7:00 am Saturday	Dozed on sofa from 8:30 pm to 11:00 pm; slept without sleeping pill from 11:15 pm to 7:30 am on Tuesday 30 March
Gluten Intolerance	Avoided food with gluten	Avoided food with gluten	Avoided food with gluten
Bloating and Flatulence	Moderate level of bloat all day	Horrible bloating from 12:00 noon with very acute pain; moderated after 3 hours from acute to “merely” very painful	Minimal bloating in morning; able to eat breakfast, lunch; severe bloating from 2:30 pm onwards and no further food; still present at 9:00 pm; eased by 11:00 pm
Hiccups	Moderate	Hiccups started about 6:45 pm and continued all evening	No hiccups in morning; severe hiccups from 2:30 pm to about 11:30 pm
Optical Migraines	Nil	Nil	Nil
Sense of Smell	Unable to smell since mid December 2020	Unable to smell since mid December 2020	Unable to smell since mid December 2020
Miscellaneous	Nil	(1) Severe diarrhoea commencing about 1:00 pm; lasted until late evening (2) Worst bloating pain I have ever had - truly awful and nearly went to A & E (3) Unable to eat anything at all after breakfast (4) Unable to do my usual morning walk, yoga or hour of meditation (5) If there are many repeats of days like this, my body will completely collapse	(1) Able to do 1 hour 30 minute yoga in morning without difficulty.  (2) After about 2:30 pm, the day became a complete write off. (3) Unable to meditate or do anything else constructive

****

I avoided all of the products that the test had shown I was now allergic to.  It made no difference.  I circled ever closer to the death drain.

 

134 – Circling the Drain, Part 1: 1 January 2025

This shows Margaret and me on 25 April 2019.  My open heart surgery had taken place in November 2018.  I was delighted and astonished to still be alive.  Celebrating life with Margaret was such a wonderful experience.

****

My circling of the drain and growing ever closer to death can be accurately dated to our cancellation by Anne Ryan on 8 February 2021.  What had until then been crippling but intermittent episodes of life threatening symptoms were transformed by Anne’s behaviour into a daily struggle to breathe, eat and live.  The coughing returned far worse than it had ever been in 2020 and my ability to sleep was eliminated as effectively as if the chain saw used to open my chest in the heart surgery had been repurposed to ensure death by sleep deprivation.

****

I usually delayed going to bed for as long as I could, hoping that the constant coughing would settle down.  I told myself that if I went to bed AFTER the coughing had settled, I might be able to sleep for longer. 

This strategy was a total failure.

It did not matter what time I went to bed and went to sleep.

I always woke up coughing fiercely at about 12.30 am or (if I “slept in”) at 2.00 am at the latest.

The coughing had a single mission in life – ripping my insides into tiny pieces.

I used to pretend that if I left our bed and crept quietly into the living room and closed all the doors, Margaret would be able to sleep through my coughing episodes.  Common sense told me this was stupid, but Margaret never openly told me that my coughing made it impossible for her to sleep – so I kept pretending to myself that at least she was getting some sleep after I moved away from the bedroom.

The difficult part of the nights started after I had left the bedroom.

The coughing came in spasms from deep within my belly.  It felt as if my insides were going to erupt out of my mouth and spill onto the floor while the spasms were in progress.

I found that I could eventually make the coughing spasms ease up if I did Perimeter Prowling.  Perimeter Prowling was the name I invented for my slow walking around the walls of the kitchen and living room.  I timed how long it took me to do a slow walk around the perimeters.  One circuit of the perimeters took about 60 seconds.  If I did Perimeter Prowling for 30 minutes – or 30 circuits of the perimeter – this usually but not always - induced the coughing to ease up.  If the coughing eased up, I could sit down on the sofa without coughing.  If I got REALLY lucky, the coughing would even go away for a while.  If the coughing temporarily went away, I could sit upright on the sofa and rest my head on a cushion.  Sometimes, I was able to doze for about an hour while resting my head on the cushion.

They were very dark days.

Margaret had been given a miraculous reprieve from death but my own death loomed increasingly closer.

I was not complaining.  If the universe wanted me to die so Margaret could live, that was an extremely fair swap, but the universe did seem to want my own death to take the maximum possible time and inflict as much suffering on me in the process as it possibly could.

As for me, I kept going because I knew Margaret wanted me to stay in her life.

****

Margaret was not simply my wife.  She was the only woman who had loved me completely even though she knew every fault I had.  Margaret was my lover.  I wanted her to recover from her cancer and I wanted her have a life filled with joy.  She needed me, so I kept struggling through the daily episodes of coughing, stomach bloat, dismaying weight loss and increasing physical weakness.

****

This Table sets out the rapid, significant decline in my health in March 2021.  I drew ever closer to death as “I circled the drain”.  My body made significant progress along Death Row.  My weight loss was caused by an inability to eat.  These are the meals I was unable to eat in March 2021.

 

Date	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Friday 5 March		None
Saturday 6 March		None
Saturday 13 March		None
Sunday 14 March		None	None
Monday 15 March			None
Thursday 18 March		1 banana	3 gluten free crisp bread wafers with vegemite
Saturday 20 March			None
Sunday 21 March		None	Bowl soup
Thursday 25 March		Bowl ice cream
Friday 26 March		None	None
Saturday 27 March		None
Sunday 28 March			None
Monday 29 March			None
Tuesday 30 March		1 orange and 1 apple

 

****

Apart from being increasingly unable to eat, I kept getting physically weaker.  This Table summarises the exercise I was unable to do in March 2021.

 

Date	Scheduled Exercise	Actual Exercise
Tuesday 2 March	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	Nil
Wednesday 3 March	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	Nil
Thursday 4 March	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	1 hour walking at home; yoga nil
Friday 5 March	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	1 hour walking at home; yoga nil
Saturday 6 March	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	1 hour 15 minutes walking at home; yoga nil
Monday 8 March	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	1 hour walking at home; yoga nil
Tuesday 9 March	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	1 hour walking at home; yoga nil
Wednesday 10 March	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	1 hour walking at home; yoga nil
Thursday 11 March	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	1 hour walking at home; yoga nil
Sunday 21 March 2021	3 ½ hours at Morialta	1 ½ hours at Morialta
Monday 22 March	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	30 minutes walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga
Thursday 25 March	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	30 minutes walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga
Friday 26 March	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	30 minutes walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga
Sunday 28 March	3 ½ hours at Morialta	1 ½ hours at Morialta
Tuesday 30 March	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	1 hour walking at home; yoga nil
Wednesday 31 March 2021	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga	1 hour walking at home, plus 30 minutes yoga

 

****

The exercise I did manage, required massive willpower.  When I did not do scheduled exercise, this was because no amount of willpower could force my weakened body to do what I demanded.

My body was in deep trouble while Margaret was apparently cured of cancer.