Mr Brain is ill. Our life revolves around doctors and hospitals and ancient copies of magazines encrusted with other people’s germs and snot, and experiments with drugs and shoving Mr B into a microwavable machine, and the inescapable but as yet unspoken fact that Mr B, like the rest of us is heading towards the great architectural practise in the sky...but not quite yet, as in the tradition of the building trade I intend this to be one be one job that might be over-budget but will certainly run over time. All this, plus my own experience of medicine a few years ago in Portugal, which in this house has become known as ‘my brush with death’, makes me fully qualified to give advice to those who suffer.

Do not even contemplate having an illness without being fit and well first.

You will need all your strength, both physical and emotional, to cope with what is ahead. But advance planning will make all the difference.

Firstly, you must be physically fit. I would suggest a rigorous training programme that includes short bursts of speed be combined with long distance stamina work. You will need both of these to cope with all the running about required. Remember, you will be required to leap into action at a moment’s notice to attend for tests, to ferry documents and yourself about the country and to navigate the complexities of multi-sited medical facilities. It is one of the peculiarities of the NHS that as soon as you are feeble and ill and unable to drive you will be sent to far flung venues inaccessible by public transport. It is advisable, too, to include some physical training that leads to suppleness. You will need this for the difficult and uncomfortable positions which are required for examinations. Pole-vaulting would be appropriate.

Extensive shopping trips are required. Fashion tips for the stylish patient are not the staple of magazine articles. What you need are a number of outfits that convey a serious and responsible attitude so that it is not assumed from your appearance that your illness is in any way due to personal fecklessness. Medical staff are keen to apportion blame whether it is due to your parentage or lifestyle. There is not the moment to appear rakish. However, avoid black. It appears pessimistic and may be taken to imply a lack of confidence in the medical staff.

Buying nightwear for the actual hospital stay is only to be undertaken when you are entirely well and at your strongest. It is an inescapable fact of life that however few toiletries you may require, every toilet bag is just one item too small. I would suggest that everyone now goes out now and buys three sensible nightdresses and a dressing gown to be placed in the bottom drawer and, hopefully, never used. Otherwise nerves of steel are required to reject all the pretty sexy garments and plump for grannies up to the neck, down to the ankle winceyette in a size 24 cruelly trimmed with incongruous rosebuds. Pretend to have an old fat friend.

Get a divorce. You will need to marry a saint. More than that you will need to marry a saint who doesn’t get on your nerves. Though even a saint is not without guilt. On one blood-giving visit to the hospital, the very fierce looking lady technician asked if I were pregnant. Laughing I said I thought not and that in any case my husband was nearly 80. Looking at David standing dutifully at the doorway she extended her arm towards him, pointed at him and shouted, forcefully and accusingly ‘He could get you pregnant!’ David torn between pride that he should so obviously ooze fecundity and yet slightly resentful at being single-handedly guilty in the eyes of the ills that have befallen womankind through the ages, smiled modestly.

Simultaneously, take a degree in administration – you will need this for all the paperwork required if you have private medical cover – a degree in medicine concentrating your post graduate thesis on your particular ailment; and a study of mental illness. You will need the last to cope with your own madness and to help in your interaction with the medical staff. In my case the madness took the form of superstitions. Examples. If a see a green car then Everything Will Be Alright. If when we drive into town we do not see a cat then Everything Will Be Alright. If I think lovely and generous thoughts about everyone, especially those I hate, then Everything Will Be Alright. If I defrost the freezer then Everything Will Be Alright.

More generally, you will need to convert to every known religion. To hedge my bets, I now believe in every God known to man. I have made pacts with them all. If I Come Through This...I shall go, like Gladys Aylwood, and sing songs with Chinese babies in the hills...I shall never be anything other than the happiest and most grateful person on earth. I shall write the great British novel...I shall fill the unrelenting minute with good works and will never again be all the things that got me into this in the first place...we shall go to Harry’s Bar in Venice to have lunch again...Although I suspect it’s a bit like the business of the eleven-plus and the bicycle.

When people asked my mother if, as was tradition then, I would be getting a bicycle when I passed the examinations my mother replied with her usual incision, ‘No, it is those who fail the 11-plus who will need the bicycle. Thos who pass will never need one.’ So, with illness. Being well is enough.

Do remember it is the duty of the patient to be ever-grateful..thank you nurse, thank you doctor, thank you bedpan washer...the exhausting gratitude. And with the gratitude comes the implied guilt that the terrible workload and nature of the work is all down to the idiot patient. Without the patient this hospital would run like clockwork. As though junior doctors hours were a secret and that nurses pay comes as a terrible shock and is all down to the bloody patient.

In all honesty I have to commend the medical care I received in Portugal. OK, so the private hospital was shabby. There was no colour co-ordinated curtains and duvets. Hospital gowns were unknown, even those in England which only have one string at the back. But the staff, after the first minutes of Portuguese cool and politeness where we sum up each other, were gently, efficient and sensitive. Just when I needed it the young male technician doing tests said seriously and quite formally, that I was ‘very nice for my age’. Now I’ve had ore effusive compliments but none more welcome or better timed, or I suspect, more genuine. The lady surgeon was wonderful. She talked to us as though we were real and intelligent people. She was thorough, professional and kind. Kind. That wonderful scarce virtue almost lost to mankind.

Admittedly the surgeon’s English, while good, lacked subtlety. It is unlikely that in England a consultant would refer to a lump as ‘huge’ but I was happy to forgo such niceties for a bit of frank talking.

Lumps are traditionally described in terms of fruit. As big as an apple, an orange, a tangerine, a grape, though rarely a pineapple. David, at my hysterical instigation, drew a to-scale sketch of mine. Though with his usual professionalism he remarked that he was one vital measurement short of accuracy. He compensated and justified his fine arts degree by some subtle shading. I decided on the basis of this and the principal that you are what you eat that my lump was a roast potato.

Choose your friends well.

The choice of Best Friend becomes particularly critical at the time of ill health, as you need exactly the right reaction to bad news. When I told mine, over the telephone, she was distraught. I comforted her by saying I had made a new will in which I had left her my new computer and I read her the eulogy I had written in advance of the event not feeling that I could quite count on friends and family to fully exaggerate how important I had been to them or quite how lovely. I heard her sob at my reading. This near despair is what you want in a friend. I am the one to play the brave little heroine. That’s my job. Hers is to be heart-broken. It instantly made me feel better. None of that ‘life goes on, she wouldn’t want you to grieve’ nonsense for me. Though I admit, I did take this a little too far on one occasion when I was crying ’I hate her, I hate her’, and when pressed, admitted to David that I was referring to his next, imaginary, wife. Hence the need to be married to a saint.

In the event, my roast potato turned out to be not much more than an imposter proving that my superstitions worked, I am using them now with David’s illness...if this diary entry comes in at under 2000 words then Everything Will Be Alright.