Late November - early December
I know I haven't posted anything for months, and I do have accounts of a couple of days out to post, with photos. But I am currently in France, with a really terrible Internet connection, so I am far from sure photos will post, so I may delay that until I get back.
We had hardly had any time for days out after we returned from Sicily, and the weather had been terrible anyway. Also we had been doing a bit of travelling up to Manchester and back, so somehow our days were very full. On Friday 30th November we set off for Manchester quite early in the morning. I didn't switch on the iPad until evening, when I got the shocking news that my cousin Douglas had been attacked by a deranged person the previous day and was gravely ill in hospital.
My cousin Douglas, who lived in West Hampstead, was registered blind. About 11 or 12 years ago, he got meningitis and shingles at the same time, and was in hospital for months. He was very ill indeed and was not expected to live. My uncle, his father, was told there was nothing more that could be done, apart from palliative care. Then, a few days later, he was offered a new and experimental treatment and against all the odds, it worked and Douglas survived. However, he had lost almost all of his sight.
Because he was registered blind, he had to retire before he was 50 and to try and make some sort of life for himself as a blind person, which he must have found difficult. He was a very intelligent man, with a PhD in Chemistry and he had had a very high powered job involving a lot of international travel, so it was a devastating blow. He suddenly found himself dealing with disability payments and care workers and visits to Day Centres - if he could find somebody to take him there.
My cousin had always been quite an abrasive personality, but we were all filled with admiration about the way he coped with what had happened to him. We never once heard him complain, and he was always full of hilarious stories about his exploits. He utilised the abrasive part of his personality in dealing with the quality of the care he received. He had us in constant stitches with his stories, like the one about the poor care worker who spoke no English but was supposed to microwave his meals-on-wheels meal for him. The care worker couldn't read the instructions, which were in English; and Douglas himself couldn't read the instructions, being blind! I can't quite remember how he coped with that one! He maintained both a blog and a twitter account, so if I can find the information about both, I will post it here.
Anyway, Douglas did make a life for himself, and filled it with activity. At the Day Centre, he learned to paint - he had some peripheral vision. We always got a hand painted Christmas card from him. I wish now I had kept them. He got himself a long white stick with a bulb on the end and managed to walk about in his own street and woe betide anybody who didn't give him a wide berth, they were likely to be bashed with the stick! He got himself a computer and the software to read text to him. He signed up with the Open University and after some years got a BA in various Arts subjects; he completed this 2 or 3 years ago.
On 29th November a deranged person attacked him in the street outside his house, and he very nearly died at the scene. He was rushed to hospital where he had an operation to remove part of his skull so as to relieve pressure on his brain. On subsequent days he had an operation to repair his palate, and later he had a tracheotomy to help him breathe. He was in an induced coma, in which he remained for some days.
We couldn't rush back to London as we had agreed to cover for our daughter-in-law who had to be back to the hospital herself the following Tuesday. Anyway, with Douglas in a coma there was nothing much we could have done, except provide some relief to his partner. So we returned from Manchester on Wednesday December 5th and the next day I went up to London. I wasn't feeling too good myself by then; our grandson had been coughing like mad, and the GP said it was viral tonsillitis. So when I started 'flu-like symptoms and exhibited a graveyard cough, we assumed it was the same; it wasn't, it was bronchitis, but I didn't find that out until the following week. I had a medical appointment on another matter late in the day, so I was able to visit Douglas in St Mary's Hospital Paddington before my own appointment.
Douglas was still in the induced coma, though the doctors had decided to reduce the drug which induced the coma to see if he would wake up. He certainly looked in a bad way. He was in Intensive Care and connected to a lot of machines. The attacker had jumped on his head, crushing and fracturing his skull, and part of his skull was still missing. It would need a metal plate if he survived, as the exposed brain was currently only covered with skin. He would also need operations to repair his jaw, which was fractured in several places, and to plate his cheekbones.
I felt at the time that he was able to hear us - I'm sure there was some reaction to our voices, though the doctors seemed less sure. But we were talking about the attack and his pulse rate changed and I could swear an expression of fear passed across his face. There was a meeting with the doctors later at which they described reducing the coma-inducing drugs, but I had to leave before the end as otherwise I wouldn't make my own appointment. (Apparently my current stomach problems are caused because I have developed a hiatus hernia - it's a sort of pouch at the top of the stomach - and I will probably have to take a drug to calm the inflammation and production of stomach acid for the rest of my life. This pales into insignificance when compared with my cousin's problems)
I returned home and went straight to bed, where I remained, feeling worse and worse, for some days. As I seemed to be getting no better, I went to my GP after the weekend and he diagnosed bronchitis and prescribed an antibiotic.
On Tuesday (December 11th) I was supposed to be back up in London for a meeting with the Police Liaison Officer, and the doctors asked for a meeting too. Although I felt truly terrible, and had quite a high fever, I somehow got myself onto the train and back up to Paddington, where the meeting with the doctors was quite devastating. There were 4 of us there, me, my sister, Douglas' partner and another of his friends. Douglas had not recovered consciousness, and brain scans showed that the brain damage was very severe indeed. It was possible that he would never regain consciousness, but if he did, he would probably be bedridden and need 24 hour care, including every sort of personal care, and he would have lost any peripheral vision he had had, and might be deaf as well. This did not seem a future that anyone would want to contemplate, so all 4 of us agreed with the doctor's opinion that the best course would be to turn off all the machines and allow him to die naturally. We went in to see him, but this time it seemed to me that Douglas wasn't there at all; there was no response to our voices or to touch. The machines were switched off the next day, and he died the following day, December 13th, in the early morning.
We found out a bit more informaton from the Police Liaison Officer. As the police had no difficulty in catching the deranged attacker, there may well be a trial if he is judged fit to plead. He is an 18 year old German with mental health problems; he confessed not only to the attack on Douglas, but to murdering another man in Germany before he left there. He is currently in custody.
What happened seems really quite bizarre. The shingles from which Douglas suffered along with the meningitis left him with some skin problems on his face and head and it also left his eyes very inflamed and sore. It was apparently Douglas' appearance which attracted the attention of this young man. Douglas had been to visit the National Portrait Gallery just off Trafalgar Square, where they have special tours for the visually impaired; a volunteer takes them around and describes the pictures for them, and Douglas took advantage of this whenever he could. After his tour, the volunteer took him down to Charing Cross Station so he could catch the Tube home.
The young German was in London as a tourist, and was visiting Trafalgar Square. He saw Douglas, and for some reason thought he was not really blind. He also told the police he could tell that Douglas was a very evil man - I assume that might be partly because of the swollen red eyes - so he decided to kill him. He followed him in the tube all the way home. This must have involved a change of tube; I'm not sure how Douglas handled that, he wouldn't be able to manage on his own, but I guess the station staff helped him. Anyway, apparently the police have the young man on various CCTVs following Douglas home. He must have followed him on foot all the way down from the tube station nearest to his house, which is almost a mile, before attacking him on his doorstep. He knocked him to the ground and jumped on his head, crushing and fracturing his skull.
If Douglas had not been so independent and so determined to make a life for himself without relying totally on others, I daresay it might never have happened. But he was never one to sit around in the house and do nothing. As I said, he never complained about the blindness destroying his life, he just got on with it and made himself a different life. There were many things he couldn't do - travel was beyond him for instance; he needed a guide in any unfamiliar place. But he was determined not to be a prisoner and did whatever he could, and he thought he knew his own street well enough to feel safe there.
We do not know when the funeral will be; there has been a postmortem and there might need to be a second. (The defence can request a second postmortem on their behalf, though it seems unlikely in this case). The police tell us that they are not likely to release the body for some months, as his brain has been sent away for further analysis; so the funeral will be delayed until the body can be released. He will be buried with his parents up in Edinburgh, (we are a Scottish family) but this not likely to be until the end of February at the earliest, perhaps even March. His partner is organising both this and the memorial service in London for his London friends, which is set for later in January.
This post, all rather serious and disturbing, is more than long enough already, so I will post it and continue later.
No comments:
Post a Comment