2

 

After all the emotion and the strange feelings bothering me most of the other day, this day feels different. Almost flat and smooth like gliding my hand along a freshly polished piece of stainless steel. It started early with an hour on the phone with a complete stranger, wanting to know the ins and outs of everything.

As she started in with the questions, I felt myself sigh inwardly like a patient pubescent teenage nerd. This however I noticed, as our conversation gently meandered, was the first time that I’ve  been able to talk about what’s happening to me without getting even remotely emotional and upset. It was all very business-like. I hadn’t realised just how ofay I was about my condition as I rattled off technical terms; symptoms, percentages, procedures, next stages, excitement, frustrations, limitations, medications on and on and on.

What struck me as funny occurred as we were running through her summary. This lady, with a calm and kind voice said there was some obligatory questions she needed to ask. Ok. Go ahead.

First- ‘Is it long term and likely to have a significant impact on work and your life?’ Erm – Yes.

Second- ‘Will it ever go away?’ Erm -No.

Third- ‘If you stop taking medication and/or the treatment options available don’t work or are stopped, what would happen? Erm- I die.

After a very short pause I burst out laughing and so too did the soothing voice on the other end of the line. It wasn’t an uncomfortable or embarrassed laugh on the part of either person. It strangely didnt even feel weird or remotely inappropriate. It’s interesting how you can tell what another person is thinking just by the tone of a laugh – in those few seconds, we had connected and shared the difficulties and absurdity of it all.

In my slightly twisted mind we had just verbally performed the iconic comedy sketch of the two proverbial neighbours. Gossiping over the back fence about all kinds of terrible and shocking things and goings on, when one of them shrugs, tilts up their eyebrows and cackles  ‘….well what can you do?’.