Chapter 8

AT times Kathleen's vocal chords became infected and talking became too painful to her, and she was quite satisfied if a visitor sat by her bedside and held her hand. On those occasions she would say to me, "You talk, I cannot talk much,” and she would occasionally squeeze my hand with her fingers to show that she was listening.

Very few can realise the intense sufferings during the last stages of this disease, the maddening irritation in the lungs which is eased for a time by coughing, a cough that racks with pain the vocal chords already affected by the bacilli. Then there is the overwhelming depression which sets in, owing to the helplessness of lying in the same position, without being able to stir, and waiting for someone to turn the cooler part of the pillow to the feverish head.

To the nurses, Kathleen was a model patient. She never complained, she never rang during the night as other patients unnecessarily did, to the annoyance of the hard-working nurse and she always showed her patient smile of gratitude when anything was done for her. But secretly she often pleaded with me to help her.

It is no wonder that Kathleen, worn out by long sleepless nights, sometimes craved for a little ease. On one occasion she asked me to bring her some methylated spirits from the Science Room. Some time previously a nurse had often painted her body with spirits to harden the skin for the long weeks of suffering ahead, but for some time they had stopped the application of the spirits. And also the beds were hard and lumpy. The cooling effect was so pleasing at the time that she wanted to experience it again. But when one of the patients applied the spirits it must not have had the desired soothing feeling because she did not ask for it again.

Another evening with a pleading look in her eyes she begged: "Will you bring some jelly in a jar. I cannot eat the food here as I vomit, but I could eat jelly. Really, I'm hungry.”

But the pleading look in her eyes showed that she was more than hungry, that she was actually suffering the maddening pain of starvation. I had seen many sad things in the life of Kathleen, but that was one of the saddest, to see the pleading look in the eyes of a hungry child.

In those years, not much care was given to the patients. With only forty beds there was a large waiting list, and when a patient died the next on the list was so far gone that a common saying in the neighbourhood was, “You were sent to Creagh to die.” (5)

The food was cooked in a larger building occupied by the Matron and nurses and wheeled on a trolley through the open air to the chalets, and by the time it reached the patients the meat was cold and the gravy hardened round it so that it looked most unappetising.

For tea, a large thick slice of bread thinly buttered was placed on a locker beside the bed of each patient, including those who were too ill to eat. After a while, large teapots with milk and a little sugar in each were also wheeled through the open air so that the tea was neither sweet nor hot.

The bread was got by contract, and the lowest contract and therefore the cheapest bread was provided. A great many patients could not eat the rough bread, and bucketfuls were gathered by the maids along the various wards and given to the pigs and hens attached to the institution.

Some patients were not badly off because loving relations at home kept them supplied with sweet cake and other tit-bits. However, some of these patients provided another difficulty, as in the case of eggs. If a patient got a dozen eggs from home the difficulty was to try and get an empty cocoa tin in order to boil them over the fire in the day room. No matter how weak a patient was, Creagh provided nothing outside the common fare given to all.

There is something pathetic in the eyes of a hungry child and that look was in Kathleen's eyes that evening when she said the simple words ”I’m hungry." She had not eaten anything for two days. A woman in town made the jelly which was brought in jars to Kathleen until she became too weak to even take jelly.

I remember coming home from the sanatorium one Tuesday evening, the sky overhead was darkened with clouds, and rain began to fall in torrents, and darkness fell earlier than usual. From the top of a height on the pathway, I looked back and saw the lights of the sanatorium in the distance, glittering through the driving rain. There was a mysterious silence about the place, the silence that is felt in a room where a person is dying. The pathway through the wood was darker than usual, and the driving wind howled through the trees. The rain fell in such torrents that soon I was drenched wet. Earlier that evening I had seen a patient almost at the point of death, and in the darkness round I could still see his staring eyes, and the cracking of the branches overhead was like the rasping death rattle in his throat.

But one felt no fear from the darkness round or from the driving rain. There was a special comfort in an empty jam jar I was carrying back to get filled, a jar that had contained jelly to ease the hunger pains of a sick child.

Another evening I got a whisper from Kathleen, a whisper that no maid was to hear, “Just two sausages only.” The two sausages were brought out, but by the time two patients had tried to cook them in a tin on the day-room fire they weren't a success, judging by the face of the child who tried to nibble them.