Wednesday 7 February 2018

Needing Air and Non Encounters.

I’ve been receiving an immense amount of attention from the medical fraternity over the past few weeks, and after Monday’s visit with the consultant I began to feel that I was drowning under a flowing tide of clinicians and administrators. I get claustrophobic when people try to contain and direct me, even when they’re doing so for my own good. I know they’re acting in my best interests; I thank them for it; I congratulate them for their care and dedication. But I still hate being controlled and I still experience a strong sense of suffocation when it happens.

There was another of their white envelopes in my post box yesterday; there was another phone call from the admissions department this morning. They told me I don’t need to wait until 16th February for my next scan, I can have it on 10th instead. The surgeon was even planning to start carving on 15th.

No. Right now I need to come up for air before filling my lungs and plunging back into the depths. I told them I would be busy until 16th, which is true. I told them I’ll come when I’m ready.

Maybe I’m acting counter to my interests. Maybe I’m being foolish and irrational, but there’s a line beyond which I won’t be pushed and I still hate feeling suffocated.

*  *  *

I sat four seats away from the Lady B’s sister today (or it might have been five.) She chose the distance and seemed disinclined to talk to me. I concluded that she must be possessed of commendably good taste in the matter of people. I also saw the Lady B with her mama and noticed that she walks differently than she used to. I find it mildly frustrating that the Lady B's family constituted the only group of people I ever wanted to get to know during the eleven years I've lived in the Shire.

*  *  *

Tonight I watched a movie and discovered that in spite of my sense of suffocation and the accompanying affliction of extreme ennui, I can still be enthralled by the eyes of a French woman. I suppose it means I’m not quite unconscious yet.

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