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Thelma and Joe on their wedding day at Camden Town Hall in 1962 |
‘Stomach ulcer more painful than childbirth’
‘Think positive!’ Brave pensioner tells how her life was turned upside down by serious operation
THE man who would later become Thelma Dowsett’s husband fell at her feet – literally.
Joe stumbled over in front of her in Gray’s Inn Road as she made her way home from work at a wool shop.
Mrs Dowsett walked him home, and the rest was history. They married, and in 1963 had a baby. But shortly after, the couple were warned by doctors that, due to a spinal problem, Mrs Dowsett could die in childbirth should they try for another.
Some years later she survived a terrifying operation after an ulcer erupted without warning.
Mrs Dowsett was with Joe, a plumber at Islington Council, at their Cromer Street home – the street she has lived in most of her life – when she was suddenly struck by severe pain.
“I came home from work and didn’t know there was anything wrong with me,” she says of that night in 1988.
“On the Friday afternoon I said I felt funny and my husband said perhaps I’d eaten something. I was sick all night, and the following morning I couldn’t get out of bed.”
Shocked by the sight of his wife vomiting blood, Joe rang for an ambulance.
Mrs Dowsett had developed a stomach ulcer that had ruptured.
Within days she was told she must have a gastrectomy operation in which doctors would cut away roughly half her stomach.
In the event, the ulcer was much larger and they were forced to remove three quarters of her stomach, cutting from the breastbone to the naval.
But Mrs Dowsett insists she feels lucky: she didn’t lose her entire stomach and does not have to use a colostomy bag.
Although doctors believe the ulcer must have been growing for “quite some time”, she didn’t feel a thing until the sudden pain of that night, which was “worse than childbirth”.
The ulcer was thought to have been the result of a stressful job and pernicious anaemia, caused by a deficiency in vitamin B-12. The condition is incurable and Mrs Dowsett injects herself daily with a vitamin serum.
Her diet now consists of “old-fashioned English cooking with no frills”. She can’t eat anything spicy, cannot take white bread or sugar, and must alternate her eating and drinking as she cannot do both simultaneously.
Mrs Dowsett says that she loves gardening, but cannot walk to the end of the street without a rest.
Joe, who Mrs Dowsett calls “my little ray of sunshine”, died in 1991. Despite everything, she is looking firmly on the bright side.
“I am restricted, but I feel a lot better now than what I used to,” says Mrs Dowsett. “I’m not smoking now, I don’t drink, and I’m not eating rich foods. Would you say I looked 80? That’s the difference it’s made to my life.”
Mrs Dowsett was recently diagnosed with emphysema but her motto is “think positive”, and she is happy to talk to others going through the same operation to help if possible.
She adds: “I tell them, ‘if you do as you’re told you’ll do all right. As you’re going into surgery, think about the nicest thing you have in your life and you’ll get through it’.”
Mrs Dowsett says she thinks of her beloved son, Joe Junior. And it works for her. |
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