andrew mitchell

I should have spotted the signs. Looking back, they were plain as day. The dream was simple. I’m on a small boat in a storm; rough seas with grey swirling water and driving rain is knocking me off my feet. The boat, a tiny vessel in an unending ocean, is being tossed around, the faceless crew and I hold on for dear life.

Then it comes into view, a horrifying rogue wave rises on the horizon, powering towards us, growing larger and larger. Within moments, it’s upon us, towering before the bow of the boat, like a wall of swirling fury. There’s nothing we can do, but wait for it to crest, and submerge us.

As I pondered the dream on waking, I knew it was significant, even thinking about it now, it’s a potent image in my mind. Unlike the majority of dreams, which fade into the ether like passing clouds, instead of taking it as the omen it so obviously was, I got on with my day, filing the nautical hellscape away in my mind. I spent the next few days in good spirits; I reconnected with an old school friend, bringing each other up to speed on the last 25 years, while we drank great beer and reminiscenced. I spent time in nature; walking the trails at Gibside, listening to Goldcrests sing in the hazy Spring sunshine. It was serene.

However, on return home, a deep exhaustion washed over me. Even napping and food didn’t help. As I tossed and turned in bed I awoke, or I thought I did. Our bedroom seemed larger, more detailed. It was disconcerting. Then I saw it; a spectral figure slowly gliding down our hallway. It silently entered out bedroom, two jewel like eyes bore into mine. Terror struck me. I tried to move but couldn’t. It came closer walking around the bed towards me, never once looking away. I tried to muster the ability to shout, to wake Emma, to get her out of the room.

Closer and closer it came until it stood directly over me. Staring down, inspecting its prey. I’m struggling to think of a time when I was more frightened. I tried, one final time to scream as the being began to press down on my chest, when Emma shook me awake. The room snapped into a dimmer, lower resolution. The being was gone. Apparently I was making unintelligible noises that had woken her up, she’d known something was very wrong.

I’m well aware of sleep paralysis, sometimes known as ‘Old Hag Syndrome’, when your brain awakens, but your body remains asleep. The phenomenon is one in which the sleeper feels the presence of a supernatural, malevolent being which immobilises the person as if sitting on their chest or the foot of their bed. I originally came across this while reading the Fortean Times as a weird child. I thought it sounded amazing. Young Andrew, you were an idiot.

Pulling myself together from this terrible night’s sleep I drove to work feeling incredibly low. Thoughts of Emma’s illness, her forthcoming surgery, of weekly enforced office time swirled in my mind like the sea in my dream. Everything suddenly felt hopeless as I sobbed my way along the A69. The darkness contrasted starkly against the light of the weekend; my cyclothymic brain fluctuating from manic happiness to crushing depression.

Cyclothymia is a mental disorder that causes extreme shifts in mood, energy and ability to think clearly. People with Cyclothymia experience rapid mood swings between hypomania and depression. While the exact cause of Cyclothymia is unknown. It is widely believed to be the result of chemical imbalances in the brain and seems to run in families. It is also thought to be triggered by stressful circumstances or situations.

Suffering from Cyclothymia can be a uniquely wild ride. During manic phases you can feel full of boundless energy, highly ambitious plans, and endless ideas. It’s like a drug come up, with a euphoric plateau you never reach.

It can be incredibly exhilarating if you’re able to realise what’s happening. Usually however, I’m too busy building a website, or setting up a business to take any notice. This is where my Working Men’s Club project emerged from; a manic evening of conquering the then nascent Midjourney, to create an unending series of bairns smoking tabs and sculling pints.

Thanks to Cyclothymia, you also make some spectacularly bad decisions. Such as spending a terrifying amount of money on things you absolutely can’t afford. You don’t sleep well, don’t want to eat, all while being highly animated one moment, and full of rage the next.

Mania has been a mainstay in my life, however not until my diagnosis, could I give these fun packed episodes a name, or even try to explain my actions.Odd behaviour had been with me from childhood; from obsessive collecting of bottles, magazines, posters, and any other old shit I could lay my hands on, hours would be spent compulsively cleaning my bedroom or I’d spend entire sleepless nights just watching the same movie on repeat. It was simply, as my family and friends will attest, just who I was. At no point was my behaviour ever challenged, which goes to show how self absorbed the eighties were.

As I got into my early twenties financial recklessness became a big thing. I amassed over £20K in credit card debt before leaving university and earning just £6 an hour, then walked out of a six-year job on whim at the age of 23, despite it being the only thing paying my rent and keeping me afloat.

Safe to say, manic behaviour is somewhat of a mainstay in my life.It wasn’t all bad, mania allowed me to talk myself into TV writing roles, filming commercially released BTS music videos, receiving a cease-and-desist notice from Police Academy star Steve Guttenburg about the ridiculously offensive comic book I co-wrote, blagging jobs in the brewing trade, and even getting to fly to Los Angeles to make a documentary about Cold Steel Knives president Lynn C. Thompson.

Did I parlay said documentary into further work in the industry? Absolutely not, instead, I sold all of my camera equipment, deleted all my editing software and moved on to the next thing.

With my highs, however, came the crushing lows. As each phase of mania peaked with whatever ridiculous thing I’d ended up doing / buying / imbibing / agreeing to, came the race to the bottom.

The depressive yin to my elevated yang succeeded in sucking the joy from everyday life and filling me with dark thoughts, extreme lethargy, and crippling anxiety that make each day feel like a hopeless struggle. A breakdown of a relationship in 2008 triggered my worst phase; a spiral into a deep depression and borderline alcoholism that lasted several months. I was unable to work, isolated myself from family and friends and entered a pattern of, not to put too kind a point on it, risky behaviour and a freesion of suicidal ideation.

It was a dark, self-destructive time but one which, finally, saw me reach out to a professional for help. My then employer offered a counselling service I was able to access. One late night teary and drunken call to their 24-hour helpline saw me placed with a counsellor in Newcastle whom I visited for four months, while my GP trialled me on various anti-depressant medication.My highs and lows continued to fluctuate over the years but thankfully never to the debilitating extent they had in the past. With a strict focus diet, exercise, and mindfulness meditation I managed to, for the most part, self-regulate.

Then came the ol’ Panny-D. The loss of order and routine was the fan to my mental health’s flame. My drinking increased, I started smoking again after years of hiatus, all while exercise and self-care went quickly out of the window. Naturally, my patterns of manic behaviour increased dramatically.

From buying countless vintage digital cameras, an expensive guitar despite having not played in the best part of two decades, to starting a T-shirt side hustle. The latter did raise a solid amount of money for Hospitality Action to be fair, I’d show you the website had I not deleted it on a whim like I so often do.

All my grandiose planning and plotting was quickly followed with a depressive cliff edge drop sensationally soon after. This time was slightly different; I’d started to hallucinate. I’d catch glimpses of people in my house in my peripheral vision.

Whether cooking a meal, watching TV or working from home, I would often be on the hunt for these invisible visitors in and around my home. It was unsettling to say the least. My cycles of mania and depression began to heighten in both strength and duration, culminating in me taking a calamitously drunken fall down a flight of concrete stairs after a particularly exuberant night.

I somehow managed to walk four miles home with ripped jeans and huge, bleeding cuts on my legs. Incredibly, just one year later, I slipped off a curb outside my house and shattered my hip in three places, finding out in hospital I had osteopenia. I can only guess that my sensationally drunk state somehow saved me from destroying every bone in my body. Bizarre.

This, however, was the wakeup call that I wasn’t going to get better under my own steam. I needed to get professional help. Again.

I reached out not just to my GP, but also to my employers, to access our counselling services. These sessions were a genuine lifeline. Up until this point, I’d felt adrift, unable to tackle the thoughts and feelings I was experiencing. Counselling was a genuine tonic; allowing me to work through my current feelings and patterns of behaviour while being given the opportunity to look back over similar occurrences and triggers in my past.

My sessions gave me the insight to keep myself within an acceptable window of tolerance. Counselling has also guided my treatment plan; helping me provide much needed information to the mental health team who were able to quickly find me the right specialist to work with.

It is difficult to put into words the benefits that come with talking therapy. Gone are the difficulties in speaking to loved ones or any potential embarrassment about opening up to friends or colleagues; it’s completely impartial. Talking about your issues is the first step in making sense of them.

In the maelstrom of awfulness affecting Emma at the moment, it’s become obvious that I’ve been in a manic phase for around eight months. Looking after Emma was and is my sole focus. However, having returned to the world of work after a long period of absence, my brain is seemingly struggling to balance the nine to five work tasks with the forthcoming unknowns of Emma’s surgery.

Several months of counselling last year have kept the rapid cycling to an absolute minimum as Em’s treatment was all consuming, but now I’m thinking it is time to look into mood stabilising medication, and getting an ADHD assessment I’ve been putting off since forever.

The last thing Emma needs is a carer who is suddenly obsessed with playing the xylophone or something equally ridiculous. Now just the small matter of paying for it. I’m sure I’ll have three hundred ideas on how to do just that on my next trip on the mental rollercoaster.

Discuss...

Trigger Warning: This article contains detailed descriptions of a cancer diagnosis and treatment, including: Bowel cancer diagnosis, invasive medical procedures, chemotherapy side effects, mental health challenges and emotional trauma related to serious illness.

In late spring 2024, my wife, Emma, and I embarked on a whole house renovation project; re-wire, new central heating system, new kitchen, new bathroom; the absolute works. We'd planned this for the best part of five years, squirreling money away for a complete re-do of our home. We organised tradesmen for each of the phases of work and set about ripping the house to bits, uncovering an endless list of worrying issues, hidden behind the endless amount of plaster we removed from the walls. It was an incredibly stressful time with bills mounting up from the difficult discoveries we made.

Thankfully we'd moved out of the house, away from the dust and dirt, living out of two suitcases in my sister in laws attic room in Gateshead. We made frequent trips home to clean up / put our head in hands as we surveyed the devastation. A property developer I am not.

As we battled through the filth laden chaos Emma came down with a bout of constipation. Initially we thought nothing of it but, as the days passed, we thought it best to get her checked out at the doctors. With Emma in her early forties the GP decided to schedule a flexible sigmoidoscopy at hospital to rule out anything suspicious. We duly attended the appointment not really giving it a moment’s thought as we tried to firm up definitive dates and times from our elusive Tradies. Following Emma's procedure, I was called in to meet the doctor.

The mood suddenly shifted; the doctor looked serious, checking pages of notes on a clipboard. She'd found something “sinister”. The doctor explained it was undoubtedly bowel cancer and Emma would need urgent scans to ascertain the stage, size and type of the tumour. Emma went ashen white, gripping my hand as she looked around the room for answers that simply weren't forthcoming. I felt sick. The next few hours are a blur. I remember calling Emma's sister, her parents and mine but I have no recollection what I told them. Emotional shock plays havoc with memory processing.

Over the next week we returned several times to the hospital for a dizzying array of lengthy CT, PET and MRI scans to assist in allowing the surgical and oncology teams to devise a collective treatment plan. Although the waiting was interminable, endlessly playing through 'what ifs' in our minds. Amazingly, it only took ten days after her initial appointment for us to meet with Emma's surgeon to hear the news.

It wasn't great.

Emma had a six-centimetre, stage 3, rectal tumour that was too large to operate on. She required months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy to shrink the tumour to a size where it could be removed. However, due to the tumours position it was vital for Emma to have a stoma formed to ensure her bowel didn't become blocked and delay her treatment. Stoma, coming from the Greek word meaning ‘opening’ or ‘mouth’, is an opening on the abdomen that can be connected to either your digestive or urinary system. This will allow waste (urine or faeces) to be diverted out of your body. Emma required a colostomy and, although this is sometimes a temporary measure, this would be permanent in Emma's case.

Emma's stoma surgery took place just two days later. Over three hours her surgeon rerouted her lower bowel, forming her stoma on her abdomen. The incredible nursing staff worked with her to show her how to change her bags, clean her sutures and adapt to her new life. Her diet was one of an eight year old’s dreams. Cake, white bread, chips. Protein and fibrous veg was replaced with carb heavy stodge to allow her bowel time to adapt and heal. She spent ten days on the ward before I was able to bring her back to her sister's, where we spent time processing the difficult journey ahead.

It was tough; emotions ran high, some family members and friends found it hard to take in, shying away from her diagnosis. Anxiety robbed us of sleep and time seemed to slow to a crawl but, through it all, Emma took to her new life as an 'ostomate' in her stride. Bobby, her given name to her stoma, healed well with only a couple of late-night visits to the hospital with complications from small blockages.

At the Freeman Hospital, a fortnight after her surgery, we met Emma's Oncologist, Dr. Hashmi. He is a straight taking man in his early forties, who was laser focussed in his directness at our meeting. Her tumour was large and, given Emma's relatively young age, he wanted to throw the harshest form of chemotherapy at it. Four drugs, delivered in six rounds, with an initial seven-hour infusion on a ward and an additional 48-hour infusion, delivered at home through a connected Baxter pump. She would have twelve days of recouperation between rounds. The drugs were incredibly potent, with three, terrifying A4 pages of potential side effects.

This was, he explained, the harshest form of chemotherapy Emma could potentially endure, and it would be, in his words, absolutely awful. She would lose her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, she would be in pain, she would struggle to eat, she would have insomnia, she would get cripplingly painful neuropathy in her hands and feet, she wouldn't be able to drink, eat or touch anything cold. Catching coughs, colds or, God forbid Covid, could hospitalise her. To help Emma stand a chance of recovery they needed to poison her; destroying her immune system to allow the drugs to melt away the growing tumour. Without it, Emma would have less than a year to live.

But wait, there was more. The radiotherapy side effects would be just as bad; horrible burns and troubling inflammation, but with the absolute cherry on the cake of a rapid onset menopause which she couldn't receive medication for until her cancer was in remission. The final boss level of her treatment would take place in the New Year. Once the tumour was significantly reduced in size, Emma would need an Abdominal Perineal Resection; the removal of her lower colon, rectum, and anus, leaving her with what is affectionately called a 'Barbie Butt'.

As playful as the name is, this is a major surgery that will require months recouperation with another laundry list of potential life changing issues. We were told to expect Emma to be unable to work for well over a year. All of this was laid out for us in fifteen minutes of rapid-fire chat that was sensationally difficult to take in. The news was seasoned with a carrier bag full of leaflets and information sheets. To say we were reeling from the news was an understatement.

wo days before her chemo commenced, I rallied people to come together to help get us back into our home. Although not fully finished, the house was liveable. The people working on the house, on hearing of Emma's condition, pulled out all the stops to get us back in. I'll be forever grateful to the electricians, plumbers, kitchen fitters and decorators who worked late into the night, rejiggling their schedules and, in some cases, refusing payment, to help us have the space for her recovery. The project was only missing Anneka Rice and a dune buggy to complete the charitable aesthetic.

Chemotherapy started in August at the Tranwell Unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The unit was previously a secure mental health ward, where we were greeted for our frequent visits by Fred Watson's imposing concrete sculpture, Inside Outside, a 3.5 tonne of carved granite symbolising the mind's ambiguous relationship with internal and external worlds.

“Dominating the composition, a stairway and arch represent social hierarchies and institutions. Against these large, roughly carved masses, a dangling telephone, carved in intricate trompe l'oeil detail, focuses sharply on the lack of an answer, a listener, or communication. “

As Emma was struggling to talk about her illness and her feelings with those closest to her, the significance of the sculpture was not lost on me.

On the ward, Emma had a line fed from her forearm into her shoulder, an area with less nerve endings. The main drug, Oxaliplatin, was known for causing discomfort and severe nausea. It would feel like molten lead was being poured into her veins. The first session took eight hours and left Emma severely ill. Fever and exhaustion buddied up with projectile vomiting that, to clean up, required me to dress like a Hazmat operative due to the incredibly toxic nature of the drugs in her system. The heavy hitting antiemetics kept the majority of the sickness away but she felt dreadful and I could do nothing but wait for the side effects to subside.

My own mental health had taken an absolute hammering during all of this. Having had a mental health crisis pre-pandemic and broken hip a year later I knew the tell-tale signs of both mania and depression. The thought of losing Emma was interminable, manifesting in nightmares, panic attacks and abnormal heart rhythms. I was holding on to so much tension I pulled a muscle in my shoulder and was offered diazepam to help calm me down. As we progressed through Emma's chemotherapy sessions, I started attending counselling sessions at FACT (Fighting All Cancers Together), meeting with Debra who helped me to process the maelstrom of emotions. Having worked in cancer care for years, she understood the medical jargon I brought to my sessions and she was able to empathise around the complexities of treatment. The sessions were a lifeline, a safe space to unpack what had happened, and what was yet to come.

Chemo was tough; really tough. Despite her stoic nature, Emma was terrified that her drug regime wouldn't work. Chemo, for small number of patients, is completely ineffective, causing more problems than success. Three rounds in, we met again with Dr. Hashmi following a second round of scans. The tumour was shrinking, her treatment was working. It was only at this point that Emma cried, thankfully, for all the right reasons.

Heartened by the news, Emma arranged a wig fitting at The Wonderful Wig Company in the Ouseburn. As part of the package of care she received a voucher to subsidise the cost of wig. Lack of body confidence during chemo can have a dire effect of patients so we spent two wonderful mornings there while she tried on various shapes, styles and colours. She was getting ready to go back out into the world, in a limited capacity admittedly. The company couldn't have been nicer, treating Emma with such kindness and sensitivity, finding the perfect new look for her. Armed with her new locks, a colour returned to her face that had left her back in the Q.E months before. When I asked her what she thought the change was she immediately fired back with quote from Alec Baldwin's character Jack Donaghy, the Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming for General Electric from the NBC television show 30 Rock, “Andrew, your hair is your head-suit!” I had married well.

Chemo continued, but under a different, softer light. The severity of it didn't diminish but our attitudes were changed. We met so many others enduring their own battle. Watched in sadness as some were told the treatment wasn't working and cried tears of happiness as others rang the bell to signify the end of this part of their journey.

In late November, Emma was disconnected from her infusion bottle for hopefully the final time, looking resplendent in her Happy Hour t-shirt as it was her turn to cathartically sound the bell. To applause, tears and hugs of the nurses and family members, its resonance a calming, joyful balm soothing the last fifteen weeks of treatment. We had reached the first base camp.

Chemotherapy was, of course, just the start, with radiotherapy starting only a few weeks later. Daily fifteen-minute sessions of concentrated radiation targeted at Emma pelvis with the aim of further shrinking her 'bulky tumour'. Despite the short nature of the treatment this didn't factor in the travel to and from the Freeman, blood tests and meetings result in a good three hours spent there each and every day. We'd been given the laundry list of side effects to expect but had crossed our fingers we'd been lucky in dodging them.

Sadly, our luck had seemingly run out. On New Year's Day, following five days of intense sickness and diarrhoea, Emma found a large amount of blood in her stoma bag causing us to present at A&E. Ten hours of waiting in an assessment room, while Emma lapsed in and out of consciousness, was far from the New Year's vibe I was looking for. Her initial diagnosis was one of Radiation Colitis; where radiotherapy causes large scale inflammation and bleeding of the intestines. However, it was slightly worse than that. Her blood work showed Neutropenic Sepsis; a very worrying condition for cancer patients where their white blood cell count is abnormally low. While standard white blood cells help your body fight infections, neutrophils are important for fighting infections caused by bacteria, and Emma had none. The hospital was experiencing a huge influx of winter sickness bug patients when we arrived, so Emma had to be isolated from patients and visitors.

She spent nearly a fortnight in hospital; initially in Gateshead's Q.E, before being transferred to a specialist cancer ward at the Freeman. Unable to eat or drink, Emma remained on a drip to raise her potassium levels and injections to kick start white blood cell regeneration in her bone marrow. Thankfully, the meds stemmed the tide and Emma, now being monitored closely by her Oncology team, was able to continue her radiotherapy in hospital before being deemed fit enough for discharge.

As radiotherapy wraps up, we are, of course, still filled with a nervous hum of anxiety and worry. The disorientating sights, sounds and smells of hospitals, coupled with the worry of “will this work” is ever present, but now this plays pianissimo as opposed to the fortissimo overture that soundtracked our initial months post diagnosis. Realising and accepting we are not in control of the situation has allowed us lean into the treatments and interventions; to put our trust in the hands of the specialists working on our behalf.

If any good can come from these awful circumstances, it's this; we've been given an odd sort of freedom. Emma's cancer diagnosis has reframed our day-to-day life. Long term planning has been replaced with short term, impactful moments. When the chemo and radio exhaustion permitted, we took a walk along the river, or went for a coffee, or watched a ludicrously formulaic movie on Netflix. These micro adventures, however trivial, offered a chance for gratitude, to spend time together and to appreciate our relationship. Removing everything other than the essential has been incredibly liberating. No longer catastrophising on “but what if X happens”, instead leaning into the little glimmers of hope and happiness and luxuriating in them. A slow walk around Saltwell Park became a calming moment in nature, not just an allocated hour on an exhausting list of must-dos.

Excepting help from friends and family, something I, in the past, had actively shied away from, became of a cornerstone of our days. Whether it was receiving help moving our possessions back to the house or enjoying lovingly cooked dishes delivered by a team of faux meals-on-wheel drivers offered respite from the day-to-day household admin. We're a long way from all of this being resolved but we are certainly en-route, navigating our way with a basic but helpful roadmap. And certainly not one gleaned from Google. If you, or people you know, end up on a similar path I implore you to avoid the all too easy to access digital encyclopaedia; there be monsters. For us, the magnificent MacMillan, Bowel Cancer UK and Colostomy UK have been our guiding lights.

As the chaos of Christmas and New Year were replaced with a very different set of circumstances, I am minded by Derek Mahon's translation of one of Horace’s Odes, titled ‘How to Live’. A timely reminder to set worrying aside, and to give thanks for the time we have with each other.

Don’t waste your time, Leuconoé, living in fear and hope

of the imprevisable future; forget the horoscope.

Accept whatever happens. Whether the gods allow

us fifty winters more or drop us at this one now

which flings the high Tyrrhenian waves on the stone piers,

decant your wine: the days are more fun than the years

which pass us by while we discuss them. Act with zest

one day at a time, and never mind the rest.

— Derek Mahon, The Hunt by Night (1982)

Discuss...

As an artist, I'm always seeking new creative avenues to explore. In recent years, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence technology has opened up unprecedented possibilities in the realm of art. In early 2023 I began experimenting with generating images using various artificial intelligence platforms.

Having worked as a photographer for many years, I was amazed at the new scenes, vistas, and worlds that I created from my computer; from tropical beaches to snowcapped mountain tops – the possibilities seemed endless. I created an Instagram account to share my creations, through which Sally Lockey, from Right Up Our Street, contacted me about using image generation in a community setting.

Organised in conjunction with Right Up Our Street, and from suggestions from their community advisory group, we created The Album, with the aim of creating personalised art works with participants from DCC, aiming to push the boundaries of what AI can achieve in the artistic domain.

For this project, we turned to the innovative software Midjourney, which generates images from natural language prompts. The system takes your suggestions for scenes, sculptures and photographs, rendering photorealistic outputs. Through a series of in-person sessions, our participants delved into their lives and loves, to create portfolios of imagery that were unique to them.

We crafted image after image, experimenting with various themes, emulating artistic styles, and weaving in personal narratives.The results were nothing short of breathtaking. Over a series of weeks, based out of the DCC office, we created a series of AI-generated visuals from our collaborative prompts. From awesome architectural design to flamboyant fashions sheets, serene sculptures to underwater adventure; combining human creativity with machine intelligence.

But The Album was about more than just the final pieces. It was a living, evolving process – a journey of discovery that both inspired and humbled me. Working alongside Sammy, Mo, Mina, Ahmed and the dedicated members of the Doncaster Conversation Club, I was privileged to bear witness to their life stories, experiences, and cultural perspectives.

Each prompt, each brushstroke of artificially intelligent brilliance, carried deeper meaning and insight into the human condition. We didn't just create art; we forged connections, built bridges between cultures, and celebrated the potential of technology and humanity in unison. We reconvened in March at RUOS HQ, to share the portfolios of work with our wonderful group of artists. Over a delicious afternoon tea, we admired the incredible artworks, were serenaded by Mo, and shared our experiences of working together on this wonderful project. I'm tremendously grateful to have been part of this groundbreaking project.

The Album has opened my eyes to an entirely new artistic canvas, where the boundaries between human and machine grow increasingly blurred. It is an exciting frontier, but one that must be explored thoughtfully and collaboratively.

I extend my heartfelt gratitude to Beth, Sally, the Right Up Our Street team, Paul and Denise from DCC, and most importantly, to the wonderful participants who entrusted me with their stories and their friendship. The Album will forever be a milestone in my artistic journey – an expedition into the great unknown that has yielded profound discoveries about art, AI, and our shared human experience.