My song today is ‘Solitary Man’. This song was written and composed by American musician Neil Diamond, who himself initially recorded the song in January 1966. It has since been covered by many artists.
Recorded in 1966 and initially released in April 1966, ‘Solitary Man’ was Diamond's debut single as a recording artist, having already had moderate (but accidental) success as a songwriter for other artists; their versions of the songs he had already written and composed were released before his own versions of them were. By July, the track had become a minor hit, rising to Number 55 on the US Pop Singles chart.
The song is a ‘ballad of a loner looking for love.
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Except for my late teenage years (between the ages 17-21) which were devoted to dancing, dating, fighting, and having fun with a close gang of mates from the estate, much of my life has witnessed me as being a ‘solitary’ person. Having to do things largely on my own was more to do with the nature of my experiences as opposed to one of choice.
My introduction to a more solitary position in life occurred at the early age of 11 years. I was popular with my peers, I was a good singer, and my football skills showed enough talent to ensure that I was picked to play with the big team at my school (14-15-year-old average age). I had always dreamed that someday I would play soccer for Ireland, the country of my birth. My Irish father had played for Kilkenny County before going on to play briefly for the Irish national squad, and if dad had done so, then I could not see why I could not also follow in his footsteps.
I was popular with my peer group, but a serious accident I incurred at the age of 11 years that witnessed me being unable to walk for three years, effectively kept me in a situation of 'isolation' from my peers. I was to find myself engaged in a process of self-learning during most of my teenage years. The purpose of this tuition involved me learning to walk again, and then, learning to walk and not hobble. My greatest fear was to be labelled as ‘a cripple’. My injuries had been the result of a wagon that knocked me down and ran over me. I was left at death's door with multiple life-threatening injuries.
Between the ages of 11-15 years, my inability to walk prevented me from living a normal life. My traffic accident had put me in a place I had never asked to be. I had been robbed of my childhood football dreams, and my prime years witnessed me having to negotiate my adolescence outside my peer group. My childhood had been brought to an abrupt end before I had managed to explore all my fantastical boundaries, and from that moment on, I was obliged to grow up before my time, and apply my mind and learning to topics that my age range would usually find alien.
After my admittance to Batley Hospital at the age of 11 years, for the first three months, the doctors fought to keep me alive as my injuries were severe. Then, because of a spinal injury, I was told that I would never walk again.
Over a seven-year period of self-improvement, as my school friends were thumbing through the dirtiest pages of the Harold Robbins novels in the school toilets or in their bedrooms, I was reading books about physiology, the connection between body and brain, relaxation training methods, transcendental meditation, body balance, Indian dance, imagery, and autosuggestion. I used such reading to acquaint myself with a better understanding of the functioning between the human brain and body, in order to help me walk again. When I did walk again, I then needed to concentrate on methods that might minimise the difference in length between both of my legs. One of my legs had been left 3 inches shorter than my other leg because of multiple breaking and re-setting of the bones during four dozen leg operations over a two-year period.
There is nothing that hurts a child more than having their boyhood dreams stolen from them before they have had the opportunity to grow up or to naturally grow out of them. There is no time when a person struggling for their survival will not reach out and clutch at any passing straw that offers hope. When the medics of western medicine had nothing to offer me and told me I would never walk again, I looked elsewhere for my medical remedy. My desire to walk again led me toward the practices of the east, and in particular, the benefits and power that could be derived from a greater understanding of relaxation methods, transcendental meditation, pain management and control, and a philosophical belief system that would go on to serve me well for the rest of my life. This was a philosophical belief that could merge with my own religious upbringing of Catholicism.
There have been many times in life when I have chosen to be alone. There have been times that I needed to be alone, and there have been occasions when I could not avoid being alone. One way or another, the first half of my teenage years saw me engaged in an intensive period of solitude and self-improvement. I placed myself on a learning curve of unfamiliar and complicated subjects, upon which there were no textbook manuals produced or very little written about. I was helped immeasurably in being able to ‘understand’ adult concepts by usually thinking in a different way to most people. Knowing that I was clever for my age ( having been taught in an older class of 14-and 15-year-olds prior to my accident), Paddy MacNamara arranged to have me Mensa tested.
Being an odd fish in a lonely pond, I quickly learned to value my own company and to make full use of being away from school for almost three years while I had dozens of operations performed #on my legs. Fortunately, my school sports teacher (Paddy MacNamara), maintained regular hospital visits to see me and spent much of his time and money securing me the books and reading I required.
When I came out of Batley Hospital after nine months, it took me two more years before I could hobble around. I could not walk but I now had feelings below my waistline and in my legs that registered as 'intense pain'.. Being unable to get the peace I needed to engage in relaxation methods within my home, I would daily hobble to a nearby bluebell wood to meditate. I had to make the best use of my own space during the daytime hours when the rest of my siblings were at school.
I found it easier to be alone than I first imagined. Coming to terms with healthily processing one’s worried thoughts involves learning the most effective thinking methods. Most people believe that ‘we think as we think’ and there the matter ends, but they could not be farther from the truth. My learning on ‘thinking’ had not yet started. Over the years that followed, I became ever more aware of the power of the human mind, the determination of the human will, the significance of self-talk in which we all engage every minute of our day, and the correlation and connection between all these human aspects of behavioural functioning. I would learn that one’s perception was influenced by one’s belief, and that one’s beliefs were shaped by one’s self-talk, and that one’s self-talk was influenced by one’s first thought, and that one’s first thoughts were controlled by ourselves. Most important of all in this sequence between thought and action was knowing that “one’s first thought never needs to remain one’s last thought’. I learned that 'first thoughts' could be changed at will, just as easily as clicking a light switch from on-to-off-to-on-again.
Even as a teenager who had barely reached my 13th year of life, although I could not walk, and only just stand, I had embarked on a lifelong journey engaged in becoming the captain of my own ship, and the master of my own fate.
I first experienced being moved out of my peer group in Batley Hospital as a twelve-year-old boy whose seriousness of injuries had placed me on the adult male ward, where I would stay for my nine-month period of hospitalisation. The wagon that ran me down had physically mangled my twisted body around its main-drive propellor-shaft, leaving me with multiple life-threatening injuries but thankfully, it had left my mind intact.
My extensive injuries included a damaged spine: a crushed chest with all except two of my twenty-four ribs broken: a punctured and collapsed lung: each leg broken in several places on the knee cap, and both arms broken. For the first six weeks after hospital admission, I remained on the critical list, and my parents were told several times to prepare for my death. Then, for the next two years, I was told that I would never walk again. Finally, I was told that even if I did walk again, it would be nothing more than a hobble, and I would need reinforced boots with steel rods down the sides that would compensate for one leg now being three inches shorter than the other by means of a built-up inner platform. This three-inch leg differential was a consequence of having fifty operations during a two-year period of breaking and re-setting my legs.
Not being able to sleep for a solid six months in the hospital. enabled me to become well acquainted with my own company, besides helping me to face my many fears behind the intense level of body pain I had started to experience. During my first three months in hospital, my spinal injury meant that I had experienced no feelings below my waist and all the pain felt by me related to my above-waist injuries. Even the functioning of my bowels etc needed to be physically manipulated. Then, for reasons (still medically inexplicable), the nerves between my spine and brain reconnected. The most prominent effect of this on me was my experience of feeling below my waistline once more. I felt intense pain in my legs. The pain seemed unbearable but at least I was able to view its presence as a sign that my legs still lived, even though they hurt like hell.
For at least another three months, the intense pain of my damaged legs persisted and essentially kept me awake every night on the ward, while the rest of the patients, slept, snored, farted, and died. For six months I became friends with the quietness of the night and my only companions on the hospital ward were occasionally hearing the death sounds of a patient’s last breath and observing a nearby nurse working in the shadows, ever so quietly, assisting the night porter to remove the body of a patient who had just died to the hospital morgue. No sooner had the patient become certified as deceased and transported to the morgue, the nurse would strip the empty bed and re-make it with clean, crisp sheets for the next patient to occupy.
I would later learn that anyone entering the hospital as a new patient and finding new crisp sheets on their bed instead of merely clean ones, would be spending their first night in the hospital sleeping in a bed where the last occupant had died. The first time I learned about the use of new sheets was when I heard a new patient protesting after having being shown to their ward bed. I heard this man tell the admission nurse, " You’re not putting me in a dead man’s bed!”
The year was 1954, and it was an age when polio, TB, and other diseases struck down many a boy and girl in their youth. In those days, death was not as unspoken a topic as it has become today. During my lonely nights in the hospital, I would lie awake in pain while the rest of the ward slept soundly. Then. when the ward woke up for their 7’0 clock bed baths, medicines, and ablutions, I would fall fast asleep, often missing breakfast if I was not woken up.
For all of my life after the age of 11 years, I have lived with high pain levels. During the past few years, the intensity of my pain has returned with a vengeance as I developed several different body cancers (two being terminal). My earlier life as a child prepared me for the high pain levels I would need to adjust to as a man, and earlier learning about my own mind and body has enabled me to control my pain by non-drug means (until two months ago).
My facial cancer (which is terminal and cannot be cured) has advanced at a rapid pace over the past few months. It has spread from my head to my face, all down my neck, and across my shoulder and across my throat. It has left me most of my days with intensive pain levels that mind and method alone can control. I now need to supplement what I can do myself with regular daily use of cannabis oil and morphine doses.
I am on a drug trial at 'St. James’ Hospital' in Leeds alongside four others. The trial is highly dangerous but if successful, while it will not cure me or remove my facial cancer that is spreading rapidly, it will slow down its growth and buy me a bit more time on this earth with my loved ones. Such is too high a reward for me to deny myself the opportunity.
Throughout my life, the high pain levels I have experienced have led me to have a much higher pain threshold than I would otherwise have ever attained. The early association for me that pain in my legs meant that life had returned to them after my spinal damage had miraculously re-connected itself. Thereafter pain has always meant something different to me than what it represents to most people. My early life experience gradually led me to a lifestyle of being able to successfully engage in pain management and control.
Pain tells me first that something is bodily wrong. Medics need specific locations of the pain before being able to accurately measure its intensity and effect. Pain should not hide whatever is going wrong beneath the skin and bones of an individual. It should not be masked or suppressed, if at all endurable. before the end-of-life stage has been reached.
Of course, people experience different pain levels and therefore require different responses, and some require analgesics, pain killers, and morphine, or even codeine when the pain is too bad to tolerate. Society is blessed today with the expertise that is available to assist in pain control., and our Macmillan Nurses are simply the best if/when you are unable to manage your own pain levels.
Love and peace
Bill xxx