imageI have just confirmed with the University College Hospital, London that they have a bed for my son David today. His consultant will perform a bone biopsy on his jaw tomorrow in the hope that they can find a cure for his chronic osteomyelitis which David has had for almost four years, and has suffered considerable pain, though the pain is being successfully managed now.

Unless he can be cured by medication, the only alternative is surgery to cut out out the infected area, which could leave him facially disfigured. Plastic surgeons will then rebuild his face. David has made me promise never to allow  that to happen. So we must hope for the very best and put all our faith in medicine, the skill of the hospital’s microbiologists and his consultant.

Just to tell you a little more about David, the shirt he is wearing is a genuine Gucci number. David is a very modest 17-year-old, not at all boastful, but has a weakness for designer clothes. When we visited Rome last year, his only thought was to head for Prada and Gucci, never mind the breathtakingly, stunning architecture. So we hailed a taxi to zip about the city and he bought his Calvin Klein jeans and a couple of designer shirt. And yes, we did see the classical sites too.

My other son James feels great when he picks up a bargain or two at TK Max, usually his favourite sports brand, while my husband is happy enough wearing Tesco’s jeans. So I don’t know where David gets this extravagant streak from. He spends a fortune buying these clothes with his own money and works in Clarke’s shoe shop at weekends, as well as a waiter in our local pub. I will tell you this, the shirts do feel lovely and soft and the finish is superb, I hope I can fit into them when he outgrows them!

I do sometimes give up on him though. I gave him some money to buy a pair of new pyjamas for hospital, the tee-shirt top and shorts bottom type. He came back proudly with a white Calvin Klein tee-shirt. “Very nice, but how are you going to manage when you go to the loo?” I asked.

So we have to stop off at Tesco en route to buy a pair a jim-jams which David thought were so uncool they would tarnish his image. Still, he will at least be able to impress nurses with the top part of his designer clad body, while his Tesco bottoms will be hidden under the bed linen.

I have never been in a designer shop in my life and am almost afraid to put David’s clothes in the same washing machine load as my stuff, it is so inferior in comparison.

In the meantime, we very much hope that David can be cured before he starts uni next year.