Feb 15

 Nausea still comes and goes. Sometimes I will get a day off. And sometimes I don't. I am well into taking the PPIs at this point, so, my stomach acid should have come down, albeit the dosage of the PPIs they have me on is half of what I had before.

I am sleeping very long when I don't have to drag myself awake to do something. Averaging 16+ hours of sleep a day. No joke. Day after day. Inevitably I end up going to sleep somewhere between 2 and 5 am. And then don't stir until the evening. 7pm to 9pm. It is kinda monstrous. And all kinds of fucked up. I live in a twilight state. I get a few half decent hours in a day if I am lucky. Noodle with a game. And that does me.

Yesterday, in a lot of pain, I decided to take a couple of paracetamol before bed. I have by and large been off any kind of painkiller since November. In a bid to not give my nausea anything else to have a problem with. I ended up sleeping a lot better than I have in... months. I know I am full of pains all over, but I don't think I realise just how debilitating they are to me. I just get on with it But a dose of anti inflammatories really does help me out quite a bit. I am reminded of when I did something to my back a few years ago, and ended up nearly passing out from the pain, but, weirdly, I didn't feel super in pain. I mean. It hurt. A lot. Breath stealingly so. But. You get on with it. My nervous system however thought differently, and I nearly blacked out on the stairs. Perhaps I have a high pain threshold for such things. I don't know.

Hazel has been pretty stable and in a decent mood of late. She has also been putting a bit more effort into doing things like washing up and so on. It is a little bit of a change of heart with her after all these years. I am not sure what is behind it. I suspect it is because she has seen just how bad I am lately, and is pulling a little more weight. Last couple of days she actually cooked dinner for me. I can count on one hand in a decade how often she's done that for me. I don't ask anything of her. Or expect anything of her. Other than to not be a raging asshole.

I have tentatively asked what her plans are a few times. It's very unclear just how long Poppy has. It is very much up to the whims of cancer. Which we know can break in any direction. Slow. Fast. Unexpected. The underlying expectation was that Poppy didn't have long. A month. Perhaps. But it has been a month. And she is doing good. Which is not to say she is completely fine. She's not. Two days ago something tweaked in her bad leg and prompted a lot of crying and pain, even on all the painkillers. Worrying. Sad. But. She seems to have recovered again. And as of today went out for a very eager walk. Pulling at her lead. Bouncing around. It is nice to see her so happy. But like all dogs you must fill in for their wisdom, if not their intelligence. Boundless enthusiasm is not always wise. So we try to keep her as low on bounces as we can.

I went out for a walk with Hazel and Poppy today. Short. Very short. Just around the block. In the freezing air. It felt very good to be out. With the fresh air in my lungs, despite it being completely frigid. If anything the cold air was better for me. I badly miss going for a walk. Very. Badly. I miss having my pair flowing around me. I cannot dwell. But it is there. That enormous sense of loss in all sorts of ways. Terrible. It is life. Terrible, awful, ever increasing loss and grief of life.

I spoke to Andy this week. Back from his skiing holiday. He was in good spirits. He is, it has to be said, doing good by me. He cares. He is careful with me. He tries to do his best for me. He is being an all round good dude.

Spoke to my nephew a bit. Unprompted he offloaded a lot of stuff he was worried about. His anxieties. Around people. Paranoia. He thought he was maybe schizophrenic. No. But. A serious problem. Twice I have told him that I think he really really needs therapy. He is dealing with some very serious mental health issues that if anything are slowly getting worse.

Of course, I did not feel well whilst talking to him. Nauseous. It occurred to me about 30 minutes in that here I was, using a tiny slither of energy I had to support someone else. I do not begrudge it. At all. But I noted it. It is something Hazel points out in her scolding kind of way. That I will burn my energy on others even when I have none to give. At this point, I am always going to be that way. It is hardwired within me to give a shit and to help.

Anyway. There are positives there too. He is enjoying being social with a friend he has made locally. Slowly doing something for himself in a social setting. He just needs a lot more of it. Normalisation of engaging with people. Whilst under the weight of debilitating anxiety and a dose of low level depression. Tricky. 

I shared with Hazel - with a lot of caveats - my sisters experience with dogs with tumours. Sometimes short. Sometimes years. I think in my sisters experiences the tumours are.. different. The one Poppy has is known to be much more aggressive. But. Still. I passed the information on. I apologised before I even shared it. Said I wasn't sure if I should etc etc. Because I have been kicked by Hazel for both sharing and not sharing information. So. You are damned if you do, and damned if you don't. My next strategy then is to apologise profusely, and then share information. What else can you do ?

Anyway. The point was. What if Poppy does stick around for 3 months ? 6 months ? A year ? Would she be staying with me the whole time ? I said it was entirely up to her, I did not want to compromise Poppy's well being at all, so she could stay with me as long as she wanted. But I know from experience she gets antsy with such things. She worries she will lose her flat if she doesn't show up there ( I have no clue how realistic that is ). And I think she knows how sketchy she can be, and that being on her own means to a certain extent she can just kick the walls, as opposed to a person. The upshot of all this is, that Hazel is planning on going back home this weekend. To see how it goes. Whether Poppy can deal with the stairs. How long. How well. She flomps up and down the stairs here. Sometimes overly much. And seems reasonably ok with it. I think she will do just as well at home to be honest. In any case. Hazel is going to give it a go. I said we could always alternate weeks on bad periods or something like that. Or just take each day as it comes. No firm plans. 

So we shall see.

I am not sure what her plans for vet visits will then be. She has been entirely relying on me to a) pay all her bills and b) ferry her around in a car. That will be an entirely different situation when she goes back home.

I think to date she has spent in excess of £3.2k on Poppy. All of which has gone through me. Her boyfriend sent £1k over last month. So. She's still in debt to me of over £2k. I don't ask her or push her for the money. She never seems terribly grateful about it, as is her way. But eh. I am doing what I can to support them both.

So. Setting aside everything else. How shit my health is. How my focus is on swirling around the fucking plughole that I am due to go down. And Hazel. And Poppy. And everything else.

Aside from all that.

I find myself idly wishing I could move house. Move from here. To somewhere different. To somewhere with more crafting space. In all probability the final house I would have before kicking the bucket. It is, of course, an immense mountain to climb. Full of anxieties and impossibilities. But in a perfect world. I would like to move. I am really unsure how wise it would be. But I do think I'd appreciate a bit more space to set projects up in and leave them. With my low energy and health, being able to just walk away from a project without having to worry about putting it away would help my sense of well being a lot. And of course. There are so many memories in my current house. So. Fucking. Many. I have been here just about 25 years. Give or take. In that time I have seen girlfriends go. Got dogs. Lost dogs. Lost my mom. Been diagnosed as crackers. Had all my major depressive turns here. All my near misses with suicide. I have marks on the wall left by my mom. My dogs. I still have knick knacks and things around from previous girlfriends. The house is an endless call to the past. I suspect. It might do my good to break from it. Leave it behind as a memory. Instead of keeping it as a constant reminder. I also worry that I would lose myself in that. That all of those things would become even more just like some fever dream. I would lose a greater part of my life. Like it had never happened. What would I have afterwards in my twilight state ? Nothing but dreams. I suppose it is not much different to how it is now. I don't know. In the end I suppose we leave no mark on the world. We are erased and forgotten quicker than you think. What does it matter ? But of course. It does. It matters. Because we are human. And in the moment we care. It triggers emotions. It is who we are. In the big picture it doesn't matter. In the small personal picture it matters a lot.

I came to a realisation today. This is something I already know, but had not put succintly. I am very aware that 9 out of 10 things in people are driven by anxieties, past trauma, patterns of behaviour set from painful events, eventually stuck in dysfunctional loops that masquerade as normal. But when you put it succintly. It is fear. The thing that drives and shapes people is fear. More than anything else. It is the fundamental power of the world. Which isn't to say people can't also be motivated by love, or other things. But. The elephant in the room. The powerhouse of energy is that of fear. It motivates the rich to accrue ever more material wealth. Fear of not having enough. Fear of being thought less of. It motivates the abusive, the violent. Fear of abandonment. Fear of loss. Fear of looking weak. Fear of being hurt again, so hurt first. It motivates the tyrant. Fear of being found out. Of being made to look stupid. Weak. Fear of being put in a position of vulnerability. That. Is another key point. Fear. Of vulnerability. It drives so much. PTSD. Anxiety. It is so far down in our genetic coding, fear the dark, fear the predator, run for the trees, beware the tiger. In the modern world it is morphed into a panoply of anxieties.

Fear. Makes the world go round. It is the terrible secret in peoples hearts.

I wonder what a cure for that would be ?