Restaurant Customer Rants

I often read rants against restaurants by customers.

I don't have the full facts. I don't know the owners or customers.
However, this is a topic for concern to restaurant owners and customers, both in individual incidents and in general.

Are people of all religions and none welcome in a restaurant? Is a restaurant a public place? I'd be interested in other people's comments.

Lots of restaurants and pubs have people standing around the doorway smoking, preventing would-be diners from entering easily.

When I visited or passed one restaurant it did seem that customers or onlookers were standing around outside treating the place like a bus station.

Many people think even a bus or train station should not be treated this way. (A gathering place for groups. Are they groups of homeless and penniless teenagers who stand smoking and talking before gathering in a group to go off elsewhere, presumably to gatecrash parties?)

1 What are the aims of the restaurant owners and the customers?

What the real problems? What caused the problems? What's the first spark of conflict? Is there an ongoing conflict? What's the last straw?

What could be changed?

2 What do the owners want?
To sell food and drink?

Many restaurants have this problem. They want to attract and fill the place with the small spenders in daytime and between meals. Only if the small eaters spend on drink.

They want people who have finished eating to move on. They don't want people to sit without ordering. It seems to me that the initial problem, or the ongoing problem is this.

3 The secondary problem is: The secondary aim of the restaurant is to provide a place with a theme.
Provide a place where people of any age or religion can feel at home?
Provide a place reminiscent of the culture and religion back home for expats, nostalgia and tourists?

Turn the situation around. Are Italians more welcome in Italian restaurants? Can the italian speaking waiters explain the menu's dishes to English speakers? Can the Polish speaking waiters explain Italian dishes?

It seems to me it took a long time for us to make it a legal requirement to list drinks prices. It should now be a legal requirement to list the ingredients of dishes in English.

I remember years ago a dispute between a customer (my mother) who ordered a canneloni, expecting to get a meat canneloni, and getting oen filled with spinach (Florentino). A restaurant owner cannot expect every customer to know every dish on the menu.

I think as a minimum, we should do as the French, and make it a legal requirement to have a set meal including a drink (soft or alcoholic) and coffee and tax and service for a set price so the customer will know what it will cost and that he or she has enough cash or credit to pay. It would make entertaining easier too.

If seats must be vacated by a certain time, a sign should say so, and a customer should be given a five minute warning.

Now lets look at another source of dispute. Racism.

Are Jews welcome in Arab restaurants? Are Arabs welcome in Jewish restaurants?

How does the restaurant owner know the customer is Jewish? Arab? Muslim? By dress, language, topic of discussion?

How can the restaurant owners make friends with the customers?

Have the customers make friends with the owners.

3 At one restaurant the premises provide a mixture of the outdoor shish smoking lounge at the front (attracting youngsters who want to smoke and drink and snack) and the more expensive restaurant at the back (attracting the older and affluent couples and groups who want to eat a three course meal or youngsters who want celebrate a birthday.

The result is that the front area attracts onlookers and passers by and groups, who block the entrance to the diners.

If the owners, as is the case with most businesses, want to make money from selling food and drink (with the lounge at the front attracting attention), then customers who want to sit and chat to each other without ordering food and drink will not be popular with the staff.

Do we know anything about the owners when customers write rude comments? Very little.

Do we know anything about the customer? Very little.

In one complaint or rant which I read, the customer seems to have had a smoke without ordering any food or drink.

The customer, on that internet site, had not praised or patronised any other food or drink place.

2 What could restaurant owners do, there or elsewhere? Any restaurant needs to keep on good terms with all local communities.

Some would say: Be careful not to alienate youngsters whose parents or grandparents may be dining inside. Make it clear what the seating policy is. Has a restaurant become very popular and attracted more than they can seat?

Maybe if both sides tried to apologise and think of helping the other, life would be better for everybody.

Others would say, don't let one set of customers alienate others.

But I've seen Arab/ Muslim and Jewish restaurant and shop owners who are both in sales get on very well. The Jew goes into the Muslim's shop or restaurant and knows him by name, greets him, expresses interest. 'How are you Mohammed. How's business? Wonderful place you have. Wish you every success. Is it okay if I have a drink without ordering any food today? Mustn't get in the way of your regular customers. ... Please go ahead, Madam... Mohammed, you are the best. Give me your card. I have a cousin / neighbour who could help you ...'

Then Mohammed is giving 'Moishe' free drinks and leftovers. Suddenly you find they are actually in business, bosom friends, renting each other's property, sharing this and that, making profits together.

In one customer complain I read it sounds as if the customer went back 'after everything calmed down' - to complain - and did not get a good reception.

What if you heard this story in court, as a Magistrate, a case of assault? One has to hear both sides of the story.

Clearly one has to avoid racist remarks, whatever the provocation, because they are likely to alienate everybody.

Should a restaurant be invited to reply?

But would that prevent people from complaining and turn sites into slanging matches?

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Retrospect

I haven't kept up with the cancer diary daily. I've been too busy. But here are some observations from experiences over the past few months.

On a bank holiday T went for a blood test. The blood test department was closed. 

So he went to A & E. He was told he would have to wait two hours. 

In the blood test department he has priority. I don't know why cancer patients get priority. Either because getting the results is critical. And therefore they are rushed through to get the results. Or because otherwise they might get fed up and miss the essential appointment? Or because people needing a one-off appointment can wait once or twice, as the cancer patients do on their first couple of visits, but if you are have regular tests you can't wait that long each time, and they have all your records so it's easy to rush you through?

However, the nurse in  A & E told him not to wait in A & E, because people in A & E have all sorts of infections he should not be exposed to. (Maybe that's why cancer patients are rushed through in the blood test department, so they don't sit for two hours in a confined area when because their immune system is down they must not be in crowded places.) So he went the next day to the blood clinic. 'Delivering blood,' he quipped.

Cervical Cancer

This year, 2009, we have all, in the UK anyway, heard about the death of celebrity Jade Goody. She had cervical cancer. The good news is that her death has increased awareness of the problem and in my local area, Bushey, a newspaper reported that there was an increase in the number of requests for cervical smears.

What are the ways of dealing with cervical cancer? Obviously, start with education. Then:

1 Be a nun. Nun's don't get it. Or it least not at the same rate as the rest of the female population. In the olden day's this would have been a good choice. The first choice. Abstinence from sex. Nowadays other options are available and preferred.

2 Vaccination. I spoke to a gynaecologist about this. The government (NHS) is planning to start vaccination on 14-year-olds. Girls before they reach the age of consent, and before they become sexually active. How long will the vaccination be effective? A year, five years, ten years, a lifetime? We don't yet know because we don't have a large population who have been vaccinated who have lived long enough after the vaccination for us to get the results. 

3 Cervical smears. This is both before and after treatment, but mainly after. Before in the sense that you might spot something which would later develop into cancer. (And a few false positives or just the thought of having the test might scare people into seeing that they and their children get vaccinated.) Mostly after, by identifying cancer in the early stages you treat it before it spreads all over the body and is untreatable.  

Restaurant Cleanliness

I love sugar lumps served with coffee in restaurants, but I notice that when I try to take one it's hard not to get your fingers on the adjoining lumps. Whatever happened to sugar tongs?

I'm sure in five-star hotels at tea-time they have elegant sugar tongs. But restaurants don't. They should put a spoon in the sugar bowl.

Why does it matter? With a member of the family having cancer treatment, and their immune system down, we are all washing our hands in gel when we are in our homes or out with the person having cancer treatment. And now even when I'm not with them, I'm thinking about the dangers.

It's a matter of life and death. Am I exaggerating? No. 

This week, a member of my family logged on to Channel News Asia. If you want news from Singapore you could log onto Channel News Asia or The Straits Times. The big story was the death of a banker who had leukaemia. He was on cycle two of the six or eight cycles of treatment and got the dreaded high temperature. This signals that the body has an infection it can't fight. The immune system is down because of the treatment. 

You are told to get to hospital within an hour. No messing about at A & E. The cancer ward admits you straight away. If you are living at home or away on business you must be within an hour of the nearest hospital with a cancer centre. (You carry your pills and medical your records with you.) 

The man who died was only in his forties. He was a banker. All his money could not save him.

So I look very carefully at restaurant hygiene.

Health and Healthy Conversation

Health

Health is now a major issue. T does not impose his rules on anybody outside the house. He says, ‘It’s their life’. But when sharing a table at a restaurant, his rules take priority.

I must not catch anything in case I give it to him. So my health has to stay tip top. Must get to sleep by midnight. Take a brisk walk every day before it gets dark. To get the vitamin D from sunlight. Wear walking shoes in the morning because I shall be walking later.

Conversation

Strangely having cancer has become not an obstacle but a link in conversation. Everybody wants to tell you about somebody they know who had it. The window cleaner - both his late parents and his in law.

I am also getting daily practice at positive thinking in conversation. Not just being upbeat, but sounding cheeful.

Good News

Now that we know the stomach cancer has gone life is improving. Like the Goat Story. (If you have a problem buy a goat. The goat adds so many more problems that when you get rid of the goat, your other problems don't seem so bad because life is improving.)

Prayers

The cancer of the stomach turned out to be a misreading of a misleading scan shadow. If we had prayed, and believed, we might have thought our prayers had been answered. 

T quips, 'I don't have to pray. Other people are praying for me.'

I used to read that prayers had an effect, like the placebo effect, on those who believed. Assuming that their troubles are either psychosomatic, or exacerbated by losing heart. 

But more recently I read scientific trials which showed that a comparison of two groups, some praying, others not, showed no difference.

I read that a UK nurse had got into trouble for praying for a patient. At first sight that sounds absurd. Surely evidence of her concern would reassure the patient.

Obviously somebody had complained.

One can imagine in such a situation a relative objecting, perhaps because the family think the nurse is relying on prayer, not medicine. More likely, they are of a different religion or no religion, and suspect the nurse is going to persuade the patient to give money to her/his religious organization. 

Milk

T buys food at the supermarket and can stop looking for soy milk and buy semi-skimmed real milk again. He says it tastes better, even a little added to soy milk. 

He cancels the shopping trip he had planned. He feels too tired.

At the beginning of stage one of the treatment he spent a day in hospital under observation. Now he tells me he is feeling tired at home - but less tired than when in hospital on the same day of the cycle last month. Then he slept all day.

Wasting Time In Hospital

He has spent hours researching on the Internet. He is shocked that people sit for hours in hospital without a book, entertainment, or keeping themselves informed. 

Supporters

Some of the patients, out-patients, go to hospital in pairs, mother and daughter. Sometimes it's daughter with the older mother who is being treated. 

Other times you are shocked to see the younger daughter languidly resting in the chair while her older mother is standing, watching, or pacing about. But in this case it's mother helping the younger daughter who's being treated.

PEP Scanners

The UK has lots of the PEP scanners. (I keep wanting to call them PET scanners because I can't remember what that acronym stands for and it sounds like PET. He thought there were only five. But internet research shows not only the ones in Singapore (which is so small that from anywhere on the island you would not be far away even if they had only one). But the UK has several in major cities and so do Dublin and Belfast.

Hair

For the cold treatment to prevent the side effects of the drip, a woman in hospital wore a cold 'hat'. She was asked to remove her ear-rings and necklace. The cold could give her what I would call 'frostbite'.

His hair is falling, he says. He plays mournful classical music. Mourning loss of hair.

Hair today. Gone tomorrow.

I play jolly Country and Western. Not when he's around. Living together has many advantages. So does living apart. 

One has to keep cheerful.

Parking At Hospitals

Must find out if there are any concessionary rates for patients or outpatients at Northwick Park.

My late father spent a month dying in Watford General. They had a system where visitors of long stay patients could get a permit. But you needed to get it from an office which worked office hours, never open when we went at the official visitor times, in the evenings. You needed to get the form. Then take it to the ward to get a signature confirming the circumstances. Then back to the office. What a palaver. 

It would be so much easier if the ward had coupons and could hand you a fe.

Super Clean

End of the first 21 day cycle is the beginning of the hair loss.

We've heard people who shave their heads say that they did it to conceal the fact that they were thinning on top which gave a piebald effect. So that's an excuse to not worry granny about the cancer.  In any case she's so small she can't see the top of her son's head. 

Preparing food has become a cleanliness overdrive.

You can't take a pill, which involves putting your fingertips in your mouth, without washing your hands again before meals. In fact you wash your hands straight away. Because otherwise they contaminate everything.

I remember when I was teaching watching pupils who blew their noses and coughed into their hands and then borrowed my pens or handled the pages of my books and dictionaries. Same principle. 

Wash before 'clean activities' (eating) and after 'dirty activities' (picking up items you dropped on the floor, handling the boots you pulled off, or moved to the side of the room or corridor, or handling the wastebin, or taking out the rubbish.

It's like keeping kosher so that your parents or in-laws can visit, or keeping a special frying pan not used for meat, scrubbed with sand, for the visits of your Hindu family. I have to keep my home ultra-clean, even if the affected person is away overseas, ready for the return. 

I've always thought that paper kitchen roll is cleaner than kitchen sponges and wiping cloths. If you are brought up in a home where your parents thought that using kitchen roll was wasteful, and a sponge can be washed with a kettle of leftover boiling water that is the compromise you make. Now, there's no half measure.  

I look with disgust at tea towels. When I was at grammar school our domestic science teacher taught us to wash tea towels in boiling water after every meal. General knowledge from books on health and looking after your teeth has taught me germs multiply within an hour - so any used cloth should be disinfected within an hour - ideally after use so you don't go off and forget. 

The new system is to use a bowl of bleach as a resting place for the kitchen cloth. How about adding the sponge? Will it dissolve!

A restaurant has to become our second home, in the sense that we are creating a clean space around ourselves. Last weekend he asked our friends if he could take the communal bread and butter first.

In the restaurant I clean the basin and taps. The toilet handle. The door handle. If they've more than one cubicle I go back on a second visit to the same cubicle. So, nothing's changed.

You watch other people rubbing their noses, touching their hair, dabbing at their lips, even wiping their mouth with a table napkin. Don't even put me near children who pick their noses and then hand you sandwiches saying, 'Scuse fingers!'

I think, 'Are we exaggerating the fuss we are making?' Yesterday I spent the evening in a crowd of people (writers). A merry widower told me that his late wife died of breast cancer.

We phone and email all day with any news to do with cancer. TV celebrity Jane Goody, according to my understanding of the newspapers, now has cancer spread from the cervic to other parts. 

And today's old are yesterday's young. Another news report says that three quarters of the baby boomers, the postwar generation who enjoyed the Swinging Sixties, now have cancers of the ulva, vagina or anus - or all.  'Should have heeded the medical advice and warning - use condoms - the long term view.'

People say, 'It may never happen'. When you have cancer, you know it's already happened. And it will happen, if you aren't careful.

So our motto becomes, 'You can't be too careful.'  

I've been in one home for several days. I don't want to go to another family home. If I go to visit my son I am tidying up as I go.  The longer I stay away from a location the worse it gets. I go back and find dust to dust.

He will be here after lunch.

Yesterday I wiped the toilet handles - with throw-away wipes

What shall I do now?  The doorhandles. The light switches. I need hand cream as antidote to the loss of moisture caused by all the washing.

I always washed a lot. The undersides of my slippers.

Maybe I should clean the keys on my laptop.

That leaflet from the hospital about smoking giving you mouth cancer. I want to go up to all the people standing outside pubs and restaurants, telling them, 'Give it up!'

Created Feb 5 2009

Day 21 of the first course. (If you've just landed on my posts and not started at the beginning, I'm not the one with the cancer. It's one of my family and I'm a writer.) 

To protect the privacy of the person who has the cancer, call him T.

1 The Hospital Blood Test timing

The cancer patient is at the head of the list, marked urgent, for appointments and lab results.

We are going to book appointments ahead, making them early. T is an early riser. 

I only stick to a sensible regime if I have appointments or work or share a home, holiday, hotel or conference centre with others who go to bed early and rise early. (I think this is a personality thing. As an ENFP - P for perceiver - I call it procrastinator, I would always make appointments late in the day in case I overslept and missed it. If I am kept waiting hours, or have a bad reaction and can't work afterwords, at least I've already completed my other tasks of the day.)

This time the appointment was mid-morning. T likes medical appointments early. Your health comes first. Especially if it's cancer. Early morning appointments are less likely to be subject to delays cropping up during the day (yours, traffic, emergencies calling away the doctors). 

 

We've spent hours waiting previously at Northwick Park. So now we have a system going it's better. If you have deliveries to the office, annoyingly they often won't say what time they deliver. Some companies tell you morning or afternoon delivery. That's much better. You can't know whether you'll be back. the delivery companies (stationery, for example) say that it costs them if you are out and they deliver twice. 

They say the driver/despatcher won't phone you. But they do have phones. Today's driver phoned back to head office. They have to do that if you've changed something and their note says to deliver and they don't have a record to hand about collecting as well.

Even if we you live separately, which might be an option when you already have two homes, when you get a delivery and you are out at the medical appointments, somebody else has to be at your home or office to receive deliveries. It's a whole game, a caper. 

Losing Hair 

The ladies at my book group told me you can have a kind of ice pack scarf on your head during treatment to cut down on hair loss.

However, that might reduce the effectiveness of the treatment in that location. Brain tumours are not a problem. At this stage. But you never know.

I think hair loss is more demoralising for a woman - especially a long-haired woman, than a man.

Other options are to go completely bald with a bald haircut straight away. So there's nothing to fall out.

I read that you can buy wigs. Or even get them from the NHS. One view is: get as much as you are entitled to from the NHS. You've paid in for years. It's your right. It's providing employment for NHS workers and suppliers.

Another view is that if you are getting expensive drugs from the NHS, you can easily afford, if not a human hair wig, or one made from your own hair, a bandanna costing under five pounds.

Order online. It arrives a day or two later.  We have been through the buying bandannas phase.

Funny how yesterday's worry or problem, like yesterday's new shoes, like yesterday's news on TV, is of no interest a week later. 

Like my holidays and business trips. Two months or over a year later somebody asks, 'How was your holiday?' My reaction is, 'When did I last see you? Which holiday? I've forgotten. Go on line and see what I wrote at the time. I'm digressing. Let's go back to the subject of cancer treatments.

Long or cut short - 'and shortfall'

T's idea was to cut his hair short so his mother would not notice.

Also falling hair would be less of an embarrassment when out and less of an inconvenience at home. 

It turns out that longer hair is better. Longer hairs can be scooped up. Short hairs are harder to get hold of. You need to vacuum clean around the pillows and beds. 

We are hot on hygiene. Always have been. But now everybody is working together. Hairs and nail clippings feed dust mites in the bedding. On the floor they attract all sort of things. Like what? Probably carpet beetles. Germs. Never mind what dust and dirt attracts. We have to keep control.

Control

Control is the magic word, the important word. Important physically. Important mentally.

When you are ill, or have cancer, you feel out of control. My keeping  this diary or blog makes me feel in control.

Why do teenagers keep diaries? Because they are trying to make sense of life. Their body changes make them feel out of control. The diary puts them back in control.

Anne Frank had plenty of people to talk to, cooped up with adults. Although for long hours they had to remain silent in daytime so the office workers underneath and people living around would not hear them.

Being obliged to go into hiding, not allowed to go out, made them feel out of control. Being in danger of discovery made them feel out of control. Writing the diary put Anne back in control 

Plane Travel

Have we been over cautious? A nurse at the hospital advised against long-haul flights. Danger of infection.

On business you can travel with more space around, less danger of the person next to you coughing and sneezing over you. Fewer people breathing same air space.

The other problem to solve is that if you run a temperature, the symptoms resemble flu, your immune system is not fighting infection and you urgently need antibiotics. We've read on line that you need to be within four hours flying time of a hospital or medical attention. (I think ambulances come direct to the airport - so you get attention on landing.) But it seems that you need attention even faster. We (meaning T - telling me or emailing me) will now be investigating carrying an injectable antibiotic. On flights. 

We are with half an hour's drive of a hospital most areas of NW London.  

BLOG 3 Fitness And The Fifties

Fitness And The Fifties

Trevor is pretty fit for a man who has passed fifty. He was going to the gym three times a week and picking hotels which have gyms. 

He climbed to base camp on Mount Everest. He said it took three weeks to trek across to Everest from Kathmandu, before you even started the ascent. 

The souvenir food from local diet consisted of such delicacies as yak cheese. My favourite food is chicken and chips. (Actually chicken or veal with any kind of potato. I do eat durian, an oriental fruit which smells so strongly that signs on Singapore stations forbid you to carry it. Trevor does not like durian.)

Fifty seems to be a magic number, a crossroads, for health. Trevor goes on line to research. He has developed lymphoma in the decade when white men get it.

Look On The Bright Side

Can there be a bright side? He had wanted to live separately and have separate holidays. 

They say that Hong Kong is the graveyard of marriages. 

He cannot be having affairs over in the Far East. Though he can be in Europe.  

He doesn’t mind me dating other people. He put my photo on a dating internet site for me. I am not short of offers. 

I’ve had three offers of marriage. And lots of other offers - which did not involve marriage. 

When somebody phones for me, Trevor says, ‘One of your suitors.’

Lifestyle - Before Cancer

***

Blog 2 Lifestyle

Trevor never sat still. Trevor had been based in Singapore more than ten years, on and off, jetting about, yo-yoing back to London, across to Europe, over to the USA, to India, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Pakistan, and running in ‘the hash’ (paperchase) through the Singapore jungle on Monday nights. 

He’d trekked to the Himalayas, (three parts) many volcanoes in Indonesia, and Mount Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo. Also climbed in Scotland up Ben Nevis.

He skis on black runs, ‘depends how black they are.’  He is ‘not scared of steepness.’ He does not do moguls which he tackled once after a day’s lesson, ‘as that requires technique’. 

As for the motor bike(s), he did have an international race license for three years or more. 

He once told me and his mother he had sold his motor bike. We were very glad. Cars are much safer. As one of the major car manufacturers said in an advertisement, ‘Buy your son a motorbike for his last birthday.’ 

We were so relieved. The following week he bought a new bike.

Insurance

On hearing somebody has cancer, one of the first things you ask is, what health insurance do you have? This is not a question you can easily ask about riding a motor bike. But it seems a more reasonable question to ask when you are dealing with cancer and know the other person may be in hospital and you will have to deal with doctors and hospital letters.

And how would it affect his pension?

Although Trevor was working overseas and paying overseas tax, he was born in Britain, had an National Insurance number, and Trevor had kept up all his payments to the NHS. In fact he was told that he had paid more than necessary, because the law had changed to allow you to stop certain taxes at the age of 50, but he had continued paying them.  

Now that he has cancer, I understand he no longer has the option of joining BUPA.

Then there’s travel insurance. Insurers will not insure you if you travel against medical advice. We always used to discuss this when there were incidents abroad. Once he was willing to go to an area of a foreign country which was away from the capital where bombs had been dropped. Then the company said that even if he was prepared to take the risk, they weren’t. Not on humanitarian grounds but financial ones. I don’t suppose that senior people cared much in advance, but they had to consider not just the inconvenience of losing a member of staff but the financial loss. The insurance company had told them that staff should not travel. 

I had read in the expat newspapers similar instructions. Your insurance company would not cover you if you travelled when the Foreign Office said you mustn’t. Updates were available on line.

You might feel like characters in an Agatha Christie whodunnit, that if you were dying of cancer, you might as well live dangerously. But people in Agatha Christie novels did not think of insurance (unless they were fraudulently claiming on it and the whole plot hinged on that).   

Risk-taker

I would describe Trevor as a risk-taker. I would not describe myself as a risk taker. Trevor skis. I gave up skiing. The first time I fell over. 

Trevor prepares for a marathon by running up and down the stairs of a Singapore apartment block to the tenth floor. He adds a rucksack with more and more weights.

Trevor was still riding a motor bike. I thought the greatest risk to Trevor’s life was the motorbike. Now he has had to give up the motorbike. 

Take care

While his immune system is down, in the middle of the 21 day treatment cycle, he cannot risk a cut getting infected.

So no bike rides. No jungle runs. No sharp knives. Be careful opening tins. 

Don’t touch wheelie bins. Take shoes off when you come in the house. Wash with disinfectant gel when you come in the house. Leave your shoes and outdoor clothes by the door. Wash before meals. Before touching plates to lay the table. Before unloading supermarket food into the fridge.

Do not use trains at busy times. Separate bathrooms are best. Others could catch something from you. 

Cancer - nothing to worry about

CANCER DIARY

by Angela Lansbury

A book in progress based on blogs.

The story of Trevor’s cancer, treatment, and how it affects the family, told by Angela

Picture Trevor and me when we were younger and Trevor was in robust good health.

CONTENTS

First News Of Cancer 

Who's stressed? 

Insurance

        We Are Not Worried, Yet

        Look on the bright side

Risk-taker 

Fitness And The Fifties

Stress

The Lump

 2008 Worry 

Diagnosis Lymphoma

 Prognosis 

6 months treatment. Staging.

 Treatment Starts. Pills. Isolation. 

 Progress

First News Of Cancer

The cancer started as a lump on the neck while Trevor was on an overnight flight back to Singapore from London. 

Trevor says nobody knows the cause of cancer - or it could have multiple causes, an inherited weakness, then a trigger, which could be a virus. 

What bothers me is that if it is lifestyle or inherited it could be passed on to me (less likely as it affects men more) or our son. If it’s lifestyle we need to change it - as we are doing - as you will see if you read on. 

If it’s catching, I might catch it. He insists it is not contagious. We’ll come onto what is contagious or infectious later. If stress affects one’s vulnerability, see what you think of Trevor’s lifestyle. Frequent flier. Skier. Trekker. Climbs volcanoes. 

Spent the night in a jungle. Runs through the jungle. Photographs dangerous snakes -  close up - until his friends tell him to stay away. 

And nearly dies when hospitalised with an infected cut - three weeks after being cut. About the year 2000. He now reveals, ‘That was more dangerous than the lymphoma. Afterwards the doctor at the Singapore hospital told me she’d been very worried about me.’

I remember he phoned me from hospital in Singapore to tell me all about it. I was in the car with Mr Edmund de Rothschild and his chauffeur, getting a private tour of the paths through Exbury Gardens near Southampton in the New Forest. After lunch with the Rothschilds. A dream come true. My big moment. 

Then Trevor rings my mobile to say he is in hospital and has nearly died in Singapore. Mr Rothschild politely jumps out of the car to allow me privacy. So does the chief gardener The chauffeur jumps out, too. I am abandoned - between the towering rhododendrons, no idea where I am, no idea where they’ve gone, And Trevor is telling me he is feeling much better. 

Who Was Most Stressed?

He flew to England overnight on Singapore Airlines arriving before 5.55 a.m. on Wednesday October 8th 2008. After breakfast he drove to Bristol to sign a document. No time for lunch. Just a sandwich. We had to drive back to London so he could catch his flight. If the traffic back to London was bad, he might miss the flight.

We reached London on time, late afternoon. Then we phoned and summoned the family to an early family dinner at a restaurant. I asked our son to collect my mobile phone from the phone shop on the way.

We told the restaurant owner that Trevor’s food should be served immediately, no waiting for the rest of us. During the starter a man arrived at the restaurant door, asking for us. The mobile phone shop in Northwood delivered my phone. My son who I’d asked to collect my phone instead organized that. I was surprised and so was the restaurant owner. 

Half way through our main courses the hire car arrived ready to whisk Trevor off to Heathrow. The restaurant owner looked stunned. 

I bet most families simply sit down docilely and eat dinner. She had seen us before. So she knew that although one family member had done a runner, we would pay. But I think  ‘bring his main course quickly!’, then just watching all this hoo-ha, must have stressed her. 

That day was certainly stressful for me, waking up early, being a passenger to Bristol and back in a day, then racing through dinner, knowing he had to catch a flight.

I expected him to come down with a cold. I was not surprised to hear him phone and say he had a health problem. If he’d had a rash or a lump that would have struck me as a natural result of being overtired, one’s body saying slow down. I had that feeling of, if not ‘I told you so,’ at least ‘what would one expect’. 

I thought, I hoped, that after he had rested he would get back to normal. I got the news in a phone call to England from Singapore.

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