A Whiter Shade of Pale

As the howling gales thrash the last of the autumn leaves off the trees, leaving them scattered in huge piles like confetti from a giant's wedding, my muscle memory kicks into action again. The nerves around my sternum still concentrate like tightly stretched elastic bands whenever I allow my mind to wander back. For, since the autumn of 2003, this time of year lurches me back to a dark, bleak place where even the turning on of the sparkling Christmas lights in Regent Street or Bond Street could do nothing to dispel the gloom of the hard winter looming ahead of us.

That year our eleven year old son, Freddie, had been diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a form of bone cancer. With only thirty or so cases a year, we were suddenly thrown from the security of a comfortable, complacent, cosy family life into the maelstrom that is the world of childhood cancer. Nothing prepares a parent for either the shock of diagnosis or the advent of night sweats as one anxiously contemplates the terror of possible outcomes. To say that one's life is turned upside down would be an understatement. Like the mythical Persephone, you find yourself cast into an alien underworld, a complete sub-culture of chemotherapy drugs, blood counts and antibiotics.

Freddie had commenced his gruelling pre-surgery chemo in the June of 2003 on Carousel Ward in the old Middlesex Hospital on Mortimer Street. Ironically, it was not a depressing place despite the fact that a children's cancer ward functions with its own language and points of reference, where a raised eyebrow or hesitant response can yield up a dozen nightmare scenarios. His surgery, to remove a sizeable tumour on his tibia just below his left knee, was scheduled for the 4th November, two weeks after his 6th session of chemo.

We knew that Freddie, now bald as a coot, had a small window of time where his blood counts would be stable. In a moment of madness, we decided to give him a a special treat and take him and his poor, neglected little sister to Eurodisney for a Halloween treat. Even though I secretly disapprove, I have to admit that the Americans do Halloween so well. The upside of the trip was that with his wheelchair and blue disabled badge, we were officially allowed to queue jump every ride. The downside was that poor Freddie got so tired out in the cold and damp, we needed to go back to the hotel to let him sleep at periodic intervals.

He was a trooper throughout and it gave him a much needed lift in advance of the prospect of losing almost half his tibia. Afterwards, with a week to spare, we decided to fly down to Bardies from Paris on the new Easyjet service. More than a trip to Eurodisney, Freddie wanted to get back to our beloved Bardies. For him, it represented a life before cancer and a life that he was determined to go back to once he was well again. As for me, I had never thought that we would get back at all, so it was with some joy and a great deal of trepidation that we arrived 'chez nous'.

No sooner had we lit the fire and put a casserole into the oven than Freddie began to complain that his chest hurt at the point where his intravenous 'Hickman line' was inserted. There was some residual blood around it so, as a precaution, I telephoned the hospital in St Girons and they said to bring him in immediately. Whilst Peter drove him down, I frantically called the Middlesex in London, where, fortunately, Krissie, his regular nurse, was on duty. "No worries", she said, in her best Aussie accent, "I expect that a bit of blood escaped due to pressure on the plane. Just get them to wash out the line with some saline, as per normal."

By the time I got back to Peter on his mobile, it had been done. We breathed a sigh of relief and thought that our troubles were over. We all went off to bed happy to be home, but to be on the safe side I put Freddie in the bed next to me. As I leant over during the night to check his temperature, as I always did throughout his treatment, I knew that something serious was brewing. He was like a furnace. When I checked his temperature properly with the thermometer it was pushing 40 degrees and therefore critical. I dressed rapidly, scooped him up and put him into the car for a mercy dash back to the hospital.

After a very brief 'triage', we were shown to our room. It was private, spotlessly clean and with a view up to St Lizier worthy of a tourist brochure. In the half light of the very early morn, the city towered, twinkling, above us. If I hadn't been so panic stricken, because by then Freddie was almost comatose, I might have appreciated it rather more. A succession of people, all dressed in white, came and went. They were so uniform in their uniforms that I had no idea if I was discussing the finer points of cancer treatment with the cleaner or the consultant.

Everyone, but everyone, was dressed from head to toe in white, with white leather clogs to accessorise their dazzling ensembles. There was not a dirty mark to be seen on one of them. No wonder the French health service is so costly - the laundry bills alone must take up a serious chunk of the annual budget! All around were hand disinfectant dispenser gels and, without fail, everyone washed their hands the moment they came into the room. I would find it hard to believe that a single MRSI bug could survive a second in that scrupulously clean environment. If you are going to be ill with a life threatening condition, you would want to be somewhere like this. You might miss the creature comforts of a British hospital, the pictures of Jemima Puddleduck and Winnie the Pooh, the ubiquitous mobiles and half-dead pot plants, or the general clutter and chaos, but you would know that no flesh eating bug would dare to stray within a kilometer of your bed.

I have to say, though, that the Middlesex was brilliant. The care standards were extremely high and the nurses and doctors dedicated, and never more so than when we were stuck, stranded and terrified, for a week in the hospital in St Girons. They directed operations from London through a bi-lingual Registrar, no mean feat as St Girons is a local hospital and has no expertise in the field of paediatric cancer care. After a succession of different intravenous antibiotics, Freddie began to revive and the panic abated. His temperature slowly reverted back to normal and we were given, albeit reluctantly, permission to travel.

After a week sleeping in a cot beside Freddie, with the best view imaginable, I was glad that we would be on our way back to Carousel and the next stage of Freddie's cancer journey. For, with all its faults, it had become our sanctuary and the place where we felt safe. Freddie remained a whiter shade of pale until his Hickman line was replaced but his surgery was successful. We had many more roller coaster rides through his treatment, a further eight gruelling chemo sessions followed his surgery, but none was as memorable as our week in the ward in St Girons. I missed the view, but most of all I missed the glass of wine with lunch and dinner. It could only happen in a French hospital!