Lowlife 118 - The Iron Man

The Iron Man

By Dominic Horton

In last week's edition of this column I wrote about my spells of reading to a critically ill close friend of mine, Carl Taylor (or Tater as I have always known him.) I couldn't ask Carl what he wanted me to read to him as he was in an induced coma, so I perused my bookshelves trying to find a suitable book; I wanted something fairly light and easily digestible so I decided to go for a childrens' book but one that could equally be enjoyed by an adult. I could easily have chosen one of Roald Dahl's stories, Wind in the Willows, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or a host of other books but I plumped for The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. It only struck me later how fitting the title of the book is in relation to Carl, a physically imposing, mentally headstrong, solid, utterly dependable character. In hindsight I don't think that it was an accident that I picked out that particular book.  Regrettably I didn't get the chance to finish reading the book to Carl. Unlike The Iron Man there was no happy ending for my dear friend as he tragically passed away last Thursday after his critical condition quickly deteriorated.

Tater

After being admitted to Russells Hall hospital on Saturday 18^th April Carl was in a critical but stable condition and that remained largely unchanged until Thursday last week. When Carl was moved from Russells Hall to the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Birmingham on the Friday after his hospitalisation it was clear that the illness to his brain, that struck him out of the blue, was a rare one and was outside of the expertise of the staff of the former hospital. As the QE hospital is a centre of neurological excellence in the country I thought at that stage that it will only be a matter of time before the experts there diagnose the illness, get to the bottom of what caused it and start a course of treatment that would lead to Carl being restored to health, even if such treatment took a while to complete. Sadly, through no fault of the hospital staff, things did not work out as I had anticipated.

After the neurological consultant assessed Carl he quickly diagnosed that he had status epilepticus, which is a very rare condition where the patient has continuous bouts of fitting. Although the consultant reached a diagnosis his knowledge on the condition seemed to be limited as it is such an unusual one, to such an extent that he had only previously encountered the illness once before in his career. That being the case further tests on Carl were needed and the consultant had to research the matter further. The main problem seemed to be that the medical staff were no further forward into knowing why such an otherwise healthy man contracted the illness. Still, there was a plan of sorts and all hoped that the test results would provide answers and the consultant's research would prove fruitful.

Early on Thursday morning Carl's wife Sarah let me know that he had taken a turn for the worse. When you are contacted at an early hour in these circumstances it is not normally going to be good news. Any deterioration in Carl's critical condition was always going to be extremely worrying. At the hospital Sarah explained the severity of the situation as Carl's organs had begun to fail. Although the doctors would try things to help Carl's condition during the rest of the day if there was no improvement they recommended that treatment be withdrawn the following day. Needless to say, Sarah and all of Carl's family and friends that were present were utterly devastated with the dreadful explanation and it seemed barely credible that things had escalated so quickly from Carl being in full health to such a dire predicament.

Greenhill FC, 2005: Back row: Newty, A. Speake, A Wooldridge, J Barlow,
D Smith, Tater, Me, K Wainwright, L Baker, A Spencer. Front row:
Tony Parkes, C Winstanley, Jim Mattin (c), Matt Adams, M Siddall (seated),
B Smart, The Big Un (Mark Whitehouse). 

When a close friend is extremely poorly and in hospital it is often tricky to know when to visit and when to respect the family's privacy and to leave them be. Throughout Carl's hospitalisation Sarah had completely dispelled this awkward dilemma by consistently inviting me, and Carl's other close friends, to attend the hospital when we wanted to and I was truly thankful for such a warm and open invitation. But on hearing the dreadful prognosis on Thursday morning it seemed to be the right decision to leave Carl's family alone for a while to come to terms with the atrocious news and at that point there didn't seem any imminent threat of the worst happening.

So Tony and I decided to go to lunch and pop back to the hospital in a couple of hours or so. We ended up in one of our old stomping grounds, the Fairfield pub, a Banks's (Marston's) house. As we were just about to order our drinks and food my mobile telephone rang and ominously the screen told me that that caller was Sarah. I barely needed to answer the call to know what the news was going to be. It turned out to be Lesley, a close and incredibly supportive friend of Sarah, who through her tears confirmed the worst, that shockingly Carl had passed away.

The precise moment of Lesley call could be seen as one last timely intervention of advice from Carl: “Doe drink any of that Banks's rubbish, if you want a decent pint you might as well get your ars* down the Waggon & Horses.” We immediately returned to the hospital, dumbstruck and in disbelief.

Enville Athletic FC, early 90's: Back row: N Bird, Me, A Gore, M Heathcock,
Tater, C Howard, A Litchfield, S Hancox, S Smith, Glenn Taylor. Front row:
D Robson, M Dutton, Warwick Adams, P Clinton, Mark Rutter, Newty,
P Tomlinson. 

I won't write that Carl lost his fight for life because he never had the chance to compete in such a fight as the severity of his illness meant that it was entirely out of his hands. If Carl had of been involved in a straight and fair fight for his life then there is absolutely no shadow of doubt whatsoever in my mind that he would have ended as the resounding victor such was his strength of character and mind and dogged determination. More than anyone that I know Carl was a straightforward, honest, unflinchingly steadfast and unfailingly reliable person who I would have trusted with my life. He was an iron man. I always saw Carl as unbreakable, a towering figure, both physically but in terms of his personality as well which makes it almost impossible to comprehend that he is no longer here. If I were to choose one person to be in my corner or to be in the trenches with me then it would be Carl, without question. When Carl was there, it felt like everything would be just fine, he was a steadying, reassuring influence who gave me a sense of security and peace of mind. As a dear and invaluable friend to me, Carl was always a cornerstone of my existence and without him it feels like the world will collapse and crumble into nothingness.

For those of you who didn't have the pleasure of meeting Carl the previous paragraph might give you the impression that he was an overly serious man but nothing could be further from the truth as he was always smiling and we never failed to make each other laugh. Occasionally something silly would tickle our funny bones and we would set each other off chortling uncontrollably and just when one of us would regain his composure the other one would set him off giggling again. One time Carl and I were sitting on bar stools in The Mosquito Bar in Malaga, me drinking Scotch, him vodka (Carl hated whisky) after a busy night of drinking and making merry with the rest of our stag party, and we were trying, but failing, to make understandable conversation. I said to Carl, “this is no good Tater, when I'm drunk I cannot hear and when you're drunk you cannot speak.” And that was that, we were off, crying with prolonged laughter, almost falling off our bar stools.

The Big Un and Tater enjoying a vodka jelly. 

The story of how I met Carl to a large degree sums him up. I joined Enville Athletic Football Club as fresh faced eighteen year old some twenty five odd years ago and at the first training session I didn't know the other players from Adam and I was a bit nervous. Carl said hello to me (or “alright mate, how am ya?” to be more precise) and that was that, I got talking to Carl and Newty and my nerves were dispelled and both have remained close friends ever since. Carl's outgoing, warm and friendly nature was the seed from which our friendship blossomed.

Before Tony and I left the hospital to go for lunch at the Fairfield on Thursday we briefly got to see Carl and although I didn't realise it at the time it turned out to be the last time I would see him. Knowing the gravity of Carl's condition, lying there unconscious with his life being maintained by numerous machines, my legs turned to jelly and they remained that way for the rest of the day. I knew that I may well not get the chance to ever read the last few pages of The Iron Man to Carl, so I told him how the book ended: the iron man won his battle with the space-bat-angel and pacified and befriended the terrifying monster and the world became wonderfully peaceful. Carl now is also peaceful but the world is an immeasurably poorer and emptier place without my dear friend to illuminate and enrich it.

© Dominic Horton, May 2015.

Lowlife is dedicated to the memory of the late Jonathan Rendall

Email: lordhofr@gmail.com