Black Notley Blues. Diary of a Teenage Tb Patient, 1958 - 1959 Paperback – October 15, 2013

Although the subject matter of Black Notley Blues might lead one to expect a somewhat maudlin account of a lengthy hospital stay, nothing could be further from the truth in this entertaining memoir. Mr. Dell’s recollections of his hospital stay is both humorous and inspirational. I found myself sometimes amazed, often laughing out loud, as he recounts the creative ways he found to distract himself (and his fellow patients) during his confinement. A tribute to the human spirit!

In a sanatorium for a year yet laugh-out-loud funny You wouldn’t expect that a book recounting a teenager’s year-long hospitalisation and recovery from tuberculosis could possibly be funny even laugh-out-loud, but Chris Dell’s Black Notley Blues is just that. Again, his reminiscences - with 100 photographs - of that painful late 1958-59 period are also, at times, so compassionate and poignant.Chris drew on his meticulous and so perceptive daily diary entries of the time to offer us this remarkable tale of the antics he, his naughty fellow ward patients, and even the flirty young nurses got up to in that year.It was not all fun and games. Break-through antibiotics, streptomycin following penicillin, were just making inroads into post-war devastated Britain’s new National Health Service treatments. They helped take patients successfully beyond the former prevailing ‘fresh, open air’ and ‘plenty of bed-rest’ primitive beliefs. Two rather understandably unsympathetic though realistic common verdicts then were doctors’ experiences that ‘TB regimes made it difficult to control male patients despite the 1950’s strict ward principles’.However this 18-year old patient, described at his UK sanatorium as ‘a courageous yet mischievous ward patient’ often tested the tolerance of the staff to the limit. His perceptiveness, the loving humor, never flags. You marvel at half the ward escaping one evening to the Pub a mile away, a few so drunken as to fall into a ditch on the way back. To while away the time Chris set up a few ‘businesses’ during his confinement: fledgling cane made into baskets; and even selling his ward-made knitted products.The ward patients were victims of a disabling disease, some died, but often he and his near-anarchic sufferers engaged in various activities to raise their spirits; for example, Chris and his fellow patients wrote a play while restricted to the ward. He persuaded some patients into taking part, recording the performance on tape. It was a serious yet light tease on ward staff and others, and well received by all, he recalls.I highly recommend the book Black Notley Blues as one of the few accounts from daily diary entries of a patient in a 1950’s TB sanatorium, especially relevant today to help raise awareness of the global increase and threat of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis.

This is the diary of one young man's experience of long term hospitalisation in the 1950s for TB treatment. Given that it was in the 1950s and that treatment for this condition began to be successful because of antibiotics during that time, it is a wonderfully poignant account. It has just been published this year by Chris Dell, who has gone on to have a long and successful life, because of the treatment he was given. And despite the horrors of the treatments - being confined to bed rest for months and wheeled into the open air, having traction and splints, weights on the body, operations and body casts, and daily streptomycin injections, this is all dealt with in a matter of fact manner and overlaid with stories of relationships with other patients and the nursing and medical staff and all the activities these young minds dreamed up to keep themselves occupied. Despite the seriousness of Chris Dell's condition and of the other patients, the account of daily life in a hospital ward is light-hearted and at times laugh out loud funny. I loved the fact that he began a series of business enterprises in cane making and knitting, wrote and produced a recorded play whilst in hospital and got up to all manner of escapades when he could. I thoroughly recommend this book for anyone interested in social history or life in the 1950s. It is a fascinating window onto that time through the eyes of a delightful young man. I am so glad that his treatment was successful and that he has shared his account in this book.

What an enjoyable read! Amusing, eye-opening and informative, Black Notley Blues could even be described as inspirational. For most of us could certainly learn a thing or two from Chris Dell about courage and positivity and making the best of a very difficult situation. How such a young man had the strength of character to remain so consistently stoic and upbeat while being confined to a hospital bed for so long, is hard to imagine. His resourcefulness is equally impressive - from basket weaving to teddy bear making, he acquired so many practical skills during his confinement, along with coordinating under-cover trips to the pub; performing and recording plays and generally entertaining his fellow patients - not to mention the nurses!! From the reader's perspective, it is satisfying to learn what happened to Chris once he was discharged from hospital and to see more up-to-date photos from a recent visit back to the hospital. Fabulous!