Back in the haematology department. Sitting in a packed hospital waiting room. It’s like sitting in Argos having paid for your purchase. You perch on wooden chairs awaiting your number to be called. Here you have paid with blood but were offered no “laminated book of dreams”. Instead, you shift on your seat, arm to arm, with fellow inmates awaiting your possible "laminated folder of uncomfortable treatments". With good fortune, the many vials of blood they’ve sent away will contain nothing vile.
I’m in a holding pattern. My blood is not normal and this has been the case for many months. If today’s results show no change I shall be free for a whole year from hospital visits. I am filled with both hope and fear. My liver sort of stopped working over a year and a half ago and weird proteins flooded my system. My liver function has recovered greatly and it seems as if my system has also begun to recover. Except for these pesky proteins. They keep being mass produced by an immune system that feels it’s still under threat. So, these tests have been happening regularly and each time I feel a fraud. Sitting like a healthy cuckoo among the nest of smaller weaker birds. Normally the cuckoo lays its eggs in another bird’s nest and when the intruder egg hatches it rapidly disposes of the rest of the eggs by pushing them out. But here it is the cuckoo, I, who is examined by its fellow inmates with suspicion. So, I sit trying not to be intimidated out of the nest by those much sicker than me.
A year and a half ago my weight plummeted and I wanted to sleep all the time. I knew something wasn’t right. One, I don’t lose weight I gain weight. It’s what my body does. Two, I used to sleep only at night. Strangely, now, I have put on weight but cannot sleep even at night. It’s as if my body is playing silly beggars with its symptoms. One minute this the next minute that, a confusing peekaboo affair. I might be morphing into hypochondriac mode. I want to ask is mental confusion a symptom. Disappearing keys, handbags and glasses are they characteristic of a physical complaint? I try to put milk into cupboards instead of the fridge. Forget why I entered rooms and what I did yesterday. But all of these pales into insignificance when I compare them to not being able to sleep. Staring at the ceiling counting down the hours to dawn. Even that has changed. I used to stare bleary-eyed at my bedside clock disbelieving that it was 3 am and I was still awake. Now, I frequently am heartened that it is 4.30am and dawn has begun at last. Instead of thinking precious hours of sleep are being lost I am just so relieved the night is over. I may not have slept the whole night but at least the bloody thing has ended.
-->
My brother suggested meditation as a way of passing the long hours. Then, as we discussed it he confessed that the main problem with meditating at night is the miserable bugger you discover in those quiet reflective moments. You! There is nothing to distract you from yourself. It is a horrific moment of self-discovery and not a good substitute for deep oblivion in dreamtime. Ahh … my test results are ready, got to go.
PS bloods are all good! Hurrah!!!
