22 March 2021

This book tells the story vividly of author and poet Michael Rosen’s descent into Covid and his harrowing climb out of it – with help!

 

different kind of love.png

 

And how its left him with:

Islands of memory

Seas of forgetting (p219)

It’s a compelling story, told mainly in blank verse, with the diary ICU Staff wrote for him whilst he was in a 40+ day induced coma.

I am getting it that 

There is  a place 

Between life and death

 

I was there for weeks… (p179)

It also includes times from his stay at our St Pancras Rehab Service and his Sticky McStickstick ( ‘nose over toes…’) and a celebration of staff who are the NHS.

There are lighter moments:

‘Your oxygen tank is empty,’ he says.

‘I think I need one that’s full,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ he says

And:

They’ve been worried

about my low blood pressure

but they’ve bought me the Daily Mail

So it’ll be fine in just a moment. (p101)

 

 

And:

The Nurse tells Peter in the bed opposite

that his urine is dark.

‘The times are dark,’ he says. (P121)

And:

I read the accompanying leaflet:

Possible side effects – 

always diarrhoea.

Why isn’t a possible side effect

uncontrollable laughter

or a desire to play the bass guitar? (p173)

But most of it is the frightening place of experience and loneliness (the nights are long and sad..) scanning his own body for signs and signals and fearful of what he’d find or not find; grappling with the biology he’s now over familiar with:

I start to believe the edges of my body are liminal,

they are touching other worlds

sheets, blankets, the bed, the ‘fence’

on the side of the bed, the pillows

and it is all this that stops me sleeping:

they are all edges.

So I bring my hand up to my face

And put it under my cheek.

It feels like I’ve found myself

something that’s not on an edge

and I’m back with me.

 

I sleep well that night. (pp76/77)

And now he finds himself:

I am now the person

who is alert to every twinge

or mark anywhere on me.

I am getting to know this person.

This is not me.

This is me. (p161)

He meets many of the nurses and therapists and is struck by the number from ethnic minorities:

Why did these strangers try so hard

To keep me alive?

It’s a kindness that I can hardly grasp

the words tell me

that they wanted me to survive (p183)

 

Quite early on in the book he pens the lines:

 

We have to find many different kinds of love

he says, love for lovers, love for our children

love for our colleagues, love even for people 

we don’t know

if we don’t, we will destroy ourselves … (p59)

Think that’s true; read and be moved more than you’d think.

Mike Waddington

Communications Director