Nov 22

 Nausea has settled in for the long haul again. It is. Sigh. Annoying. Frustrating. Sickening. It's enough to take a large edge off of everything. Don't want to move. Don't want to do anything. Don't want to eat anything. Just enough to empty your head of proactive thoughts. Just want to feel better. It's not enough that you're writhing around in misery. It's. Like being permanently seasick. A mundane sort of suffering.

As ever with that kind of shit the time factor makes things very different. It's one thing to be really sick for a week and then recover. It's another thing to be somewhat sick for months. Having light at the end of the tunnel or some semblance of things improving turns out to be very important. This is part of my reality these days. The long haul aspect. It is brutal. The lesson you get is that length of time ends up being way worse of a problem that just intensity alone. If you're very lucky you get both. Feeling very ill. Very indefinite periods. It slides you neatly into suicide adjacency. I bump along that border so often these days it feels just like part of life. Again. It makes me wonder how people with slow terminal illnesses handle it. Maybe they figure out ways to ease any suffering along the way ? I don't know. I just suspect I am weak at it. Maybe. I don't know.

But anyway. At the moment. I am. Ok. Ho. Ho. Fucking. Ho. Why do I even say that. What is the point of me saying I am ok. What information does it convey. It has lost all sense of usefulness. It's just a call and response thing. Hi. Hello.

Let's try again.

I am not ok. In the greater scale of things I have had worse. Far worse. I am currently in a... gratingly... copeable state. I can manage this. Like you can manage having your face scraped along a gravel path. It is decidedly unpleasant. And not just in a oh, I wish I was more comfy, but in a very real, I feel ill enough that I can't keep any thoughts in my head about doing chores, or cooking, or other shit like that. They are - in some back room way - too low of a priority for my brain to consider. It is occupied with trying to not feel like shit. Stupid nonsense like, are the towels clean. Gets shoved right out the window into, leave me alone, I feel sick kind of territory. 

I am in that very familiar grey zone. Purgatory. There are worse bits of purgatory for sure. But here we are. Washed up on the shores of nauseous unwellness. Exhaustion constantly lapping at you.

The Permanently Ill and Exhausted Pigeon syndrome.

Sick of it. Bored of it. Frustrated with it. Annoyed. Resentful I have to keep dipping into sleep.

Anyway.

Different day. Same story I guess. I think my surgery window of shuffling the deck has expired. And we are back to the Business as Usual Shit.

Everytime I have surgery I do this dance. It makes the sand shift. I always wonder what the secret ingredient is. Copious painkillers ? Anaesthetics ? Pure oxygen ? Strait jacketed into masking up for a day ? Not eating for a day ?

One thing that did occur to me this time. When I came round and my eyes were punchy. This immediately tells me a few things about my punchy eyes.

1) It is NOT allergies. Or air quality. Or pets. Or dander. Or any of that shit that people guess. I got punchy eyes in a fucking sterile operating theatre.

2) It's not lack of oxygen. I was being monitored. On an oxygen feed. My O2 levels watched like a hawk.

3) It's not me "sleeping funny". Again. I am being monitored. From blood pressure to O2.

4) It's not what I'm eating !

Personally I suspect it's something to do with blood flow. Particularly as in the recent past I have got punchy eyes in real time. Awake. Start to feel more ill. And then my eyes get punchy. Almost like something is sucking the blood away from your face to... somewhere else... it thinks its needed. Your eyes go black. They feel like they're being sucked into your head.

And consider. Before they knocked me out. They made me feel ill. They made me almost pass out. That blood rush away from the head.

Uh huh.

If - ha ha - I ever talk to a useless GP about it again. I will at least have some data proof to pop any of their trite fucking guesses out of the air. No. No. And no. How about. Gasp. You do your job, and try some fucking diagnosis, rather than just running your thumb down the statistically most likely things to occur without ever having to take any fucking data from the patient.

I swear to god. The modern GP approach is just literally run from a statistics spreadsheet. And a triage risk spreadsheet. Without any fucking reference to the human being in front of you. Medicine via lowest common denominator. The stats say. You're most likely to have a cold. Go away and have lemon tea. Yes, but doc, my leg is missing. Yeah. Uh huh. But statistically, it's probably a cold. So my leg will grow back ? No. Have you tried fucking off and not bothering me for 2 weeks ? Great. By the way. We now have a 3 month waiting list for appointments. Good luck with the lemon tea. Won't I be dead in 3 months ? Probably. Good luck.

That's the modern GP mo in a nutshell. The number of cases of people dying from treatable shit for just such a stupid scenario litter the headlines. Remember the 11 year old dead from a burst appendix. Because she got the have you tried fucking off for 2 weeks. And by that point. It was too late. And the very belated scramble to then get her into surgery - woops - was too little too late. If only. Someone had diagnosed her on day one. Diagnosis ? Of a super common problem ? By a half competent health practitioner ? And whos treatment is textbook easy ? Ha ha. Idealistic nonsense.

Worse than useless. Criminally negligent.

Eh meh.

Ranting. About bits of the NHS again.

Moving on.

Turns out the gaming buddy who died this week might have an open funeral. If so. I think a lot of his gaming groups may end up attending. Myself included - if my health behaves itself.

I always find that slightly tricky. About paying respects. Don't get me wrong. I absolultely believe in it. And of course. The person is gone. They "don't care" anymore. But it's not about that. It's about honouring their memory. About marking the point that this is important. It matters. We should not just let people slide into the darkness unnoted. That. Feels like. Just. An even greater darkness. There is something stupidly irrationally emotionally human about marking the passing of someone. It does matter. Even though in the bigger picture it doesn't. That tension. Between the nothing matters. And this is very important. Both things are true at the same time. And there is something painfully, tragically human about it mattering a lot. If that makes any sense. I think who we are. The silly monkeys we are. Death. The passing of someone. Is as important as it gets.

But I do wrestle with it - particularly where its not overwhelming obvious to me whether I should turn up or not. Who am I. I don't matter. Don't want to interfere. As stupid as it sounds. I do need time and argument to settle on the Right Thing To Do here. It isn't an automatic for me.

For someone like my mom. It's obvious. A no brainer. As is the choice to dress smartly. My mom always really liked me being smart. As moms are wont to do. And I know it mattered to her. A great deal. Even if to me, it doesn't matter. But her funeral. Her passing. Of course I am doing to do that for her. Because. If she was still there. I know. She would have liked that. She would have passed comment on me being smart. And that would have made her happy. And also. To be there. To not let her go into the night on her own. Which was what we were initially facing. No ceremony. No one there. She just goes off.

No. Fuck that. As I said at the time. Even if I am the only person there. Perhaps even more so if I am the only person there. I am not going to let her be alone in that moment. I know. She's no longer there. But fuck that. It matters. A great deal. I will not leave her alone. On her very last step. Never.

And is it turned out. My conviction brought everyone else along with me - except the old man. And we had a funeral. And everyone turned up. Because. Of course they would. A rejection of the casual nihilism of it doesn't matter. It does matter. And if nothing else. It's about everyone else getting their closure. About dealing with it. About a shared moment. About remembering. As a social animal. It's incredibly important.

Anyway. I am lecturing. On my soap box again.

If. Big If. I can attend my gaming buddy's funeral. Should I go smart ? He wouldn't have cared. He would care that I was there. I am sure of it. But smart ? Am I just then doing it for me ? A chance to preen ? Even though, hilariously, preening is not me at all. But that doubt. That inner critic.

I gently debated it with a friend of mine. My doubt. Uncertainty.

But he was very clear. No question.

Being smart. Making the effort. Is a sign of respect. It is a sign of respect to his family who will see you. To know that someone made that effort for him. And as he pointed out. No one is ever going to be upset that you were smart at a funeral.

I can see his point.

I don't have his clear confidence.

But I do understand. And I can see. From his moms point of view. It would be respectful. I can get that.

So. Assuming its open. And my health holds. I will go suited and booted. And pay my respects for a lovely guy.

As I said to my friend. Particularly in these shit times. It's important we point out the people that are not raging assholes. The good people. This was a good person. The cruel narcissists are running rampant. It's not a given that people are decent anymore. Therefore. It stands. To make a point. This was a decent person. Lament their loss.

Anyway.

I shall park that whole thing now. Processed. Decision made. Packaged up. I now know, should the situation arise, what I am doing, why I am doing it. I just have to follow a plan from this point on.

This is 99% how I am with life. Everything is pre calculated. So I know where I am. And why. At any given moment. It's why I always seem like I know shit. I've already thought about it typically. At length. Exhaustively even.

My dufus fucking nature. 

I Can hear my shrink chiding me in the background. You're being mean to yourself again for showing compassion and thoughtfulness.

Heh.

See. Maybe the shinkery is indeed working in subtle ways. 

Sigh. I am so fucked up.

Stop it. We don't like that word.

Fair enough shrink.  

Bit of a wrestle in the mud isn't it. Stopping my inner critic always kicking me. 

Cunt ! No. Stop that. Ok. Sorry I'm an idiot. No. Stop that. Sigh. 

You were not taught these things as a child, why would you then not be like that as an adult.