Ashya King’s parents freed – another CPS fiasco

Continued from yesterday…

It has made world news, and rightly so, revealing crass insensitivity and Orwellian double-speak on behalf of the authorities who have hounded the King family who only seek the best medical care they can for their terminally ill child, Ashya.

Now, the CPS backs down and withdraws the warrant for arrest of the family, in the light of recent events. Apparently, they ‘urgently reviewed the case and we consider there is insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction for any criminal offence. We have therefore decided to stop the criminal proceedings.’ That was from a spokesman of the CPS. Big of them. This was announced last night, Tuesday.  The CPS issued the European arrest warrant on Saturday. Shouldn’t they have considered the evidence put before them at the time of the request for the issue of the warrant? No, it was probably a knee-jerk reaction, not a measured or considered response.

Timetable

Wednesday, July 23 – Ashya admitted to Southampton General Hospital and undergoes extensive surgery for a brain tumour.

Wednesday, August 20 – Family apparently told by doctors that Ashya’s life expectancy was about 4 months, nothing more could be done. The father asked if his son could be treated with proton beam therapy. The doctors said ‘no.’ They were adamant that the therapy would not help their son.

Thursday, August 28 – At 2pm Ashya is taken from the hospital by his parents, and all travel quite legally to France with other family members. They intend selling their Spanish property and obtaining the proton treatment for Ashya in the Czech Republic - £65,000 it costs and they have already been in touch with the relevant clinic. At 8.35pm the hospital alerts the police that Ashya is missing – some 6 hours after the absence; is this criminal neglect on the part of the hospital?

Friday, August 29 – Based on information (later proven to be suspect or even false) from the hospital, the police issue an urgent appeal for information on the family’s whereabouts. CCTV images are used, branding the parents as criminals to all intents and purposes. Portsmouth city council apply to the High Court for Ashya to be made a temporary ward of court on the grounds that he is in ‘serious danger’ – false grounds, in fact. If apprehended, he will be under the care of a juvenile court rather than his parents. Many children have been unfairly taken from loving parents in this manner in Britain – while other children are left by the social services to die at the hands of monstrous parents; and let’s not dwell on the appalling situation that has prevailed in Rotherham (and doubtless other cities) regarding child rape blatantly ignored by police and social services. Topsy-turvy Britain.

Saturday, August 30 – UK police confirm they’ve obtained a European warrant for arrest due to ‘neglect’ by Ashya’s parents. About six hours later Hampshire police reveal that Ashya and his family have been found in Spain and taken to a Malaga hospital. No great detective work, really, since they were not active fugitives. Following internationally agreed protocol, the Spanish authorities have to arrest the parents.

Sunday, August 31 – Hampshire police defend their decision to issue the arrest warrant. Yet to everyone directly concerned it is obvious that Ashya was not ‘in grave danger’ and was in fact stable and placed in the hospital’s low dependency unit. This unforgiveable hubris of the police is noted.

Monday, September 1 – Head of the Southampton hospital now casts doubt on whether Ashya had just months to live. The hospital ‘very much regrets’ the breakdown in communication with the family. No real apology. No explanation why the messages passed to the police were economical with the truth. This unforgiveable hubris of the medical fraternity is noted. It’s cover our backs time, clearly.

Tuesday, September 2 – After public outcry, newspaper comment, petitions, the rather belated comments from UK politicians jumping on the bandwagon, the hospital states it is ‘willing to support’ Ashya’s transfer to Prague for the proton treatment. Later, that evening, the CPS drops ‘criminal proceedings’, the parents are released from Spanish prison and make their way several hundred miles from Madrid to Malaga to see their son. This is a good result but four days overdue; and it was no thanks to any UK official but to the power of common sense voiced by the people and the media.

The British Health Secretary calls it ‘unfortunate’ and ‘there had been misunderstandings along the way.’ Don’t expect any recriminations any time soon. The upper strata of officialdom – in the NHS, the police and the social services – will never accept blame. Throughout, double-speak and obfuscation was employed by those guardians of health, safety and law.

George Orwell and Franz Kafka saw it long ago.

Saturday Story - 'Tagged'

With the latest news about targeted radiation for breast cancer sufferers, it seems yet one more giant step will be made against this indiscriminate killer disease. In the beginning of June there was an encouraging report about a seemingly miraculous recovery from advanced melanoma after being treated with a new immunotherapy drug, pembrolizumah.

For some years it has been known that there’s a close relationship between the body’s immune system and cancer.  Recently, understanding has reached to the cellular and molecular level.

Cancerous tumours grow so vigorously because they’re able to switch off the auto-immune response that would normally combat unfamiliar cells found in the body. The tumour cells have a protein on their surface that binds with a compound on the surface of the cells that make up the advance guard of the immune system. The binding action turns off the defensive cells, allowing the tumour to flourish.

The new generation of drugs bind to those proteins on the tumour cells’ surface, stopping their interaction with the defensive cells. This enables the immune system to do its job and fight the cancer.

In effect, it is the body itself that can now fight the cancer. Professor Justin Stebbing, Consultant oncologist of London believes that in five years’ time immunotherapy will be the backbone of cancer treatment, rather than chemotherapy. It’s not a fix-all for every cancer, it seems; not the prayed-for magic bullet, and hopes should not be raised prematurely, but this research suggests that the fight against cancer will mean that thousands of sufferers will live longer and enjoy a high quality of life.

And maybe, ultimately, it’s all to do with our own bodies turning a switch. That’s a lengthy lead in to today’s short story, which was published in 2010 in the Costa TV Times.  

 

PET scanner - Wikipedia commons(Jens Maus)

 

TAGGED

 

Nik Morton

 

Alex Santini wished he wasn’t claustrophobic. It’s not as if he hadn’t been here before, either. Very much like a tunnel, he supposed. Maybe there’s hope now, light at the end of the tunnel.

            I’m hungry, he thought, which isn’t surprising since I haven’t eaten in over six hours. Nerves, too, are having their effect. Mind over matter is the answer. Think thin. That’s one way to diet, though it probably doesn’t have a great deal of success.

            It was only forty-five minutes ago - seems like ages - when Nurse Baker led him into the special preparation room. A radioactive substance created in a cyclotron was tagged to some glucose and injected into his bloodstream. She reassured him: ‘The intravenous injection’s just a slight pin-prick, Mr Santini, nothing to worry about.’

            ‘Fine. I’m not worried,’ he replied. In truth, worrying never cured anyone. Surgeons did, sometimes. Self-belief might. Faith often did.

            Odd, knowing it’s coursing through your body, yet not feeling the radioactive substance. Will I glow in the dark? The radioactivity is supposed to be short-lived, so maybe not. Afterwards, he was supposed to drink lots of fluid to flush out the radioactivity. He speculated about his radioactive liquid waste - would it mutate the rats in the sewer system?

            The injection was the easy bit, even though he didn’t like needles.

It’s the claustrophobia that he was really worried about.

            The PET scanner looked like something out of a science fiction film, similar to a large doughnut. Doctor Richards told him all about it in an effort at calming his anxieties.

            The Positron Emission Tomography scanner was made up of multiple rings of detectors that record the emission of energy from the radioactive substance in his body.

            The cushioned examination table was comfortable enough, just like last time. Then he started to sweat as it slid into the hole in the doughnut. Although he couldn’t see them, he knew that images were being displayed on the computer monitor as he lay there. Pictures of my brain, he thought.

            But was the tumour still there?

            This was the final test.

Three months ago, they’d run a PET scan and found the small abnormal shape, about the size of the hole in a doughnut. The cause of his headaches.

            ‘Sorry, Mr Santini,’ the Doctor Richards had said, ‘but due to the site of the tumour, it’s inoperable.’

            The fact of a tumour was bad enough, but to be told it couldn’t be removed was devastating. Alex’s head really ached then. They wouldn’t say how long he’d got. He could understand that. They could raise false hope or create premature despair if they were mistaken. When he got home, he radically changed his diet and drank lots of carrot juice. Over a few weeks, he purged all the toxins he’d fed into his body from coffee, tea and alcohol. Thoughts about closing stable doors crossed his mind but he dismissed them. He didn’t keep horses, anyway.

            Then for six weeks Alex meditated, picturing the unwanted cells that had gone astray, visualising the tumour shrinking, not growing and not spreading. Eating itself.

            The body is a remarkable creation, Alex thought, which is taken for granted until it malfunctions. It deserves to be taken care of, looked after. A balance, between the psychic and the physical aspects. A bit late in the day, he realised, but he devoutly believed that.

Now, as he waited for Doctor Richards to come out of his office with his diagnosis, Alex sat calmly sipping water from a bone china cup.

            The door opened and the doctor came through, a frown on his face.

Think positive, Alex told himself. ‘Well, doctor, is the tumour worse or not?’

            ‘What tumour, Mr Santini?’

            ‘Pardon?’ Alex said.

Doctor Richards shook his head. ‘Our PET and CT scans have diagnosed thousands of patients and we’ve helped almost all of them, saving their lives. You’re the first I’ve known where the tumour has simply gone away.’

            A massive wave of relief surged through Alex. ‘But you did save my life, doctor. If your PET machine hadn’t detected the tumour, I wouldn’t have been able to deal with it.’

            ‘Deal with it?’ Doctor Richards held his head to one side. ‘I don’t understand.’

            ‘I believe in mind over matter, doctor. Let’s be honest, we know that we only use a fraction of our brainpower. Just think, if we could utilise the unused portion, who knows what we’d be capable of accomplishing?’

            ‘But…’

Alex held up a hand to stall the doctor’s objections. ‘I know it isn’t taken seriously by scientists, but you have to agree that I’m living proof now that it can work.’ He smiled. ‘In fact, you could say that it’s become my pet project.’

***

Note: Since then it has been revealed that the urban myth that we only use 10% of our brains is a falsehood. That figure was probably plucked out of the air by early psychologists and subsequently made famous by Dale Carnegie’s 1936 self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. It has been perpetuated by the self-improvement industry, since we all like to think we can better ourselves by expanding our minds. – Sources: Daily Mail/Barbara Sahaklan, Professor of clinical neuropsychology, University of Cambridge, and Sam Wang, a neuroscientist at Princeton University. Even so, individuals have been spontaneously cured of cancer and other ailments; maybe that’s positive thinking or mind over matter…

 

***

Tagged (above), copyright 2014, Nik Morton

My collection of crime tales, Spanish Eye, published by Crooked Cat, features 22 cases from Leon Cazador, private eye.  He is also featured in the story ‘Processionary Penitents’ in the Crooked Cat Collection, Crooked Cats’ Tales.

 

 

Spanish Eye, released by Crooked Cat Publishing is available as a paperback for £4.99 ($6.99) and much less for the e-book versions – UK or COM.

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spanish-Eye-Nik-Morton/dp/1909841315/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1399383023&sr=1-4

 

http://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Eye-Nik-Morton/dp/1909841315/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1399382967&sr=1-5

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spanish-Eye-Nik-Morton-ebook/dp/B00GXK5C6S/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1399383023&sr=1-4&keywords=nik+morton

http://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Eye-Nik-Morton-ebook/dp/B00GXK5C6S/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1399382967&sr=1-5&keywords=nik+morton

 

Mum’s the word

My mother was born Florence Lillian Ross on this day in 1918. Harking from the north-east, I called her Mam. At some point I probably changed from using Mummy or Mammy, but don’t know when that happens. When self-consciousness sets in? Who knows. My mother-in-law came from the north-west, so I called her Mum. Americans use Mom. It all means the same, really.

I was adopted as a baby. She was and always will be my Mam. One day in the 1950s, sitting in Junior School class, I felt my face glow red when my Mam walked in to have a brief chat with our teacher. She looked really elegant, in a summer frock similar to that pictured below. A friend sitting next to me noticed my embarrassment and said, ‘Who’s that – your sister?’ When I got home, I told Mam about that and it made her day.

 

Mam and me in Carlisle forest

Mam in our garden

 

She was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks after Jen and I were married and we were on our way to Malta for eighteen months; she held our daughter once, when she was three months old, and the cancer claimed her on 7 June 1976, aged 58.

I was at sea on HMS Mermaid at the time, the ship’s Petty Officer Writer, and received the signal about her death. Because my Mam was dead, Family Welfare couldn’t finance the flight on compassionate grounds, so I’d have to; however, before I could make arrangements, an extraordinary meeting was held by the ship’s welfare committee and they voted to pay the funds for my flight. I’d barely been on the ship three months and was humbled by this generous gesture. I flew from Gibraltar to UK and thence northwards to attend the funeral. My return to Gibraltar a few days later was uneventful, save that the ship was no longer there, it had been called out on a Subsunk exercise in the Med. By their very nature, these exercises are unplanned. The ship has to set sail at once, allowing very little time to recall crew legitimately ashore, so often a handful of crew might not be found by patrols and announcements before the warship casts off. The ship’s next port of call was Malta, so I had to fly back to UK and then on to Malta, since there were no direct flights.

Later, a rose was planted in the garden of remembrance and Dad regularly painted its plaque. By the time it was his turn to shuffle off this mortal coil in 2000, it was no longer permitted to plant anything in remembrance; maintenance cutbacks, perhaps...

 

Rest in peace, Mam.

Duke it out

He learned to ride as a boy and in his early and mid-career, he was obviously expert. At an early age—while his father cleared the land, he was expected to follow, ready with a rifle to shoot any rabbits or rattlesnakes that came into view. His family moved to a community of farms and ranches, where he continued to lead an outdoor life.

In high school, he was an honour student, class president, sportswriter on the student paper, president of the Latin society, member of the drama club, and orator in the Southern California Shakespeare contest, among numerous other scholastic activities. He was also a skilled chess and bridge player. These youthful achievements are all the more impressive when one realizes that he accomplished them between delivering newspapers before school and working at a part-time job after school. He might have been successful in higher education, perhaps becoming a lawyer, if he hadn't been exceedingly fond of athletics, alcohol, and the movies.

After a football scholarship allowed him to attend the University of Southern California, a torn shoulder interfered with his game so much that he eventually lost the scholarship. Simultaneously, his love of alcohol distracted him from his studies.

Dropping out of college, in search of a way to earn a living, he gravitated toward film sets as he had when he was a boy watching westerns being made in the countryside near his home. Movies weren't merely entertainment for him. They were an escape from reality. Like many obsessively ambitious people, he was haunted by harsh memories of severe poverty and constant arguments between his parents. To escape from his depressing home life, he went to the movies as often as he could, four and five times a week. Playing with other children, he pretended that he was in a movie, as star, director, and writer.

 

 

The above is a mildly tampered-with minor extract from a moving appreciation: John Wayne - The Westerns by David Morrell, which I recommend. The quotes below are also taken from the short book, or rather lengthy essay.

Wayne’s birthday is May 26. He was born in 1907.

He didn’t start out as a film star. He worked hard at his apprenticeship. Throughout the thirties he made 56 formula pictures, ‘acquiring the elements that would combine to produce the persona of John Wayne.’ With his stuntman friend Yakima Canutt he developed the fistfight technique subsequently seen in movies, creating realistic punches thanks to the canny camera position; when they duke it out, it appears as if the fist connects....

As Morrell states, ‘he doesn’t act as much as he reacts. He lets his eyes communicate as much as his dialogue…’ Michael Caine’s acting master-class was all about the eyes, too.

He was a big man, and a determined one. That determination saw him ride out many setbacks that would have floored lesser individuals. When his long-time studio Republic refused to finance The Alamo, Wayne ‘angrily severed relations with it. He raised the money on his own and … elicited good performances from Lawrence Harvey as Colonel Travis and Richard Widmark as Jim Bowie. Wayne’s control of the ambitious production would have been a credit to an experienced director, let alone to a novice.’

In 1964 he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He announced that surgeons removed his left lung so that other people might seek regular check-ups; he didn’t mention that he also lost four ribs. He made 19 films after that, among them El Dorado, True Grit, The Undefeated, Chisum, Rio Lobo, The Cowboys, McQ, Rooster Cogburn, and The Shootist; during the latter he required oxygen between takes.

He died three years after The Shootist, in 1979, aged 72. ‘Given his excessive smoking and drinking as well as his cholesterol-thick diet (all of those steak-and-eggs breakfasts), it’s a wonder that he survived as long as he did.’

Morrell believes what epitomised Wayne was a ‘sense of integrity, hard work, and self-reliance, a belief in fighting for the values that one holds dear, a willingness to help, a refusal to be pushed, a readiness to take a stand, a championship of the individual in tandem with the understanding that we are all in this together.’ John Wayne was a complex individual, not simply the reactionary espouser of right-wing gun-toting politics portrayed by his detractors. 

On Wayne’s grave can be found his own words:

 

‘Tomorrow is the most important thing in life.

Comes into us at midnight very clean.

It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands.

It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.’

 

***

 

http://johnwaynebirthplace.museum/birthday/

***

David Morrell is a best known for his debut 1972 novel First Blood. He has written 28 novels.

Facing the light

Back in February, I wrote about Ron Scheer’s blog, commenting on how I found it inspirational, in that he was recovering from a brain tumour operation and writing about it; see here

His blog is entitled Buddies in the Saddle and it's always an insightful read and today he gives us some excerpts from his journal on the subject of ups and downs of his recovery. Needless to say, he provides us with some prose that shouts out ‘It’s good to be alive!’ And offers a big thank you to his wife...

 

 

Anyway, take this, for example:

"Meanwhile, there is relief from the emotional ups and downs in attention paid to other life forms that share this dot of space in the universe. At dawn one morning as I switch off the light by the side garage door, I find moths of various sizes and wing patterns hugging the stucco and worshipfully facing the light bulb that has burned all night. Stalks of yucca blooms nod outside a window in the morning breeze. Flower buds sprout on our big, rambling prickly pear. The acacia tree in the front yard fills out day to day with the seasons’ new willowy leaves, while overhead a cloud drifts in the ocean of air. Late afternoons bring a display of light and dancing shadows on the bedroom walls from the palms in the backyard."

[I’ve used one of Ron’s photos to illustrate his words.]

See the full blog here

LARISSA – A LIFE OF MUSIC

Some 18 months ago, my wife Jennifer’s choir, Cantabile Singers, was looking for a pianist when into their lives walked Larissa Yvonne Snarli, who was born in Russia but was now a Norwegian citizen living in Spain’s Costa Blanca. In her mid-fifties, Larissa was a diminutive package with a prodigious talent. She wasn’t an accompanist, but a concert pianist. The choir felt blessed indeed.

Last November Larissa was diagnosed with cancer and since then she lived for the music every blessed day, courageously performing on stage and teaching her devoted pupils at the piano. This photo shows her at the end of a fantastic performance this June. Though Larissa seemed to be winning after severe surgery and traumatic treatment, sadly additional cancer cells were detected. Eleven days after her birthday, she succumbed, leaving a bereft husband of twelve years, Roger, and a beautiful daughter, Elena.

Any death is sad. Yet it somehow seems particularly cruel when such formidable talent is swept away. Larissa was a linguist, cultured, humorous and highly intelligent.

When Larissa Yvonne, 56, and Norwegian Roger Snarli, 71, met on the Internet nearly twelve years ago it was love at first sight. Just a few months later, Larissa moved from Siberia to Oslo. Naturally, the life, the people and the culture in Russia were totally different from Norway. “But Larissa’s good command of English counterbalanced a great many cultural differences between us,” said Roger. “She had a great flair for languages and she quickly learned to speak Norwegian. She also started right away teaching new pupils at her private piano school in Oslo.”

“I learned the language from my pupils,” Larissa reminisced, “and by watching TV and reading newspapers.” She had a charming Russian-tinged accent when speaking English.

Larissa, or Lara as the family members called her, grew up with a sister eight years older in a privileged and highly educated family in the town of Tomsk, Siberia. Her father was a physicist and an engineer. Their mother worked as an English teacher, so the girls learned the language at their mother’s knee. They had a piano in the house and both sisters were attending music classes after regular school time. Larissa was only six when she took her first piano lessons and it soon became apparent that she had an exceptional talent. At the age of twelve, she held her first piano concert with the philharmonic orchestra.

Later, she extended her studies at the music college and completed her musical education by graduating from the Novosibirsk Conservatory. At 24, she started working as a leader of the orchestra (concertmaster) at Tomsk music theatre and worked there for seven years.

During this period she also performed a number of recitals, one of them being Beethoven’s piano concerto, with Tomsk symphony orchestra on tours in different parts of Russia. She received many awards and prizes from the city council – the highest acknowledgement available in the Soviet Union. In 1983 she was employed as a piano-teacher and an accompanist/concertmaster at Tomsk music college; she was awarded with the highest distinctions both as a teacher and an accompanist. Later on, she was twice chosen to participate in the international music festival for piano-duets.

Larissa became a Norwegian citizen and received her Norwegian passport. Their dream for warmer climes finally turned into reality when they finally got into the car on the first day of March 2006 and headed south. An enormous feeling of freedom engulfed them.

Even though Spain conquered Larissa’s heart, she maintained her bonds with both Norway and Russia. Larissa’s daughter Elena moved to Norway following her mother and has married and settled there; she is now busy studying Chinese at the University of Oslo. Larissa’s 88-year-old mother still lives in Russia.

Her personal motto was: “I wish to plant a seed of music into my pupil’s soul, and hope that it will bring joy and pleasure to their lives.”

Teaching piano gave Larissa the greatest joy in her life. She loved her pupils and they also showed that they appreciated her. The young musicians were of various nationalities: English, Russian, Chinese, Swedish and Norwegian, among others.

Throughout her medical treatment, Larissa tried to maintain a very positive attitude and believed that music would help her through the pain. For such a small lady, Larissa had a big heart and enormous talent to share with audiences and pupils alike. Now she is gone, but for all those whose lives she touched, her music will live on.

Larissa Yvonne Snarli, Norwegian citizen, born in Seversk, Russia, 8 August 1953, died Orihuela Costa, Spain, 19 August 2009.