Fergus Finlay: Life lessons from a hospital visit and an eloquent taxi driver

The health service rode to my rescue last week — but it was my knight on a white horse, Tommy the taxi driver, who gave me most to think about, writes Fergus Finlay

I spent four days in the Mater, half of them on a trolley. File photo

We’re heading toward Christmas so I wanted to share a couple of uplifting experiences with you. 

In order to do it I have to tell you a fairly gruesome tale first. It has a happy ending thanks to a somewhat unique (for me anyway) experience of the Irish health service. So bear with me.

Monday of last week I set out to meet a couple of friends and colleagues for coffee. We were meeting about half a kilometre from my house, so I walked. I became more and more conscious as I walked of a pain in my lower back. 

I’ve had some back trouble over the last couple of years, so I paid it no mind. But it got worse and started spreading down my leg, to such an extent that I really struggled to get home.

In the end the only thing that gave me relief was lying down. Which, in the middle of the night, turned out to be a terrible mistake, when I woke up in the throes of what I can only describe (please forgive me) as an unbelievable attack of incontinence. 

Never experienced anything like it. As soon as we got through the night (a night neither of us will ever forget) Frieda drove me down to the local GP.

She listened intently as I described the sequence — the leg and back pain and the incontinence — and said solemnly, I want you to go to hospital now, straight away. When I said I’d go down to the local emergency department, she demurred and began typing on her screen. 

I’m sending an emergency referral to the Mater Private, she said, because that’s the only place you’re going to get the neurological surgery I think you might need.

Mater Private, said I? Neurological surgery? What the absolute f? She was grave. Don’t be alarmed, she said. But the combination of symptoms could suggest a condition called Cauda Equinas. It must be treated immediately.

As we were driving into the Mater Private I got a phone call from a nurse there, to check I was on the way. Jaysus, nothing like that ever happened before! So naturally, despite the doctor’s advice, I googled it. 

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Cauda Equinas happens when a disc or discs collapse onto a set of nerves at the bottom of the spine, putting unbearable pressure on things like your colon. It’s not life-threatening, but worst case outcomes include paralysis below the waist and lifelong incontinence. Mother of heavens.

I spent four days in the Mater, half of them on a trolley. I was MRI’d and CT scanned, had blood taken constantly, and buckets of intravenous antibiotics pumped into me. After the first blood test I was told they would expect an infection marker of up to 5. Mine was 180. 

But the scans revealed that I didn’t have the dreaded Cauda Equinas. I had a badly misaligned disc in the lower back, and somehow or other I had contracted a heavyweight infection right across my colon. Both serious, both treatable, and not related to each other.

Grateful

Four days of treatment later (which even included an injection of something magical into the base of my spine), I walked out of the Mater right as rain. I’ll be on antibiotics for a few days yet, but there’s no reason to believe it will happen again. Infection markers came down steadily in each blood test. And I’m good.

But here’s the thing. I’ll be forever grateful to my GP for her quick-wittedness and fast action. I was upright and coherent, but I was also acutely and dangerously ill. Even though the symptoms turned out not to be related, the colon infection if untreated would have laid me low very quickly. 

I’ll also be grateful forever for the way in which the hospital responded to an emergency. I have to tell you, spending a couple of days on a trolley in a busy emergency department isn’t comfortable, but you have a very strong sense all the time that you’re surrounded by intelligence and competence and decency. 

And the nursing staff, most of whom are non-Irish, are out of this world.

Taxi driver

I was feeling so chipper when I left that I decided to just grab a taxi home. That’s when I met Tommy (at his request, not his real name).

Tommy was bright and breezy, and maybe the most articulate and literate taxi driver I’ve ever met. (In the course of one sad story he told me, he described “tears cascading from his eyes”. That’s the sort of language you come across in courtly English novels of the old school.) 

But he was African. Where from, says I. Born in Somalia, he told me, but effectively raised in Kenya. When I heard the reference to Somalia, I asked him what he thought of Donald Trump and the appalling things he says. I was expecting anger but Tommy laughed.

“Donald Trump is funny,” he said. 

He is one of those people who believes he knows everything but actually knows nothing. 

"He has actually only ever met one Somali person and she has rejected him. (He was talking about the only Somali woman ever elected to Congress, Ihlan Omar.) So he hates all Somalis despite knowing nothing about us.” 

As Tommy told me some of his own story I began to wonder how any people so resourceful and resilient could be attacked and despised by the rich and powerful. Tommy is one of 13 children of a family that had to flee a civil war and several famines. 

His family has lived its entire life for the last 30 years in the Hagadera refugee camp in Kenya. It has been a life of struggle and want. Tommy completed his education in the camp, and worked so hard he got a scholarship to a European university.

Eventually he made his way to Ireland with perfect English and a degree in European studies. Now, by day, he holds a full-time job in the Irish public service (I know where, but I can’t tell you) and for six hours every night he drives a taxi. 

He doesn’t drink or smoke, he just sleeps and works and sends home everything he can so his brothers and sisters can complete their education.

He's a Somali. He’s what president Donald Trump has repeatedly described as garbage. I’ve seldom met anyone less resembling garbage.

Human resilience

So here’s the thing. I was nearly broken by a medical diagnosis, and was lifted out of it in days by the efficacy of a first-world health care system — far from perfect but also far more capable than it’s often given credit for.

Tommy and his people have been broken again and again by far worse than ever happened to me. He’s lifting himself and many others up through sheer hard work, skill and determination, against often insuperable odds, without any help from the first world. 

He and his family are living examples of the power of human resilience. And at the end of all that he has the grace and style to think of Donald Trump as a funny man, who just needs to learn. 

I couldn’t think of a better teacher.