And the good news is

My doctor is wearing his surgical gear. He looks like a Guantanamo Bay inmate who got given blue instead of orange. I’ve never seen him in anything other than his usual uniform of khaki trousers, plain shirt and sober tie. It’s a bit of a shock. He looks a lot younger in his loose fitting clown pyjama get-up. As he greets me we share an awkward moment and he smiles as if to say, yeah I know I look daft. I can’t look him in the eyes. No good looking at the floor either, he’s wearing plastic sandals. This is not a good look. My doctor is not coming across like a man who saves lives for a living; more like someone who makes balloon animals at children’s parties. He directs me through a door, “We’ll go in here. It’s the room we break the bad news in.” Whoa, back up Coco, whaddaya mean the room we break the bad news in? My mind revs into action. “Take a seat, Martin.” This is it, this exactly how it happens on TV. I take in my surroundings. There’s the box of Kleenex on the coffee table. Oh God. I mentally brace myself for the worst. Next to the Kleenex is a plastic model of the intestines, to help explain things probably. I know the drill; I’ve seen Casualty. In the middle of the coffee table is the ubiquitous bunch of flowers. Come on, balloon bender, give it to me straight. Don’t pull any punches. The pictures on the walls are all generic pinks and lilacs. Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! My doctor smiles beatifically and I snap to my senses at once. There is no bad news. How could there be? I haven’t had any tests done recently. I’m not waiting for the results of anything. The ‘bad news’ room just happened to be convenient. I’m only here to pick up a new prescription and talk about swapping to different tablets. I sink back into my chair, no longer condemned. I’m lucky; I got to see the ‘bad news’ room without getting the ‘bad news’. It’s not a nice place. I know they’ve tried to make it look homely and peaceful and unscary, but for me the décor is just a bit too, well, 1989. That’s just my feelings though. Maybe psychologists somewhere have proven that 1989 is a particularly good antidote to terrible news?

The ideal Xmas gift for the ulcerative colitis sufferer in your life

This is a bin for the bathroom, which holds your magazine for you whilst you read on the toilet. Which means you’re hands-free. So you can forget the whole archaic rigmarole of putting the magazine down on the floor for the wiping stage. Oh no my friends, this little chrome beauty means you can read and wipe at the same time. Read and wipe. At the same time. This is 21st Century living. I bet The Jetsons didn’t even have a bin like this. If there’s a bathroom bin, anywhere in the world, better suited to the needs of someone with ulcerative colitis, I want to see it. There won’t be one. This is it. This is the bin we’ve been waiting for. Bathroom waste disposal/reading aids don’t get more exciting than this. Speaking of bathroom bins with dual use, have you ever noticed how girls’ bathroom bins would make perfect nests? With all those fluffy cotton wool ball things, soft make up removing pads, scrunched up tissues and loose hair from the hairbrush, I reckon they’d be an ideal place for an Arctic Tern to snuggle up in.

Wednesday's diary on a Thursday 1.7

Ta-da! Back on the prednisolone.

Wednesday 7th November:
6am Loose stool, blood
7.45am Loose stool, blood mucus
1.50pm Loose stool
3.50pm Loose stool
7pm Loose stool, light blood
8.40pm Blood mucus

Medication:
6 x Mesalazine 400mg
6 x Prednisolone 5mg
3 x Ferrous Sulphate 200mg
2 x Calcium Carb 1.25g

Comments:
Going to the toilet more, not as tired, joints don't ache as much.

In loving memory

When she laughs she tilts her head back, reminding me of a photograph of one of Jack the Ripper’s victims I saw in a book once. It’s six thirty on a Saturday morning and I’m watching Liz, the landlady of The Old Crown pour me a whiskey, no ice; that melted hours ago, like a polar bear’s worst nightmare. I’m thinking that for a single woman living on her own, Liz’s dressing gown and nightie are not what you’d expect. There’s nothing practical or comfortable about them. She's still buying clothes with a second party in mind, the game old bird. It’s all a bit Carry On Up The Old Crown. Me perched there like Sid James Junior. Liz puts my drink in front of me and seats herself opposite. I start talking. I use a catch phrase from a new comedy on telly. Liz’s face hardens briefly. She doesn’t get the reference and winds a stray thread from the hem of the curtains round her finger and yanks it off. Doesn’t have the time to watch a lot of telly she says. She did have a TV in the bar for a time, but the old boys only used to argue about what channel they wanted on. It’s a public house not a television room in an old folks home she told them. Liz’s laugh ended life as a sigh. I start telling her about my brother Warren. She must have seen me about with him, I tell her. Big lad. I get onto how when our mum died it knocked Warren for six. The both of us really, but especially Warren. Mum really looked after him. Warren needed looking after. But when she died he withdrew into himself, I was left to organise everything. Warren didn’t speak for a week after the funeral. I tried talking to him, but in the end I left him to it, figured he’d work it all out in his own time. Which he did, to his credit. He came bounding up to me in The Wheatsheaf, big grin on his face, saying he’s had an idea and wants to apologise for being a useless so-and-so. Never swears, Warren. Good like that. He’s tripping over his words, about how he went for a walk in the park, because mum always loved it there. That’s where he got his idea. He’d noticed that all the benches had little brass plaques on them in memory of people. You know, like ‘In Loving Memory of Mary Hedger, who spent many a happy hour in this park.’ Warren wants to get one made up for mum, which is a terrific idea because mum really did love that park and all the flowers. So, I buy Warren a Pepsi and tell him that I’ll leave it all up to him. He can choose the words, the lot. The big lump’s made up, he wants to do it so bad he doesn’t even finish his drink. I’m telling Liz all this and she’s nodding her head, squinting her eyes now and then, in that kind of sympathetic way some people have. Then, I say to her, you’ll never guess what, a week later Warren comes and finds me again. This time I’m in The Coach & Horses. Warren’s eyes are all red and his top lip is all snotty. I sit him down and tell him to take his time. He dutifully ignores me and blurts out this story about how he’d been up the park to take a look at mum’s plaque. He liked to go up there and read it. He was that pleased with himself. He’d done something for mum and he was proud as punch. But this time when he got up the park mum’s plaque had gone. It wasn’t on the bench any more. Someone had only gone and unscrewed it and stuck it onto a nearby litter bin. It broke Warren’s heart, and I wasn’t best pleased either. Who’d do that? Why? No respect some people. I finish my pint and we head up the park to see if we can’t sort this mess out. Warren takes me to the litter bin and sure enough there’s mum’s plaque firmly fixed to it. They’d done a nice job I had to admit. Next Warren leads me over to mum’s bench and things start to become a bit clearer. There are four vacant screw holes where mum’s plaque had been, but next to those four holes is another, older plaque for someone else. Warren had only bloody gone and fixed mum’s plaque to someone else’s bench. The dipstick hadn’t realised you had to have your own bench. You can’t just go and stick your plaque on someone else’s and hope they don’t mind hotching up, I told him. My guess is the family of the old dear had been passing their mum’s bench only to discover she’d got company. A lodger. Our mum. And they must have been the ones who stuck mum’s plaque on the bin. I couldn’t laugh because Warren was upset by it all. I took him into a nice little pub I know nearby and had a bit of a chat with him. Told him that maybe mum’s spirit had been up the park and moved the plaque to the litter bin. He quite took to that idea because mum had always been tidy. Never one to drop litter. She always had a handbag full of sweet wrappers did mum. Cheered Warren up no end as it goes and he soon lost himself in a bag of peanuts. Now, every year if you go up the park on the 5th April you’ll see a big, lanky lad placing a bouquet of flowers carefully and respectfully into a litter bin. And that is my brother, Warren. Liz smiles and I drain my glass. I launch into another story. The words keep tumbling out, whilst behind my eyes, deep in the back of my mind there’s a little voice fighting to be heard above the torrent of half truths and lies…what sort of person opens their pub up at six in the morning for someone they barely know? Who wakes up the landlady of a pub at six in the morning for a drink? And since when did I have a brother called Warren?

I do miss pubs and the people that populate them. This story is dedicated to a certain breed of man common to the great British boozer. He may not tell you the truth, but he will tell you a tale or two.

Drum rolls and toilet rolls

I do really want to learn German. I do. But there’s something niggling away at me. I kind of wish I’d decided to learn drums on the toilet instead. It would’ve been perfect. You can do it sitting down for a start. The din of my paradiddles would also conveniently drown out the sound of my pooing. And Keith Moon has always been a hero of mine. Not only am I in awe of his insane drumming, but his life, like mine seemed somehow welded to all things lavatorial. Legend has it Moon liked to drop cherry bombs into hotel toilets. I too drop things of a destructive nature into toilets. The cover of his only solo album Two Sides of the Moon features Keith ‘mooning’ out of a car window. Just as I have in my time had to show my backside to a fair few folk. The similarities between us are uncanny. Okay, I’m just procrastinating. I know it's much easier to take a German textbook into the toilet than a full drum kit. It’s just German seems so hard. And Keith Moon makes drumming seem so effortless and fun. Maybe what I need is a German Keith Moon to inspire me?

Putting faeces to names

I wonder if Paul Whiteman missed out on any Halloween parties because he thought he’d find it difficult without having a drink? Did Sophie Atkins decide against going to the fireworks display because there wouldn’t be any toilets nearby? Is David Offland sick and tired of being too exhausted after work to help his kids with their homework? Does Gill Palmieri use the public toilets down the road from her office because she thinks her colleagues will hear her if she uses the ones at work? Is Mike Wellum worried that his new girlfriend thinks he’s got a coke habit because he’s always nipping off to the toilet and is gone for ages? Is Beth Breton scared she’ll lose her husband because she finds sex a bit too uncomfortable? Does Joe Higman find it less embarrassing to just not go back into the lecture that he had to leave halfway through to go to the toilet? In the back of her mind is Angela Fenn afraid the baby she is carrying will grow up to have ulcerative colitis like her? For the first time in 18 months did Colin Howlett see blood in the toilet today? The Ulcerative Colitis UK petition now has 196 signatures. The names I used above were ‘borrowed’ from the list. 196 probably isn’t nearly enough to make a difference yet, but it is the biggest group of people affected by UC I’ve ever seen gathered in one place. Seeing all those names like that made me think a bit. Between them every British accent will be covered. There’ll be Brummies, Scousers, Geordies, Welsh, Glaswegians, Cockneys and maybe even someone from Nuneaton. Every faction of our ever-resilient class system will be fully represented. I did note there were one or two double-barrelled names adding an air of grandeur to the list (evening, m’am.) There will be florists, roofers, accountants, IT people, call centre workers, shopkeepers, plumbers, drivers, sales people and managing directors, but probably no Punch and Judy professors. Different people from different walks of life. You can be a cabbie from Tooting or a member of the Royal Family ulcerative colitis doesn’t appear to be choosey. Names on a list. People with lives. People like you and me.

Wednesday's diary on a Thursday 1.6

You know what, I've been thinking. I should just call this The Groundhog Day Diaries.

Wednesday 31st October:
6.35am Loose stool, blood mucus
11.25am Loose stool
1pm Loose stool
4.30pm Loose stool
9.10pm Loose stool

Medication:
6 x Mesalazine 400mg
3 x Ferrous Sulphate 200mg
2 x Calcium Carb 1.25g

Comments:
Phil! Phil Connors! I thought that was you!