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 16^th February for my next scan, I can have it on 10^th instead. The surgeon was even planning to start carving on 15^th.

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 16^th, 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.

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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.

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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.