‘Mum did something really weird today’ said my non-medical sister to my brother and I.
I looked up and took note, as there was something in the tone of her voice that made me feel uneasy. I said nothing and waited for her to continue speaking.
‘She picked up the TV remote control and tried to use it to make a phone call. It was really odd’.
For context I’m a GP and my brother is a neurologist so you can probably guess what happened next. We reassured my sister it was probably nothing and pushed it to the back of our minds. It’s a tale as old as time in medicine: never doctor your family members, you will almost certainly mess up.
Fortunately, my sister, known for her fierce determination, continued to voice concern.
Several months later, we were all sat in front of the Neurologist at Queen Square Hospital in London (where my brother also worked) and my mum was given the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease at the age of 68. We were devasted for her and for our family.
My mum is a retired GP and her diagnosis came just 2 years after retirement. What made the diagnosis even more merciless, was that she had cared for my late father for 13 years before he passed away, just as she retired. My father had a life altering haemorrhagic stroke at 58 years old, at what was the peak of his career as a GP.
The stroke had left him severely disabled- dysphagic, dysphasic, dysarthric, hemiplegic but formidably resilient in his spirit. My mum juggled her career, 3 semi-adult children and her caring duties to my father with incredible love, patience and dedication.
I was bereft. She had spent her life in the pursuit of making everyone else happy. This was her time to have enjoyed, yet it was stolen from her in the cruellest way. Being a doctor and finding yourself on ‘the other side’, either as a patient or a relative, has been discussed countless times in medical literature. It is a humbling reminder that disease is a great leveller; an inescapable truth. Our training does little to support us with this and we carry the scars of the things we have witnessed, burying them deep, until they eventually resurface often at inconvenient times.
It has been 8 years since her diagnosis and the journey has been arduous for all of us. She has started hoarding in recent years, everything goes missing, sometimes never to be found again or shoved haphazardly into drawers and cupboards. We have lost an apple watch, a precious baby blanket and worst of all car keys. It’s a running joke that if you leave your car keys on the hallway table they almost certainly won’t be there when you return.
She has lived an extraordinary life. She was born in the city of Lucknow in India, famous for its magical poetry and language (and kebabs)! She was born in the late 1940s at a politically turbulent time, just as colonial rule came to an end in India and the country was being partitioned. She made the perilous journey to Pakistan as a young girl. Later she attended Dow Medical College in Karachi, being one of few women in medicine. After qualifying as a doctor, she tells me that she travelled to London with just £30 in her pocket. Education being the main currency at that time, gave her a passport to freedom, opportunity and a new life.
I find it astonishing that she was so courageous. A young, unmarried, Muslim Pakistani woman travelling across the globe and arriving in 1970s Britain. I cannot imagine all the prejudice she must have encountered. But I also know there were many acts of kindness, such is the dichotomy of humanity.
She said it was a lonely time living in hospital accommodation, she missed her family dearly. She had a cousin located across town whom she would stay with when she was not on call on the weekend. The train station was a long walk from the hospital, and she recounted how her Obstetric consultant, a Mr Simmonds, would drive her to the train station every Friday. She vividly remembered his silver Rolls Royce and how he treated her like a daughter. In the current landscape of the NHS, it can be easy to forget the acts of kindness between colleagues and the companionship we bring to each other, such as when a global pandemic hits.
As my siblings and I declutter her drawers, removing rotten bananas and dated crockery, there is an old dusty box in her room. It is screaming to be opened. As we open it we see her iconic, floral handwriting on paper that is now so thin the edges are torn and stained. These are the letters she wrote, in her 20s after she finished medical school in Pakistan, to hospitals all over the world applying for jobs– from London to New York to Tehran.
I’m obviously grateful she picked East London, as that is where she met my father whom she knew from medical school as he was 3 years her senior. He was doing his GP rotation whilst she was training in Obstetrics and they were reunited on the hospital wards. It’s strange to imagine that even though they had lived much of their young lives a few miles away from each other and went on to attend the same medical school their epic story only really began due to a chance meeting on the other side of the world. They were also from different sects in Islam (Shia and Suni) and overcame significant religious hurdles to be together. It would make a wonderful Netflix film- the themes of war, religion, perseverance and of course love as the all conquering force. It was ‘kismet’ (urdu for ‘fate’) in its purest form.
As parts of her slip away, the shell remains. Her clothes looser, her skin frailer, her speech more muddled but her eyes are still kind and her warm smile remains. These are the lucid glimpses of her that shine so bright and we bask in those fleeting moments, enveloped in the warmth of her love once again.
Although we feel abject despair at times, there are wonderful moments too. Like when she holds her youngest grandchild with such tenderness and care; it comes so naturally, she’s an old hand. She sings him songs, strange hybrid English-urdu nursery rhyme remixes that make us laugh. And the baby loves it- the repetition, her animated face and her warm embrace. Babies light up when they are shown love and my mum is an expert at giving her love so selflessly.
So we cannot help but be grateful. Grateful for a life so extraordinary. Grateful that we have a loving relationship with our mother. Grateful that we had a chance to know her as adults. We know so many who are not as blessed as us.
When I look at her, I can still feel so incredibly sad. Sometimes she senses my sorrow. She looks at me with her beautiful brown eyes and asks me if I’m ok. She tells me not to worry and that everything will be ok. And there it is again, in a flash, despite the disease that has riddled her brain, I see her – my kind mum. I am overwhelmed by the indestructible and infinite love of my mother. She is fighting the disease with every fibre of her being to shower us with her love once more. I squeeze her tightly. She tells me she is tired, and she goes upstairs to sleep.
If by any chance you recognise any of the individuals in these pictures, please could you get in touch with the author so the stories of the individuals can be pieced together. These pictures were taken in the early to late 1970s at various hospitals in North/East London (some of which no longer exist). They may include The City of London Maternity Hospital (Harringay), Mount Vernon Hospital (Northwood), Plaistow Maternity Hospital or St Nicholas Hospital (Plumstead)
By Dr Seema Haider
GP, Writer & Coach
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