Celebrating 400 Days of My Photo Project ‘The State of London’
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Back in March 2011, my life changed when I was hospitalised after a blood clot had turned two of my toes black. Doctors at St. Thomas’s Hospital, opposite the Houses of Parliament, saved my toes — a mercy for which I am eternally grateful to the NHS — but after I recovered, my life changed again when I began cycling across London on a daily basis — and taking photos everywhere I went — in May 2012.
When I got ill, I had managed to give up smoking, which would otherwise have killed me, but I then started piling on the pounds instead, on a steady diet of biscuits and cakes, and so getting back on my bike on a daily basis seemed like the perfect way to get fit.
I’d been a cyclist since I was about four years old, but like many useful habits, it had become sidelined as I smoked too much, and also as a result of my obsessive sedentary lifestyle as a writer, researcher and commentator and activist on Guantánamo, which had consumed my life since 2006. Read the rest of this entry »
My Gratitude to the NHS, Seven Years After I Developed A Rare Blood Disease and Nearly Lost Two Toes
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Seven years ago yesterday, I was admitted to hospital after suffering for two months with severe pain in two toes on my right foot. As a human rights campaigner, it was, I thought, somewhat ironic that I was in such pain that I was suffering from sleep deprivation, unable to sleep for more than a few minutes before being jolted awake in excruciating pain, a situation that lasted for at least a month, if I recall correctly after all this time.
Eventually, doctors worked out that I had a blood clot, which was what was turning my toes black, but it wasn’t until I was admitted to hospital — and, specifically, St. Thomas’s, where I was taken on March 20, that specialists worked out what to do for me — or, rather, what they would try, to see if it worked — which involved me, for five days, having what felt like liquid cement pumped into me, in an effort to widen the artery that fed my toes and, ultimately, to save them. (I wrote about my experience at the time, in an article entitled, Intimations of Mortality — And Why This Is the View From My Bedroom).
Their endeavours, I’m very glad to say, were successful. After 12 days in hospital, thoroughly marinaded in morphine (a miraculous pain-killer that doctors work hard to prevent mere mortals from having access to on a regular basis, presumably to prevent the world from being overrun with morphine addicts), I returned home, to resume my life, to allow my toes to fully heal, and, eventually, to start a new life. Read the rest of this entry »
Official campaign video
Who's still at Guantánamo?