We say “there is always somebody worse off”
and it’s a combination of wake up call and being grateful for small mercies. It doesn’t really take away from the fact that when you are unhappy, you are unhappy. A small injury can give you insight into what somebody with greater and more permanent impairment has to live with. Or pain.
Now there’s a four letter word. Or fear, another.
Generally, things I worry about and dread have been easier to live through than to think about. Anticipation makes things worse. And it may have been the same for Zena, a tall slender art teacher living next door who suddenly, in a bus journey, confided that she had to go to a teaching hospital the next day to have examined and treated a lump in her lovely neck. She is a young thing, of course I felt for her and I am happy to tell you she has an all clear.
Thank goodness.
The abreaction to the drug package prescribed when I had a recent small stroke was protracted, uncomfortable, and anti social. My bottom nearly fell off. I didn’t want anybody near me. I was embarrassed and afraid. But, in a pause in between bouts (the only occasion I can think of when going through it did not alleviate the anxiety of what might happen) I went out to get the newspaper and found Liz (whom I have known slightly since childhood) sitting on the doorstep in a patch of sunshine, without her trademark rollup, weeping.
I opened my arms into which she fell, allowed herself that awkward “Oh good heavens, look at me – I shouldn’t be doing this” hug and disengaged. And I asked very gently what was the matter. Her mother was having an eye removed that day in connection with cancer. So you say the nice kind things, make the right noises. Don’t go in where angels fear to tread. Poor woman, poor girl. I have waited, but I will put a card through the door.
Neither of these experiences made me feel better but they did put my affliction into a more realistic proportion. Better still, drugs amended and reduced from six to two. If you had seen me hoovering up the first protein
to stay on board in three weeks (other than two widely spaced scrambled eggs), you would have laughed aloud – I did !
How I missed my fruit and vegetables ! How I missed energy ! How surprised I was when various friends encouraged me to eat as I liked, anything my body wanted, get the calories back in and drink water – which for the duration of the problem, passed through and never said good morning .. that truly alarmed me. And at last I could sleep a bit, without waking every hour or so in response to insistent peristaltic action. Nothing like having your body out of action for developing a whole new respect for when it begins to mend.
I thought of starving and how hellish that is, physically and psychologically. I thought of war when the plumbing is bombed out and the doctor elsewhere. I saw a sun bear
and a snow leopard, both with young, on tv. I have never seen cubs of either before – one at Chester Zoo and the other at the Bronx Zoo in New York.
Stunningly lovely – uplifting. Encouraging in spite of the erratic weather and the endlessly recycled bad news.
And then Diana emailed and said she was going away unexpectedly for the weekend – could she bring me some stuff from the allotment and her vegetable box, she didn’t want to waste it. And I said yes please so I became the happy recipient of cold chicken, baby runner beans, mushrooms, a bit of this and a bit of that and fresh herbs from which I fashioned three meals. And I wish you’d seen the basket, put together to appeal. Diana is difficult to thank, she goes what my father used to call “all unnecessary”, but I have a card and a small gift. God, was I grateful. Food as medicine. Kind friends and neighbours – next door, six doors down, ten doors down – the world on the doorstep.
Annalog 