Life on Warp Speed

(still trying to figure out how to sort out font size etc... hate this monster print)

Now Feb 06

Such a busy couple of weeks! Monday, I draft some copy for William Pryor at Unhooked Thinking to run past Drink & Drug News, email it to Michele and the Hep C Trust for feedback. I have tea with Lyn after work – delighted by her enthusiasm for the whole project, and bowled over by her determination to do what she can to help.

Also very important – she’s a smoker, and I didn’t crack. Very, very tempted – until I realise if I have to stay away from all my smoker friends, I’m not really on top of the compulsion. No exercise Monday, though…

Tuesday, I have a chat with our hep nurse, about training a heppie (me!) for high altitudes. Very reassuring, in that he points out I know my body really well (yes) and I probably know as much as him about building up cardio-vascular stamina (er, no – I don’t know where he gets that from… I know about self torture, not self nurture). Just goes to show how people form peculiar ideas about you… I had to get my current SORN (off-road declaration) for my motorbike, so at lunch-time, I march up to Church Road Post Office. Then, even though time is short, I have to do a quick turn of St George’s Park – where Linda and I went last week.

This is the trouble with a walk during lunch-hour. There’s never enough time – especially not when it’s a lovely crisp day… I never want to go back to work for at least another hour or so… excited about my soundtrack idea for training, & met by equal enthusiasm from chap at the workshop...

I call K on Tuesday night – so much to tell her about! I really don’t want to ‘leave her out the loop’ just because she’s so far away. And, as she points out, we could ‘do a fell’ as part of my training – Cat Bell, maybe, one of her dad’s favourite hillwalks.

Must get my boots and get them broken in for that.

Wednesday, I walk to the travel clinic for my jabs – typhoid, diptheria and tetanus. The nurse is lovely; interested and supportive about the hep C – and very accepting of the way I probably caught it. Turns out she’s worked with families affected by drug use. She comments that I’ve ‘done very well,’ which always feels an odd thing for me to hear. She’s studying for an asthma diploma or something, so she’s a great person to ask about asthma at high altitudes.

After ten minutes in the waiting room – to make sure I don’t go into prophylactic shock or whatever the reaction to the jabs is – I stride home via the back lanes. I just feel so lucky that I can do this, can take the time in the morning to breathe the fine rich-scented cold country air before going to work… I’m glad of the snack in my bag; haring out without my soya/milk drink means I’m a bit nauseous and shaky by the time I reach the bypass. Breakfast in the open air – on the first day of February! Can’t be bad.

Driving to work, both arms really hurt, particularly the left, my ‘gear change’ arm – and it gets progressively worse throughout the day. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to have my jabs mid-week… It’s a long old day on Wednesday, too – I start my college course in the evening.

It’s both a blessing and a curse that I don’t consider things very deeply, I tend to just go for it and then deal (or not!) with the consequences.

But sometimes, if you consider things for too long, you never do them – like Michele reminds me, ‘the people who wait for treatment get more and more scared and wait forever.’ Mmmm.

Getting washed on Thursday, I feel a pervasive sense of well-being and vitality – haven’t noticed this for a long time. Usually only when I’ve been in lust/love, or under the influence of something illegal…

Number one Son is isn’t at work – this week is the factory’s first three-day week. Makes me think of the seventies. He gets up to cook pancakes for his breakfast, is keen to make me some. Haven’t the heart to point out I don’t eat breakfast before I go to work (er, unless I’ve powered in some lane-work!); it would be churlish. Indeed, I feel like Frankie in Dreaming with the Driftwood Mirror having microwaved porridge at her dad’s when she doesn’t touch ‘nuked food’ with a bargepole normally… Ah, isn’t it just a delight to be treated?

The Chrysalis writing group meet at CAAAD today. I join them after months of absence – it was rescheduled to a Friday for a while, my day off. I want help with my soundtrack idea for training; I want snippets of random thoughts for the script part. I arrive (late) in the middle of a readback, so the writer backtracks so I hear it from the start. It’s a brilliant Derrida-esque tract, I want copious quotes, I want a copy – it’s Wildean in its epigrammatic density – but I don’t know how to ask without seeming somehow greedy or patronising, or both.

Our exercise: whether a virus is alive or dead. Deep philosophising for a Thursday morning. It feels a bit peculiar, thinking so deeply about the nature of viruses. I think I try not to, as a rule. When there’s one proliferating quietly in my blood and liver, I’m not sure I want to focus on it (or them?) Won’t focussing on it give it strength and potency? Wouldn’t I be better concentrating on what I have, or do, that counteracts virus replication? Or that disempowers it…

I scribble on how society characterises the blood-borne viruses as Hitlers, Mussolinis, Stalins. Not like the innocence of the common cold virus… which, really, is how I’d prefer to think of my hep C, as a kind of benign, slightly inconvenient and not long-term visitor. Viruses are here to teach us something, I do believe that. In this room, there is hep C and co-infection. And I’m aware that we think about our hep C differently, and that I can’t know what it is to have HIV, nor hep C and HIV together. Viral Sutra is destined for Edinburgh this year. That in itself is brilliant success. I hope it’s well received 'up the road'… Creating art from our painful experiences is part of the soul healing process…

After a break, I explain what I would like from the group. Instead of writing, everyone takes a turn at sharing their experience verbally with me.

I imagine this is what AA or NA is like, and feel a bit uncomfortable – there’s no time for me to offer even a precis of my own experience, so it feels potentially exploitative or voyeuristic.

But I also feel very privileged to be sharing their stories. The writer and healer/healed in me responds to bearing witness...

It occurs to me my dad was killed by a virus – one rife in Scottish machismo culture: hardmanitis. Frequently resulting in injury, fractures, black eyes, internal bleeding, sometimes unconsciousness, even coma and death.

In the afternoon, I rewrite William Pryor’s piece as he suggested, and prepare for my training on Monday. Run short of time, so grab what I need to take home with me. (Not, as it turns out, that there’s any time at home to do what I’d hoped – oh well, we’re not supposed to work at home anyway… I also forget my ‘housekeeping’ – juice, fruit, snacks – which means I’ll have to get up at 6am on Monday to grab those before going to work…)

On Friday, I have a reflexology/reiki treatment with Pippa. Wonderful. I’m surprised that my liver point is better than usual – I’d have expected it to be a little aggravated by all the changes in regular habits. Lungs are better, but the heart is showing up more strongly. What’s that one about, I wonder? Also ears – hearing things I don’t like? More and more, I feel that I should do Pippa’s reiki 1 course… I need all the self-healing I can get!

Lunch with Crysse… we don’t actually need the coffee to be buzzed up, but it is a lovely treat… over lunch, we catch up and exchange plans for the fundraising evening and my poetry/prose competition idea. We also manage a walk before we do some writing…

I promised I’d deliver the booking form for the reiki weekend to Pippa, so I decide to walk. I get into the rhythm of it, end up swinging down into town and up Welshmill hill… I really enjoy not just the walk, but reconnecting to memories of treading these streets over the years… ‘inhabiting’ the town I live in, in a way I don’t often these days. I’m really much more reclusive. For exercise, I head in the opposite direction to the populated areas, and that’s not just because I like the countryside, need a fix of nature, shedding urban poison into the soil…

Walking in the dark is interesting, it’s like being in disguise – hidden by the cloak of night… I’ve always liked it – as long as I feel unthreatened, of course. The scream of a police siren, once so rare by comparison with city streets, reminds me how life changes, but doesn’t shake tonight’s tranquility. There’s a lot of self-examination going on in the safety of dark.

As a child, I headed for the hills, too. It was an easier alternative than tackling people… My social skills became enabled once I discovered alcohol… Seeing bouncers on the door of the Three Swans is a graphic illustration that, like anything else, too much ‘social oiling’ brings its own difficulties, but finding out how far I had to limit alcohol dessicated what was left of my social skills after diagnosis had dried them up… Certain situations I have found more enabling than others – give me a particular role to play, and, generally, I can do it if I’m otherwise on an emotional keel. Just don’t ask me to be just me in a group of more than four people at once! Losing my then boss’s support was a real blow – that felt like my ‘virus-ridden self’ was being cast adrift to fend for itself in a hostile world…

Reconnecting to the world of employment, to the unnatural cycles of ‘civilisation’ after many months of tuning into inner cycles and those of the seasons, brought back the compulsion to get hammered at the weekend after a week of drudgery. The working classes, the spiritual, the pagan and the natural philosophers – all become drawn to partying at the weekend; trying to fulfill the spirit’s need to connect to celebrating life and the earth’s cycles…

When I get back home, I find I’ve been out for about an hour and a half…

On Saturday morning, I get broadband sorted at last – the chap installed it Monday, but I’ve had no time to call them to find out what the problem is. I set up a page on justgiving for people to contribute to the trek, and firkle about trying to set up a blog. It’s about 3.30pm by the time I eat (naughty! – but arguably good practice for Tuesday’s ultrasound scan). Oatcakes, hummus, olives and an apple aren’t a bad throw-together lunch, but I need to sleep… I hole up on the sofa with my book for an hour or so. Lucky my watch is fast – really fast – so that I’m not late for Peter’s book launch in Bath. Even though I can’t decide what to wear.

It’s the first time I’ve read in public without my 'baseline' tranquillisers – fags!

I’m first to arrive at Peter’s for the 'after-launch' party, so rather than hang about in the cold till everyone turns up, I go for a walk… along to the lights, up the hill and round the back of the RUH. It feels powerfully symbolic – a psychic circling of the hospital, prior to Tuesday, beginning and ending at Peter’s, on the night of the launch of Thigmotaxis, an experimental journal which has my poem about Number One Son in… Lots of synchronicities.

Laughter is therapeutic. I enjoy the ‘launch post-mortem’, cupping my mug of fruit tea as wine and beer bottles are passed round. I consider staying; Peter offers a very comfortable-looking sofa, but I’ll have another beer if I’m not driving home.

I’m also very tempted to have a fag when I get in the car – I tell myself it would be ludicrous, having lasted so well.

These urges recur regularly.

On Sunday, I have another look at my blog, see if I can tidy it up a bit. I get very frustrated at my lack of techno-ability… I discover John in Bristol has posted a comment about finding the journal encouraging – if I can do it… Am gratified – after all, that’s the point, isn’t it? To communicate – not so people say ‘look at her!’, but so they say ‘she can, so maybe I can.’ Wish I could respond to him. The best I can do is to post another comment, hope he comes back at some point…

So much to do! Heppie Trekkie update (and edit), shopping, phone call about images for publicity, draft the poetry/prose comp copy, invites to do for fundraising evening… get out for a walk! Hoovering, washing up, couple of laundry loads, mailout my change of email… Training preparation! aaargh… and I’m knackered. P. H. U. Cued. I have a headache – the one that’s been lingering all week. This is crazed – I’ve really bitten off more than I can chew…

Going round Sainsburys, I find I’m a ball of rage and frustration. Violent urges bubble in my throat – it feels like I’ve just begun trying to stop smoking today! Why am I so angry? Carole is very calming and empathetic – I’m very grateful she’s there to soothe my near-snarling self.

On return, find something has been spilled on the chair. My immediate assumption is that it must be son’s fault (of course). Now I am incandescent with rage. Before we launch into WW3, I stomp off out.

It’s a beautiful time to walk, into sunset on a sunny February day. The rage soon dissipiates in the joy of imminent spring, but also powers me much further than I would otherwise have managed. I’m delighted – and no nasty dizziness or nausea, either.

I also have much more energy and inclination to crack on with things on my return.

Putting out the rubbish, I meet our new neighbour. As I’m exchanging pleasantries with him, No 1 Son is tending to my abandoned supper…

He’s not so bad after all, is he – and it looks like the spill was my fault anyway…