Isolation, “Socially-Distant” Visits, Steroids, Peculiar Reading Matter & Strange Happenings: A Week In The Keele Health Centre With Glandular Fever, Mid February 1983

Annalisa (right) & Others, Keele Campus Store, c1985, with thanks to Mark Ellicott

I hadn’t had flu. I didn’t get better after being sent home from the Health Centre with some tablets. I got worse.

Saturday 12 February 1983 – Variable health – Liza [O’Connor] shopped for me – Annalisa [de Mercur] visited. Early night.

Reading that passage, plus some of the subsequent ones during my illness, I am reminded that I had several kind people in my circle, in addition to the attentiveness of my girlfriend Liza, who I particularly remember as having been considerate during my extended indisposition.

Sunday 13 February 1983 – Felt bit better this morn/afternoon. Evening came over all ill. Early night.

Monday 14 February 1983 – Schlepped straight back to [Health Centre] HC – pretty ill. Liza visited in evening.

I don’t think that was in line with the plans Liza and I had laid for Valentines Night. I was mightily hacked off as well as ill.

Dr Scott now suspected that I had infectious mononucleosis, also known as glandular fever. His suspicion was soon confirmed with a blood test.

Glandular fever was sort-of the 1980s equivalent of Covid 19 – it was not as well understood then as it is now. The medics were very fearful of epidemics amongst student populations, for some unknown reason. It was also known colloquially as French-kissing disease, although I’m sure there were other ways of getting it and no doubt French people knew of it colloquially as the English-something-or-other.

One side effect of that illness is to make the patient feel low, to the point of feeling depressed. I have to say that my only ever experience of feeling what I might describe as “depressed” was when I had glandular fever.

Tuesday 15 February 1983 – Still pretty ill today – bored and depressed – won’t let have visitors.

Didn’t they know who I am?

I was not a good candidate for isolation. Nor was I a good candidate for some of the clinical interventions required, such as blood tests and injections. Dr Scott – Scotty – was sympathetic yet firm. But there was one matron/nurse I particularly remember as being dragon-like, whose method was more of the cruel-kindness variety.

“If you don’t stop making a fuss, I’ll go and get my long rusty needle and use that on you instead”.

Note to students of psychology: that sort of shock therapy doesn’t work on trypanophobic people – at least it didn’t work on me.

Scotty at that time had a “kill or cure” therapy for glandular fever – a short sharp (high dose at first but rapidly decreasing) course of steroids. His theory was that it helped most people to get better quickly enough that their studies needn’t be deferred, whereas without his treatment many students ended up deferring their exams – in effect taking a year out of their studies, which I certainly didn’t want to do. For some people, the cure made their symptoms worse, but “kill” is too strong a term, as the drugs were only given under health centre supervision and would be stopped/reversed if serious adverse effects came into play.

The steroids worked on me without any serious side-effects, although they did have a strange effect on my being, which I’ll return to explain a bit later.

Wednesday 16 February 1983 – Moved into a room with James – got visitors today – Liza and Michelle [Epstein] – feel somewhat better.

Thursday 17 February 1983 – Several visitors today inc. Liza – feeling much better today – fair bit bored still.

James was a rather strange fellow. He was not merely depressed about having glandular fever and being isolated in the health centre with me. He absolutely hated Keele. He had a girlfriend who also absolutely hated Keele. Together, they had found a way of making their University life tolerable – basically by going away from Keele together every weekend – primarily to visit historic churches, if I remember correctly.

“Got visitors” was a rather strange, socially-distanced thing while I was in this isolation wing with James. The visitors were not allowed into the health centre to visit us – they could stand at a window outside our room and we could talk to them through that window. I vaguely remember that there was an element of elevation to our room, with an inadequate mound upon which our visitors might stand. Thus it was harder for me to chat with vertically-challenged visitors, such as Annalisa, than it was to speak with the more vertically-assured, such as my lanky (in several senses of the term) flatmate, Alan Gorman.

James’s only visitor was his young-lady-friend, who would join him for a mutual moan about once a day. Their shared beef was that they would be unable to escape the Keele campus together at the weekend and visit churches again until James was better.

My visitors were more numerous (several daily) and a more diverse bunch.

Friday 18 February 1983 – Still bedridden – feel much better – getting a fair bit agitated. Liza and others visited today.

I’m not sure which of the “multiple visitors” days included Ashley Fletcher, but I do remember him bringing with him some reading matter for me – I suppose technically he smuggled it in to me by throwing the reading materials to me, where I caught them at the window. It was either Miriam or Heather who was, through Ashley, lending me the booklets in an attempt to help relieve my boredom. The booklets were basically lesbian porn story magazines.

I’m not sure I was ever qualified to offer lit-crit of that reading matter…nor lit-clit come to think of it. Forty years later, the memory is dim, but I did read a few of the stories which were, to my mind, very predictable tales with almost identical plot lines. An unlikely encounter would suddenly, “unexpectedly” result in a shared realisation followed by an almost identical outcome – **SPOILER ALERT** – a sex romp. Sometimes it was two females, sometimes two females and a man, sometimes several people with a focus on the females. I suspected that the same stories were probably gender-reassigned for other similar publications targeted at other groups, with some “characters” (characterisation was in truth almost entirely absent) simply having the name, gender and some small aspects of their dénouement activity changed.

I do remember trying to discuss with my sole companion in isolation, the church-loving James, how peculiar and dull, rather than exciting, I found these story books. But James was simply horrified and disgusted by the presence of these booklets in our room.

Still, I was really touched by the thought and the effort that Ashley and the lenders of the material put in to try to cheer me up and help alleviate my boredom. I do remember Liza finding the whole episode hilarious.

Meanwhile, my use of the word “agitated” might well have been written to remind me of the peculiar effect the steroids had on me. I think that effect might have come to its peak the next day, by which time I think James had been released.

Saturday 19 February 1983 – Let me get up for first time today. Sat in lounge – very exciting. Liza visited.

Dragon Matron – yes she of the long rusty needle threat- came in to my room. I remember suddenly feeling a hot flush and thinking, “she’s not actually that bad looking”…

…the outcome was extremely swift, hands-free, involuntary and I am pretty sure indiscernible to anyone other than me. But it was a seriously weird feeling.

I have asked my friend, Dall-E, to help me to illustrate the scene:

In truth the care team in the Health Centre were very kind and really were trying their best to make our lot tolerable.

That Saturday evening, when they let me sit in the lounge, I remember that they had identified another student, a Spanish guy who was, I think, called Miguel (I knew him through Rana Sen and that lot), who knew me. So they arranged for us to watch TV and have a juice together in the lounge, before they served us dinner together restaurant style. It really did feel like a release from isolation by then, although in truth Miguel and I didn’t know each other all that well and mostly discussed how nice it was of the staff to be making that effort for us.

The Tv programme we watched together was Dynasty, which I had never seen before nor have I seen it since. I thought it was incredible – by which I mean that I could not really suspend my disbelief to engage with the programme. I think Miguel quite liked it.

Sunday 20 February 1983 – Let me out for a walk or two today. Very exciting.

Monday 21 February 1983 – Discharged from HC today – got busy laundry etc. Liza came over in evening…

In my impressionistic memory I was isolated in the Heath Centre for ages. Intolerable ages. It came as a bit of a surprise to work out, from my diaries, that a week was all it took to be “intolerable ages” when I was 20 years old.