Beryl Stockdale, Newcastleton
I met my husband in 1983 in Durban, South Africa where we were living at the time. We got married a year later in 1984. We moved to Zimbabwe, to his dad’s farm, for a short time then to Umtali, then Bulawayo. In 1988 we sold up our home and moved to Consett in County Durham where Graham’s mum and sister lived. We spent the remainder of our married life together there.
In May 2014, at the age of 53, Graham had a massive bleed, so he was rushed into hospital. They discovered that it was burst polyp. He got checked six months later but was never checked again.
In 2018, Graham, now 57, had not been feeling too good. He had started struggling with his fitness and had been back and forth for tests. In September 2017, just six months after Graham’s mum had passed away, he noticed a change in his bowel movements and thought it best to see our GP again (he never let on to me about this). Our GP referred him for scans and a colonoscopy. A day later they called Graham and asked for him to come in and bring someone with him. He said he had an appointment at the GP and would not let on what was going on.
So, off he went to see a doctor at Gateshead QE hospital. They found a tumour that had broken through the bowel wall and attached itself to his bladder, with a secondary one in his liver. When I got home from work, he was waiting for me and that was when he announced that he had stage 4 bowel cancer. It felt as if he’d pulled the rug from underneath me. I was floored.
Graham had surgery where they attached a colostomy bag to try and isolate any problems accruing during chemotherapy. He had chemotherapy to reduce the size of the tumour, but it wasn’t that successful. In October 2018, he had major surgery. It took nine hours. They removed a large proportion of his bowel and removed his bladder, along with 32 lymph nodes. When I was allowed to see him in ICU, I walked around the corner to see a very starry-eyed Graham with a very deep voice and his first comment made us all laugh: “hello sexy I’m gutted like a fish.” He had two bags: a colostomy bag which he named after the former president of Zimbabwe, Robert (Bob) Mugabe, and a urostomy bag which he named after Bob’s wife Grace.
He would not allow his illness to stop him working and went back to work about three weeks after his first major surgery. Then in, February 2019 he went in for another operation on his liver where they removed a large section. The operation was only meant to take three hours but lasted six. I was pacing the hospital once again scared and worried sick. When I was allowed in to see him in the ICU I just broke down and cried. He said: “Why are you crying? It’s not going to beat me.”
In March 2019, we heard the words we were dreaming about: he was all clear. We went on holiday to Cape Verde, he took up paddle boarding, he went running and cycling again. One Saturday he woke and said he wanted to go looking at motorbikes which we did, he fell in love with a Kawasaki Z900RS (Jaffa). His face came alive when he sat on it so I suggested he get it. He wasn’t sure but after an hour talking, he signed the papers for his bike. He was so excited and pronounced that this meant: “new beginnings”.
This happiness was short lived; he went for his six-month check-up in September 2019 and that’s when we were told the cancer had returned. We were broken. We drove home with tears in our eyes, in total silence. He went downhill quickly after that; he didn’t have much strength left. Then the major issues started. He went back and forth to hospital: he had blockages and sepsis and had to have another operation to put tubes into his kidneys to drain the poison out of them. But right through the whole thing he would joke about his problems and remained positive.
He spent most of December 2019 in hospital as he had had to have another surgery on his bowel. I was there every day like always, I never wanted to leave his side. On Christmas Day, I dressed up as an elf just to make him smile and hear him laugh. He was now hooked up to a feeding machine which he totally hated. He was eventually discharged in January 2020.
Somehow the feeding tube had curled up in his stomach and he would not allow them to put another tube down. So from that day he could only eat non textured food. I stood one lunch time blitzing peas then pushing them through a metal strainer three times so that there were no lumps as he loved peas.
He went through radiation therapy, but this really started to take it out of him and by this time Covid had broken out. Eventually Graham was back in hospital a few months later after getting sepsis again. It was four o’clock one Sunday morning when my phone rang telling me to get to the hospital as Graham had taken a turn again. When I got there, they had stabilised him and he was so excited to see me. He was in so much pain and crying out but kept telling the nurses that they had other patients who were sicker than him.
He needed to be transferred to another hospital to be near urology as he kept getting sepsis. An ambulance arrived to take him to Freeman Hospital, this was the day when reality really kicked in as they “blue lighted” him there. I was totally frozen in one spot with tears rolling down my face. Whilst in Freeman they decided they needed to do another operation on his bowel as “Bob” was not playing ball again. He would not agree to anything unless myself and his little sister Alison were there, so that we as a family could talk about it. There were so many things that could go wrong like him not waking up after surgery or going into a coma. It was a gamble; he knew that he may not survive it. We were allowed to walk him to surgery. When I was walking alongside him to the operating theatre, I felt like I was saying goodbye to him.
The following day Alison and I were allowed to visit. I knew Graham would not be happy with all the tubes in him and I told the nurse that if he woke up and realised he had these machines and tubes he would start to pull everything out. I was then told if they had not put him on all the machines the operation would be worthless. Needless to say, he did wake up and he did start to try and pull things out. We were not allowed to see him for weeks until one day the sister of the ward called me. Her comments were “Graham’s morale is fading fast so we are authorising you to visit once a day for an hour” (nevertheless an hour turned into two), not all patients were as lucky.
They kept my visit as a surprise for him, when I arrived I was kitted out in PPE and taken to his room. The sister opened the door and said they had a surprise for him, with that I put my head around the corner and said “surprise”. His words were “what are you doing here?” I told him that I could visit him each day. He was so happy; he just held my hand tightly and kept kissing it. It was then that I really started to fight to get him home. It turned out that he was in there only because they needed to drain the NG tube. I knew I was able to do that myself. A few days later the sister called me again and said she would show me how to drain the tube.
That day the ambulance brought my frail husband home. He was home for two months, we celebrated his 59th birthday and my birthday too. He went into a coma on the 13 July and took his last breath on 23 July 2020. We were married for 36 years. He’s my hero, still my world – he’s my everything and I wish I could have saved him. I would have gladly given him some of my bowel if that could have helped. He was an inspiration to so many people. A year after losing my Graham, I left County Durham and moved to Newcastleton in the Scottish Borders. It’s a place we were meant to move to 11 years ago as we just loved it for the peace and tranquillity. I’m now settled in my new little home living the life that we should have been living. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss my hero, my soulmate, my world my everything. Graham lived by one saying and that was “have no regrets “
Please, if you have any change in your bowel movement, if you just don’t feel 100% in your fitness, or you are tired all the time: get to a doctor and keep pestering until you have an answer.
