Here is something I wrote on August 24, 2017:
Once again,[Benedict Ambrose] passed all the little tests they give to make sure a hospital won't have to find a bed for him. None of these doctors seem particularly concerned that he now weighs 97.5 lbs.
And here is something I added:
A doctor explained to me that although [B.A.] is underweight, he is not dangerously underweight, so he doesn't have to be in a hospital. I'm sorry for having frightened people. I was quite frightened myself.
Happily, concerned friends chimed in to ask for more information. Here's one of my responses.
This particular doctor didn't see [B.A.] at all. He was the on-call emergency doctor at the clinic, and he was the one who phoned back when I called to ask why nobody had given [B.A.] a recommendation to the hospital. (There is a strict hierarchy here or who gets what service when, and you have to go through the right channels--unless you can get a string pulled.) He took my word for it that [B.A.] weighs 97 lbs (which he called 50 kg), and noted that according to the records Mark weighed 60 kg in 2011.
And then a very helpful friend said:
In oncology there is something called cancer associated cachexia (CAC). Notwithstanding that cancer is not B.A.'s diagnosis,* CAC is often defined as 5% loss of baseline body weight. [B.A.] has lost over 15% (60 to 50 kg), as an underestimate. I would be concerned. They can insert a nasogastric feeding tube, or a G-tube (surgically implanted right to the stomach), if nothing else. I don't know the case, but I would be pushing for more testing and/ or intervention. Who cares if you are Nightmare Wife. Its your role as [B.A.'s] advocate in the health care system. +
[*B.A. actually did have cancer, but nobody admitted this until after his final brain surgery, when the surgeon snapped, "It's all cancer." We had been allowed to think that non-malignant tumours weren't actually cancer. I suspect there are studies arguing that the fastest way to kill someone with brain cancer is to tell him he has brain cancer, which is why everyone left us in the dark. But on with my story. ]
The next day, the one family member who is a medical doctor sent me, by email, a letter to take to the hospital. I carefully bundled B.A. into a taxicab and took him there. Thanks to this letter, he was admitted. And thanks to my family member's qualifications, B.A.'s surgeon returned her telephone call.
It is very possible that had this person not married into my family, Benedict Ambrose would have died. This is called class privilege or social capital. And believe me, I was using every scrap I had.
Naturally, history has moved on, with new shocks and alarms. Here is something I wrote on Facebook on August 24, 2021:
People complained about 2020, but in 2020 I travelled to Poland twice and lived in Italy for a month without invasive tests, inoculations or quarantines--until our return to Scotland, when we did quarantine, not a hardship as we work from home. Now it's 2021 and the world has gone completely insane.
I'm of two minds about the "On This Day" feature. On the one hand, it's good to remember that doctors don't know everything, that you owe a family member a huge debt of gratitude, and that the world went completely insane in 2021. On the other hand, what an exhausting start to the day.
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