Read Online The Kindest Thing by Cath Staincliffe - Free Book Online
Authors: Cath Staincliffe
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food-technology class – pineapple upside-down cake.
I sent a warning glance to Neil, not that he needed telling, and walked after him into the lounge.
We sat down. He looked at me, gave a little ‘huff and swallowed. ‘They want to do tests.’
My guts clenched. I assumed he was talking about cancer.
‘It could be . . . the weakness, losing control . . .’
I stared at him, the cup he’d smashed, the plates he’d dropped now sinister.
‘. . . it might be motor neurone disease.’
Stephen Hawking on The Simpsons, wheelchair, robotic voice, head lolling to one side.
‘Oh, Neil.’ I wrapped my arm around his shoulders. ‘It’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘Whatever it takes.’
‘There isn’t any cure.’
My heart stopped. ‘But the treatment, there must be something.’ I refrained from mentioning Stephen Hawking – he’d lasted years. Or had he got a different illness?
‘Not really,’ he said quietly.
I kept still. My mind was scrambling, trying to unpick what he was saying.
‘It just has to run its course.’
A deluge of fear, my heart thudding in my chest. This wasn’t happening. No. It wasn’t true. It was a mix-up, that was all, a silly misunderstanding.
‘Oh, Neil. These tests,’ I said tentatively, ‘it might be something else.’ A condition they could treat, a disease they could cure.
‘Yes.’ He took a shaky breath and then another. He was crying. I’d only ever seen Neil cry three times in our years together: at the birth of our children and when I’d
told him about my affair. The sound of him crying was alien to me, the rhythm unfamiliar. I climbed on to his lap, wrapped my arms tight around him, raised one hand to cradle the back of his head.
He put his face in the crook of my neck. His tears soaked warm into my T-shirt. He was going to die. How long? I was screaming inside. How long? Ten years? Five?
People talk of a bolt from the blue, of being thunderstruck, and that was how it felt. As though Zeus had hurled his lightning bolts at us, a sickening crack to the skull, a galvanic shock,
paralysis and the sun stopped in the sky.
‘It might be fine,’ I said.
And the lie, the false hope, lay leaden between us.
At the first opportunity I had, when everyone else was out, I went online to find out about the disease. Doctors did not know what caused some people to develop it. It was not
a virus and there was only a hereditary link in a very small minority of cases. Each site I logged on to reported the same stark facts: for those people with the most common form of the disease,
life expectancy was between two and five years from diagnosis. Neil’s muscles would weaken and waste – he would lose ability in his arms and legs first; then chewing, swallowing and
speaking would become difficult. As his chest muscles also weakened he would only be able to sip shallow breaths. Eventually his breath would fail.
On the upside, he was not likely to become incontinent or impotent. He could go down fucking, then. He wouldn’t go senile either. Although the disease affected the motor nerves that
connected the brain to the muscles, the brain itself wouldn’t be affected. He’d be fully aware until the end stage. MND is not a painful killer, not like the cancer that riddled my
mother and rendered her insensate with pain. MND sounded sly and swift and wilfully random.
As with any new project, I flung myself into research hoping understanding might make me better able to deal with the situation. I read and read, surfing link after link, waiting for obscure
medical abstracts to load as pdf files, sussing out books on the disease, startlingly few. But all it did was reinforce my anger, my alarm, each new web page breaking over me, a cascade of rapids,
cold and treacherous. Without hope.
Neil’s next appointment was with a hospital neurologist. Apparently it isn’t easy to diagnose MND in the early stages: the symptoms may be due to other problems,
which have to be ruled
I sent a warning glance to Neil, not that he needed telling, and walked after him into the lounge.
We sat down. He looked at me, gave a little ‘huff and swallowed. ‘They want to do tests.’
My guts clenched. I assumed he was talking about cancer.
‘It could be . . . the weakness, losing control . . .’
I stared at him, the cup he’d smashed, the plates he’d dropped now sinister.
‘. . . it might be motor neurone disease.’
Stephen Hawking on The Simpsons, wheelchair, robotic voice, head lolling to one side.
‘Oh, Neil.’ I wrapped my arm around his shoulders. ‘It’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘Whatever it takes.’
‘There isn’t any cure.’
My heart stopped. ‘But the treatment, there must be something.’ I refrained from mentioning Stephen Hawking – he’d lasted years. Or had he got a different illness?
‘Not really,’ he said quietly.
I kept still. My mind was scrambling, trying to unpick what he was saying.
‘It just has to run its course.’
A deluge of fear, my heart thudding in my chest. This wasn’t happening. No. It wasn’t true. It was a mix-up, that was all, a silly misunderstanding.
‘Oh, Neil. These tests,’ I said tentatively, ‘it might be something else.’ A condition they could treat, a disease they could cure.
‘Yes.’ He took a shaky breath and then another. He was crying. I’d only ever seen Neil cry three times in our years together: at the birth of our children and when I’d
told him about my affair. The sound of him crying was alien to me, the rhythm unfamiliar. I climbed on to his lap, wrapped my arms tight around him, raised one hand to cradle the back of his head.
He put his face in the crook of my neck. His tears soaked warm into my T-shirt. He was going to die. How long? I was screaming inside. How long? Ten years? Five?
People talk of a bolt from the blue, of being thunderstruck, and that was how it felt. As though Zeus had hurled his lightning bolts at us, a sickening crack to the skull, a galvanic shock,
paralysis and the sun stopped in the sky.
‘It might be fine,’ I said.
And the lie, the false hope, lay leaden between us.
At the first opportunity I had, when everyone else was out, I went online to find out about the disease. Doctors did not know what caused some people to develop it. It was not
a virus and there was only a hereditary link in a very small minority of cases. Each site I logged on to reported the same stark facts: for those people with the most common form of the disease,
life expectancy was between two and five years from diagnosis. Neil’s muscles would weaken and waste – he would lose ability in his arms and legs first; then chewing, swallowing and
speaking would become difficult. As his chest muscles also weakened he would only be able to sip shallow breaths. Eventually his breath would fail.
On the upside, he was not likely to become incontinent or impotent. He could go down fucking, then. He wouldn’t go senile either. Although the disease affected the motor nerves that
connected the brain to the muscles, the brain itself wouldn’t be affected. He’d be fully aware until the end stage. MND is not a painful killer, not like the cancer that riddled my
mother and rendered her insensate with pain. MND sounded sly and swift and wilfully random.
As with any new project, I flung myself into research hoping understanding might make me better able to deal with the situation. I read and read, surfing link after link, waiting for obscure
medical abstracts to load as pdf files, sussing out books on the disease, startlingly few. But all it did was reinforce my anger, my alarm, each new web page breaking over me, a cascade of rapids,
cold and treacherous. Without hope.
Neil’s next appointment was with a hospital neurologist. Apparently it isn’t easy to diagnose MND in the early stages: the symptoms may be due to other problems,
which have to be ruled
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