Two-thirds of the way through a twelve-week HCV treatment.
Ordered in Chinese food, then the next day had a virus, fever, etc.... somebody sneezed, I suppose.
Fairly wiped out for two days;
in analysis (over the internet), an interesting focus – at one point my analyst points out that I speak of myself as a third party, abstractly, from a distance, especially at the beginnings of sessions.
Two emails – one of the other Jung-Institut students has died, sadly, of breast cancer – she had many people who cared about her a great deal, there will be a ceremony at her house in California, and probably an emotionally generous one.
My brother emails me that he met a guy who knew me in high school – he lives in a different state from where we grew up, so this is unexpected – and I get a strong compliment, second-hand as it were, from ages past.
I struggle slightly to answer both emails – they are dark and light; but I am having a bit of trouble engaging with them, and have to practically construct the appropriate answers to each; as though writing an exercise in good communications for a manual.
I sleep for an hour; then to the hospital –
As I sit at the bus stop two blocks from home, I think: I really should have taken a taxi.
It is a sunny day, I don't even need the light jacket; that spring well-being does touch me, lightly.
The HCV nurse responds to my look, skin colour, lack of energy – she suddenly wants a lot more tests, has me do a chest x-ray.
The hospital is busy, efficient, today – I do feel as though I can barely respond to questions, but try to fit into the framework, and everyone knows what to do with someone who is a bit out of it.
Tests, the X-ray, very efficient. The television in the waiting room has a clip on the nasty little sociopath who is shredding the NHS – in talking to the nurses I start to say something that might be inappropriate, then scale it back to: it would be nice to push him off a cliff.
Still a bit of a risky thing to say. (I note that, in my imagination for several days, I have generated a fantasy that many of the more rotten politicians all over the world suddenly have heart attacks, strokes, accidents – would it be better if they were all at the same minute, or would that bring in conspiracy theorists? In any case you would want something where no detectives could develop any suspicions of any living people...)
They agree, and say there would be a long line to push him off.
Blood test. I go into the waiting room and sit down. An elderly lady, fragile, follows a few minutes later and takes a ticket – I think, damn, I was supposed to take one of those, go up and get one. She says, shall we trade? I refuse of course, smile, encourage her to go ahead. She asks where I'm from – oh she'll be in America this summer, for a wedding – I ask where; she has to figure it out, finally says, Colorado. I say oh that will be beautiful, you'll like it.
She has a large bruise on her forehead, and a walking stick; she is perhaps in her seventies.
She says she and her husband are going for a cruise in two weeks – I ask where, it is the Mediterranean – that sounds wonderful, wear a hat. We are pleasant, engaged, generous to each other – but there is a moment when she touches her forehead and looks anxious:
and I think, I really, really want her to make it to that cruise, to that wedding.
Back in the HCV clinic, a nurse calls one of (my favourites of) the HIV/HCV doctors, whom I haven't seen in a while – the particularly kind, warm-hearted one. He has two medical students with him, and introduces them, but I am finding it hard to engage.
I say, this probably isn't anything, I caught a cold from a food delivery –
he turns to them and, laughing, says, this is Paul, he works with our patient group (more compliments), we know him quite well, but he always makes it sound as though there's nothing the matter with him –
do I, I think to myself? That doesn't sound right. I whinge endlessly, to my ears.
So: treatment for thrush – I say, you're kidding, that sounds so eighties! (and history opens behind me like a vast door).
Concern about the anaemia; drop one of the three pills in the evening, that will help. (And it's not the major HCV medication so won't matter.)
Back in six days for another look.
•••
So: my analyst, the doctor, see me as a bit detached from, unsympathetic to, myself...
Perhaps this is what they mean: not only this haze of illness, but a sense that increasingly, for months, I look at my life – and illness, death, people I've known, political chaos, the vast sweep of changing history – as though I am looking at a small glass globe:
the earth, floating in a bubble....
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