Published at 09:36, Friday, 11 December 2009

I WAS feeling a little sorry for myself the other day.

A trip to Egypt had left me with a decidedly dodgy stomach, which had me swigging kaolin and morphine like Tizer, and hoovering up various thickening agents, none of which seemed to have any effect on my rebellious alimentary canal.

I was so drained I even went to the doctors, to be issued with a pot and stick in which I had to provide a sample.

I was still wondering how I was going to hit the pot when things spontaneously dried up, but I was left with a thundering headache and a need to have soothing towels applied to my head.

I was even off my food, which caused great alarm at the Holland’s pie factory, and my Red Sea tan had turned a decidedly muddy colour.

I was suitably ashamed when I got a phone call from my sister, who between sobs told me she had breast cancer.

“I don’t want only one boob and a bald ’ead,” she wailed.

When God was dishing out the health and good fortune cards, he certainly gave her the rawest of raw deals.

When she was about three, she wandered into the kitchen of my Nana’s house and helped herself to several generous glugs from a bottle of lemonade.

Unfortunately, the bottle contained not pop, but paraffin, and while the doctor who pumped her stomach, and advised that she should not be allowed to sit close to the fire for a few days, said there would be no lasting effects, my mother was never convinced.

She appeared to make a full recovery, but was painfully thin, so much so that my callous brother and I nicknamed her “The Bone”, and took childish delight in beating her up when it came to the line “We all pat the bone” in the nursery rhyme, The farmer’s in his den.

Like her big brother, she was incredibly accident prone, getting knocked down by an ice cream van, and falling out of a moving Mini when she reached her teens.

She got married, and emigrated to Canada, still as thin as a crow, and had a daughter, but she was already experiencing stomach problems.

She was eventually diagnosed with a very severe case of the savage intestinal disorder Crohn’s Disease.

She was in and out of hospital more frequently than most nurses, and after having several metres of colon removed in a long succession of painful operations, she had a total colostomy.

She was only 19.

While most teenagers were strutting their stuff in bikinis and the like, she had to endeavour to conceal an embarrassing contraption usually associated with the elderly.

The fact that she did so, managing to wear the tightest jeans and tops, is a tribute to her style and ingenuity.

Her entire torso was so riven with scalpel scars it looked like a Google Earth shot of Crewe Station, but she somehow maintained a sunny disposition and a cheery outlook on life.

Her marriage ended in divorce, but she remarried and had another child.

She used to reel off the names of famous celebrities, including pop stars and members of the Royal family reputed to have undergone the same operation.

“Look – when he stands sideways you can see the bulge,” she would crow whenever a well-known entertainer jiggled on stage.

All the steroids and other drugs which were pumped into her took their toll, and several times she was rushed into hospital with major organ failure.

She had a long-running feud with another family member, and when things were looking particularly grim at the hospital one day, she opened one eye and whispered: “If I snuff it, that bugger’s not coming to my funeral!”

Typically, she rallied round, but now her digestive system is non-existent, and she has to be fed through a permanent tube in her chest.

Contracting cancer on top of all that seems cruel in the extreme, but when I rang her a couple of days after that harrowing first call, her normal equilibrium had somehow been restored.

Happily, the operation was a complete success, with no need for chemotherapy or any other further unpleasantness.

She was out of hospital after only a couple of days, fighting spirit still fully intact.

She confided: “Her across the street said I couldn’t have had the operation – so I threw my false boob at her to prove it!”

That’s my girl!

Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk