The Battle

 

Where am I?

Faced down,

It’s hot.

I’m parched.

Dusty ditch?

Roadside gutter?

Whose territory?

What war?

What uniform?

What happened?

Missile, land mine?

Shock

confusion

exhaustion

eyes closed

attached at wrist?

Gun?

Can’t feel my body

Voices nearing

don’t flinch

play dead.

 

English words

sigh with relief…

women hurry

to my aid

turn me over

place mask over mouth

I breath

They leave

I pass out

Waking later

gagging, coughing

alone

in hospital room

attached to breathing apparatus

hooked to a drip-stand

get up and fight

never give up

It’s a battle with Cancer

© Southampton Old Lady 2013

I often wondered why people referred to it as a “battle” with Cancer.  It is very much fight or flee combat. While staying in hospital and undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkins Lymphoma,  I hallucinated that I was at war. Two nurses arrived and put a breathing apparatus on me while I was semi-conscious then left.  I heard muffled instructions but awoke hours later with the mask still on.

As you realise, I survived and lived to tell this tale.

by Categories: Cancer, Hospital, poetry, UK, War, writerTags: 25 Comments

25 thoughts on “The Battle”

  2. So glad you survived but what a nightmare of an experience that must have been. I am sorry it happened to you. You’re a brave warrior and you came through the other side. Best wishes for your health.

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  4. Reblogged this on Life is for Living and commented:
    Fighting cancer. It’s like a battle. A very serious one. Sometimes we come out alive. Sometimes we die. Thankfully this author is a survivor – who also remembers and shares her battle. My mom didn’t make it and I miss her. A lot.

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    • So sorry about your dear Mother. It is not all down to how much we fight though. Some Cancers are better researched and have more likelihood of being cured over others. Very honoured that you have reblogged my poem.

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  11. Moronic me I had read but my sack of a brain lost the connect and yet I see I wrote how this was so powerful and how much now I hope you will consider writing more?

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  12. I’m now having a battle getting people to believe I’ve survived the bone mets for so long. Last year a nurse (at my dance class) asked me if I had been given the correct diagnosis (that’s what prompted me to get my hospital notes from The Christie last year. Fortunately they had been kept on microfiche (not that I’m likely to forget the metastases fractured my pelvis and the treatment and recovery thereafter was indeed ‘a battle’). Thanks for this blog – it says it all – and you know where I’m coming from – and beautifully written.

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