Ben Welsher | Writings

Day X - Birmingham It's not an easy thing to summate the thoughts and feelings of the past few weeks and I attempt it now not entirely confident that I will be successful. Indeed I am waiting for the usual flow to take me but the current is not there, stagnant I think is the descriptor. I look back at highs and lows, the 'emotional ECG' of it and find cause to treat any sensation or mood with a wary eye so mindful am I now of their fleeting conviction. One day joy, the next gloom, was either emotion worth the heartstring it was written on? It’s as if there if there is no definable identity, you are one of a myriad of personalities created only by a given state of mind. The subconscious and its teeming processes are hidden from our analysis but every second of every day they are creating and destroying you like a miniature Shiva inside us all. But there is solace in such vibrant variation and the furious energy it seems to grant, home is such a comfortable coma where I co...

As I reach the end of my course of medication I look back at the variety of pharmaceuticals I swallowed, usually in complete ignorance of their purpose. Having done some 'research' into these colourful little concoctions I present the results below. Top to bottom, left to right. 1, Name : Forte Type : Caplet Size : Very large Colour : Dried blood Purpose : This pill establishes whether there is any constriction of the airway, being sized, as it is, to the average human airway. If it becomes lodged in the throat constriction has occurred. In this way it is a little like Witch dunking in it's functioning. Side effects : Death by asphyxiation 2, Name : Vizylac Type : Caplet Size : Medium Colour : Shocking pink Purpose : This pill is administered when a patient has temporarily lost the use of one leg. It enables the patient to comfortably put all their bodyweight on the other leg for extended periods of time thereby increasing mobility. Contains extract of Fla...

Day T-0 - Delhi My bandages were fresh, discharge set for 2PM and we waited. At 3PM my consultant bade us 'au revoir' and we were free but for the small matter of a large bill. A bill that in it's compilation took longer than The Domesday Book. First it was a two hour wait (incredulity) then another hour (incensement), wars have lasted less time. Indian efficiency and mindless, box-ticking beadledom was set to 11 and suddenly an extra hour on top of the 700ish already spent in the Apollo Hospital seemed intolerable. We threatened (and nearly effected) a walkout which, credit to Indian resolve, speeded the process not one bit. I feel in hindsight, and looking at the 37 page document that eventually arrived, that the problem lay partially with the communication of the complexities of the task. How on earth the hospital accounted for 955 individual items on that bill I shall never know. From the syringe (7.7 rupees) and it's needle (3.1 rupees) to it's contents and t...

Day T-2 - Delhi I've no love for private healthcare. For all its myriad imperfections the NHS can stand proudly (if not literally) next to the Great Pyramid as one of humankind's greatest wonders and most transcendent creations. Having been in the Indian health industry's life-pricing clutches for the best part of a month I'm left faintly disappointed. For all intents and purposes and since I have insurance (thanks ma!) this experience differs very little from the one I would have had if I had thrown myself from a train back in the UK (or a less impossible but equally deleterious deed). Surely they're missing a trick here? My treatment won't be cheap but it has been standard, where are my choices? Where's the menu Doc? I guess I'm getting the best the hospital offers but how can I be sure unless there are clearly delineated tiers of care? Health tourism is growing massively not least in the Subcontinent but apart from competitive prices what's the...

Day T-6 - Delhi There seems to be a lot of shouting coming from outside my window. Either there is maintenance going on or the hospital has realised how grossly underutilised the roof space is and has created a new ward out there populated by the most vocal patients. The hands of the clock draw slowly around its face, 40 hours on the same piece of furniture, surely a new personal record. My new(er) wheelchair (freshly pilfered from the 3rd floor, kudos Attendant) stands forlorn and empty. All pleas for early release on the grounds of good behaviour have been flatly denied. It might be just me but the less you can do for yourself the less of a person you actually feel. I sit up, I lie down, 90 degrees of movement, 6 degrees of separation from the person you were. All high melodrama really but also an injection of sensation into a vacuum of stimuli. Anyway the doctors came and unwrapped my leg after 46 hours, a slow roast if ever there were one. For those of you more concerned with my ...

Day T-8 - Delhi I'm afraid the precise day of the trip on which we're on is impossible for me to pin down as time seems to pass in a different manner inside the walls of a hospital. I have therefore resorted to using possible days until discharge. Any stay beyond a few days in these places sees the familiar structure of your normal life break down or, more aptly, decay. The only constants would seem to be the times at which drugs are administered. Sleep is fitful and disjointed but is infinitely better than if I were on a ward with its perpetual twilight, its dimmed quiet. I like the isolation of this room, when the doors are closed it is my kingdom and I order it as I fancy. Of course there are limits to my power imposed by a pantheon of higher beings beyond the door. But they check my actions for my own good, benevolent gods if you will. I feel an odd contentedness this morning but I'm loathe to trust a feeling of positivity without knowing from whence it sprung. Has my...

Further to my previous post you may be wondering how all those people find sufficient activities to fill their time. Well wonder no longer, the list of tasks for maintaining just this patient is innumerable.I have cataloged a random day from around a week ago up until lunchtime. N.b. 'peek' denotes when a hospital worker opens the door to look inside but does not actually enter the room (the purpose is never known), the number in brackets is persons required for task. 00:01 - 05:45 Drip stand check every 45 minutes or so 05:45 - Blood test 06:00 - Tea 06:05 - Sheet change 06:10 - Drip stand check/robe change 06:28 - Housekeeping (2) 06:45 - Blood pressure check 06:49 - Tea collection 07:07 - Drip stand check 07:10 - Papers 07:30 - Drip stand check 07:50 - Drip stand check 08:05 - Peek 08:08 - Drip stand check (2) 08:14 - Breakfast 08:18 - Doctor's questions 08:25 - Peek 08:27 - Drip stand check (2), blood test, breakfast collection 08:46 - Doctor's c...

The Apollo Hospital in New Delhi employs a multitude of staff in various different roles. To aid in their visual differentiation they usually wear different coloured uniforms. I have described the types below according to my experience of them and identified possible roles where I can. Blue Shirts - Generally unpossessed of English or alternatively forbidden from talking to patients. Quite lowly, frequent surly look may indicate dissatisfaction and possibly plans of uprising against superiors. Known wheelchair thieves, always be sat in yours or have hidden it in toilet when a Blue Shirt is around. Attendant and Blue Shirt captured in same picture - Red Shirts - Housekeeping. English also tends to be limited but is given freer rein than that of the Blue Shirts. If something should be picked up from the floor then these people must be called, no-one else is qualified. Sometimes employed as limb support during bandage changes with varying degrees of efficacy. Yellow Shirts - Rarer ...

A day - Delhi I sit behind glass doors that won't be opened looking over a city that can't be explored. A famous philosopher once said that he'd rather be living in a cave looking at the Taj Mahal than living in the Taj looking at a cave, an interesting perspective. At least my confinement allows me to conjure fanciful notions of the world outside or, more accurately, my position within it. I am become detached from its ebb and flow, its bustle, its spin. My presence in that world is just that of an avatar, given life only by my imagination. All that I have ever done or ever might do seems superimposed when I look through the window at a planet that will not stop turning, where time will not stop ticking. Did I expect it to? Surely not! Such self-inflicted interludes have been my lot before. Perhaps never before though have I been so eager to to get on with the life that I have paused. But then of course I need only the briefest respite from daily reality to conceive the ...

Day 0 - India The Indians believe we we have reached the Age of Kali, the final dice throw when, If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of the mighty one I am become death the destroyer of worlds. Shame, I rather like India. An apocryphal epoch in which to visit this this vast wedge of land with a history all of its own. It has endlessly fascinated me since I first visited, indeed it may well be the impetus for this particular journey. I have endeavoured to understand the people, the culture, the esprit du corps. I have thus far failed but wholly enjoyed the toil. The dubious British gift of bureaucracy lingers and we had come together as a small band of travellers in the Kandy visa office to collectively curse, pray and wonder at the process by which we'd earn our entry sticker. After what seemed like, and was, hours we had the approval we needed, a paltry three months but surely sufficient barring any mishaps...

Day 13 - Nuwara Eliya It happened. Somewhere on the train between Peredeniya and Nanu Oya a romantic, idealistic, sure-to-be-disappointed dream of travel was made flesh. The butterflies in my stomach fluttered through valleys and hills blanketed with tea plantations. The land was verdant green and cool and there was an affinity with it I'd never before known. The trees turned straight and tall, their russet foliage contrasting with the lime of the shrubbery. The grass was no longer wide and indolent but prim and upright much as if the British had imported their own all those years ago. I talked about the country around with a Nederlander whose meditation related injuries suggested it was not always the calming experience it purported to be. Later, sitting in the door of the train I slipped into a whirlpool of feeling from which I would barely escape. All seemed possible even that which was not. Next to my beastly filth sat dark intrigue that intoxicated with tales of the world. I ...

Day 11 - Kandy We bussed it back down to Kandy yesterday and for once arrived in a place at a reasonable hour to find accommodation. Leaning against a building next to Trinity College we decided to search again for the place where a bed for the night costs less than a bottle of Coke. Up into the hills again we went, a young Buddhist monk reoriented us and sent us back to the very building we had been leaning again. Finally we observed the small lettering of the 'Burmese Rest'. An exuberant puppy greeted us and managed to draw blood on my hand, he didn't look rabid so I should be alright. We were welcomed at 'The Pub' with the familiarity of regulars which by flighty tourist standards I suppose we were. A beautifully cool pint of Lion on the roof terrace atop a nearby hotel ended the evening. Today (Friday) we struck out for the Elephant Orphanage. Intrepid ideas of connecting buses were forgotten with the chartering of a private taxi. We descended the hills at a d...

Day 9 - Polonaruwa/Sigiriya/Dambulla Bemoaning the sedate pace of the train we switched to the bus for the journey to Polonaruwa. They are rattling old beasts but, judging by the crush of people aboard, the most popular way to travel. In this compressed way we passed the next few hours, the monotony only broken when my pack fell from the overhead rack onto a fellow passenger. He took this assault from above most amiably and offered me pineapple. I've found most Sri Lankans to be of this cheery disposition and how pleasant to be offered a warm smile for looking different rather than the traditional fear and suspicion. Our landlady rather bucked the trend with her repeated attempts to extract money from us and indignation that we should choose to spend it elsewhere. She did tempt us into having our sweat-sodden clothes cleaned though the headband of my hat, stained betel juice red is surely beyond hope. I admire Sri Lankan's industry and constant efforts to earn a living wage....

Day 7 - Anuradhapura I hope We tried our hand at hairdressing this morning, or barbary in Michael's case, my Nicky Clarke to his Sweeney Todd. Uncontent with a freshly shaved head he also removed a fair portion of his eyebrows. I am trying not to laugh too hard, I am failing. The staff at the Indian visa office didn't seem to notice the discrepancy between his picture and his actual appearance so no harm was done, except to his ability to look normal. The applications filed we were instructed to return to Kandy to collect in two weeks once the bureaucratic machine had spun its interminable wheels. That may not be time enugh given that the train on which we are travelling north has been broken for two hours...tbc Engines came, engines went, the train spluttered forward, the train stopped. Heads were scratched. The mercantile vein ploughed its ceaseless circuit with all manner of foodstuffs from apples and nuts to, based on the seller's cry, 'showaddywaddy'. We reac...

Day 5 – Kandy Like it or loathe it, whatever your view of Kandy it can flip in a heartbeat. An 8 hour train from Galle (2 less than the journey that got us to Sri Lanka) does sensitise a person to the tribulations inevitable to unplanned travel but nonetheless our first evening in the spiritual capital was one of extraordinary frustration and rare anger. We searched first for the £3.50 a night guesthouse run by Burmese monks. Alas no trace could be found on its supposed road or in people’s local knowledge. We entered into the familiar tug of war with a tuk-tuk driver over where we wanted to go and where he wanted to take us. We checked into a mosquito-ridden guesthouse where the beer had run out by the ‘charming’ ethnic music being played in the garden most certainly had not. I don’t know if it was a man or a woman that ran the place but I do know he/she had a mightily impressive afro. Over a bottle of Coke we began talking to a well travelled Serb whose interest s clearly lay in the...

Day 3 – Galle Colombo’s inexpensive but inextensive (don’t check your dictionaries) charms receded into the distance as we pulled out of Fort Station. We traded urban bustle for serene blue sea and as our train hugged the south coast nothing lay beyond the horizon but water and ice. I sat in the door of the train to watch the altered world pass by. Shacks lined the track and dotted the beach, a meagre existence for sure but one soothed perhaps by the constant crash of waves. We passed a sign ‘navel gazing ahead’. Do they look beyond the horizon the people within? Or can any of us not? Aren’t we all born of a planet where a journey can only end in a practical or emotional sense rather than a geographical one? There is a need to push our imaginary boundaries even when the desert ahead seems endless. Perhaps it is courage to stay or perhaps it is courage to resist that urge to stray. I should think that our lives are long enough to do both. Galle swelters on the Southern tip of the isla...

Day 1 - Colombo The city awoke early and so, after 10 hours in the air, did we. The steaming heat had already settled on Colombo and the first drop of perspiration trickled down my brow. The Sri Lankans have embraced the Ryanair concept of airport naming and 'Colombo' airport is a full two hours taxi ride from the city proper, still at £12 for the fare our complaints were few. Glossy billboards extolling our Western mores marked our path, the abnormally whitened faces in contrast to the populace about. But here we were, drunken concept made real and many miles of (malaria) pills 'n' thrills and bellyaches lay ahead. I confess the long demanded excitement was quickly subsumed by practicality and the as yet, planning being what it was, unfulfilled need for accommodation. If only there were a place where we could have-a-good-time, possibly with a Native American, a Policeman, a cowboy and that other one? There was and at £3.50 a night represented a very good deal. Colomb...