Bitter Sweet Update

DEXA Scan people called back.

“I forgot that you had hyperparathyroidism. We need to do a very special scan for that, one of your forearm.”

This was the test I had done by the trainee at St. Bart’s. In the corridor. Because the department was slammed. Waiting lists. Row upon row of weak, bird-like women, all EastEnders, East Indians and Eastern Jews, and me… the fat one.

My wife’s tutor also tells us that DEXA scans have recently been discovered, gosh who knows how, as possibly not the best way to determine bone density. Still, back we go on Thursday. That will make… eleven appointments since 1st April with… two postponed, two more to arrange?

Anxiety bar at 63%

The dilemma of course was over the Good News / Bad News ratio and reaction. As I may have to go through that again (no it doesn’t get any less depressing and frustrating being told you don’t have what you’ve been told you do have but not being told what it is instead and just being left dangling) I will return to this later.

Maybe.
Don’t quote me.

Shaved Head

I wanted to razor shave it right down to the skin but my wife refused to help go that far, so it was buzzed down to zero.

But why?

I had noticed a change in my once lustrous locks. I used to have thick hair. Thick, healthy, crowning-glory hair which went from light brunette to sun-kissed blonde in the summer… if I ever went out, that is.

It became now dark, lank, and greasy… post-transplant perhaps? So much changed that I just put it down to depression: not bothering, not caring, but even after washing, it would just lay there, not bothering, not caring… not being thick, not really even being… hair.

So, I thought: let’s just cut it all off, let it grow back to its natural state, back to its former glory, it shall be restored.

Um. It didn’t really work.

Some of the hair has not quite grown back as it should have. It kind of showed a bit of a tip and then gave up. I have a thin patch. At the front. I daren’t even raise a mirror to the back to see what’s happening there. I am mortified! It’s 80 degrees outside and I’m wearing a beanie cap!

Now, in addition to the hideous face, and the teeth that are falling out, and the “I’m nearly 50 and still I get acne?!”, and the constant pain, everything-other-fucking-thing I detest and loathe about myself and my very existence, yada-blah-blah-blah, now I’m going bald as well!

Oy! Oh well. Maybe it’s time to look through the 32,000 different brands of shampoo and / or conditioner that promise to revitalise, strengthen, lengthen, repair, moisturise, blow and dry, cut and style, make you a cup of tea, and talk about your holiday plans…

Now, it’s looking “super cute” – am I 14?! – and “elven, elvish” – I am more Jabba the Hutt than Rúmil of Tirion let alone a Gadariel! Fan of Tolkein and LOTR and P. Jackson as I am, “elvish” sounds like a queenly / queerly lisping Presley impersonator. I apparently have high cheekbones and a pointed chin yes, but I also have a cowl of fat beneath it…

I’m wondering, while the shadow I cast in the parking lot shows furry wisps at my neck, like curly neck bolts, like a hairy Frankenstein, if I should shave it again – maybe down to a one.

(Odd. An MRI. A one.)

Drumming_fingers
Pondering

Bitter Sweet

I have, unfortunately, been made an embittered person. Not bitter in the very dark sense but rather in the 70% range — snappy on the tongue, memorable for its lasting tang, a lick of which leaves you astonished but enlightened.

I could have chosen, I suppose, to take the cheerful path — the one of ankle-breaking cobbles lined with pollen-laden wild flowers and bitty bitey animals — but I am made of blacker staff. I like my flowers on the purple side, never the pinks, and My Memory Is Long.

I have coping mechanisms for bearing the sling and arrows of the outrageous fortunes in my life:

I have imaginary conversations with my antagonists. I play both roles (ne’er a word wrong, impeccably dressed and a stage set to beat the band, which is Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra) and they apologise, veraciously and verbosely, to me… poor wronged me.

It gets me by.

The latest on my list was to be the doctor from the former Soviet Union who accused me of faking my muscle-skeleto and pain problems. I was aged eight when a tall man in a white coat told me, “You have crumbly bones” and I thought, “Cool!” I was 24 when a trainee orthopedist scanned my forearm in a corridor at St. Bartholomew’s and told me, “Yes, you have arthritis AND porosis.”

Today I had three tests at a local religiously-affliated hospital: four x-rays of my spine, a DEXA scan for osteoporosis, and an MRI scan.

The latter was very musical, a landscape of Autobahn, a Berlin-Marzan Neubaugebiet horizon, a German Industrial symphony heard on 11. Had it not been distracted by the magnets’ attempt to extract metal from my teeth, I would have enjoyed it even more.

The DEXA scan was quicker and quieter… and showed me “way up in the green” — I “do not have” osteoporosis. This is a good thing yes, yes, it is, but it hit me like an Acme hammer hits Wile E. Coyote: repeatedly, on the head, slamming me into a hole in the ground, of my own making, sort of.

#Rambling_ends

This isn’t the OFFICIAL resultI – it came with the “I-am-not-a-doctor” disclaimer they all reel out, and then I get home and there’s been aspersions cast upon the usefulness of DEXA scans. But no: I am “faking”. I “do not have”. I am… in pain though aren’t I? Aren’t I?! Aren’t I…? I am, aren’t I?

#Rhetoric_start
#Panic_start

What’s Outside?

Does every woman’s hair shine like the adverts tell me it can do? It seems so easy, every woman who has that type of hair – long and flung-about a lot – would want it shiny surely? Is every eyelash Luminized to the Nth degree?

Is everyone enjoying the plethora of Burger King options? One different BK sandwich or burger every day of the week seems both excessive (sod the savings) and rather injurious to one’s self, but still – it’s all the rage, isn’t it?

Which is the newest phone, the coolest one to have? Do groups of five girls, be laden with bags of pamper-myself shopping, seen all over the city, having arranged to meet via said coolest phone? Do four fine-looking fellas fall on a futon and follow football with Fosters and a Four Cheese pizza?

Are all the men covered in attractive perfumes and musks? Do they all have that bit of stubble that every guy on TV seems to be sporting these days? All of them, female or male, seem too good-looking, even most of those who line up for a chance at Insta-Fame Create-A-Celeb.

When all those people were lining the roads, filling the venues and wandering around the Olympic village, was the rest of London empty? Did anyone have trouble with their buses or tubes or trains? Did you all enjoy it as much as the TV told me you did?

Are more men wearing skinny red trousers or jeans etc., or is it just rock star types? Are Uggs still popular or have you all hopefully finally moved on? Are some women really that orange? Really? I saw some pictures of ladies at Ascot that looked like they’d bathed in Tango.

For those three months* my image of the world had been almost entirely coloured by what I’d seen on television.

I see women tell me they strive for that “natural” look but it’s obvious they are wearing make-up. They wake up wearing make-up. Their hair is silky, soft AND strong not, as they would have us believe, from the shampoo they use, but from expert hair care and styling. Lighting and soft lens camerawork helps too. We cannot aspire to this. We cannot live up to this. We don’t have a team of make-up artists, hairdressers, stylists and so on following us around.

Even men are now forced to moisturise. Is that difficult when you have to maintain stubble?

I know none of the above is true, because I know the television lies, it only lets us see what they want us to see, with some rare, brutal and brave exceptions. We all know who “it” and “they” are and why “they” do it. I just want to know if the camera lies.

It never used to: it used to have a reputation as the arbiter of truth but no more, I think. Now everyone is Photoshopped, nipped and tucked and colour saturated, super-defined and Hot Or Not rated. I never was part of that world and never will be but it has always bothered me.

Not that I want to “belong” in that affected, afflicted world but that so many have fallen into that beauty trap and made it so difficult, so bloody hard, for the rest of us. It still bothers me. I still don’t match up, pass muster, I’m still not acceptable or accepted.

* Sep-Nov 2012

Me and Ian Beale

“Don’t be nice to me. I’m just a waste of space.”

So said one soap character to another.

It’s startling enough (it’s mental health!, it’s prime time!, it’s a man!) but what’s worse is that it’s summed up my life in a line from the head of a professional soap writer. It happens once in a while. Not from the mouth of a reality show star [sic] but from dramas and comedies. It’s disconcerting. Are they listening to my thoughts?!

Life imitating art, art imitating life… They say they try to make these “soap operas”* as realistic as possible and in order to do so they talk with people who have to deal with whatever the writers are going to “highlight” – single mothers, vodka-soaked teens, deadbeat dads, absentee fathers, overbearing grandmothers, gin-soaked relatives, abusive relatives, forgotten relatives, etc. – they talk to charities, and the actors, darling, they immerse themselves, talking to the charity cases.

I always felt, I always feel, that I can never get my depression across to people. I read other descriptions and think, “That’s it!” but it’s never quite all there. That character said that one line though:

“Don’t be nice to me. I’m just a waste of space.”

That’s mine. I’ve said that, often. I was told that often enough I believe it. It must have been true. I’ve said it, therefore I am. That is me. Or isn’t, as the case may be. One sperm hit one egg that grew into 5′ 6″ and 16st that occupies space which could be far better used for something, someone, anything else. I did not deserve the nice because I was not nice.

How. Do. They. Know?
They didn’t ask me.

* From the original dramatic serials’ broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers as sponsors and producers
+ Can’t even remember when I wrote this, Sept?

Learn Something New Every Day

That’s the saying, isn’t it?

I learned some facts about obsessive-compulsive disorder today. Things the shrinks never mentioned.

I knew I was OCD but anyone whomever got that close to me always said, “Oh it’s just mild OCD.” That’s only three people. One has known me for 35 years, one knew me for 20 and the other is my wife. Those who were professionals said the same, “Oh it’s just mild, nothing to worry about!” I felt dismissed, shushed away.

Now mild was, I assumed, that I didn’t check the front door forty times, I didn’t wash my hands over and over and over and over and over again, or neaten everything on my desk. Actually, I do neaten, and straighten, and re-straighten, everything on my desk and do neaten, and straighten, and re-straighten it again, but then only 8.5% of obsessives and 5.3% of compulsives do that too.

As it turns out, my OCD goes a lot deeper than even I realised. I discovered that OCD explains behaviours, moments that happen in my life, and gives reason for some of the most disturbing thoughts in my head, and gives them a name, a place to call home, a file I can put them in to refer to and say, “Right, that’s because of that.” I can cross it off the list when those behaviours, moments happen in my life because it’s OCD, not me actually wanting to act these horrible thoughts out.

An example is wanting to push someone into the path of a train. When you’re 17 years old, catching the overland to Stratford and this insane, giggling thought pops into your head to just shove the woman in front of you over the edge, it is bloody frightening. Not only did I have to fight that urge, not only did I spend nights, days and nights, asking myself why I wanted to do that, but I had the utter shock of it happening again. Now I’ve discovered it’s OCD and I’m not (necessarily) a potential Train Track Killer.

It’s a step forward (becoming better informed) so hoorah for that. At the same time it’s a step back. I know, and you know, that OCD is not taken seriously as a mental health disease. Some of the more severe cases may get public tsks of sympathy, CBT and medication from a specialist if they are lucky, but generally it’s seen as one of those “It’s all in the head” conditions. Oh the irony!

I feel better and worse all at the same time.

The worse is winning by a bit.

Mouldy Old Dough

 

It’s one of those days where I’m feeling like a piece of food left on a plate.

Slowly turning into mould.

Slowly curling in on myself and growing smaller, turning grey.

Shrinking, my mind starved of water it seems, it shrivelled.

I thought I was a prehistoric frond.

I had one of those as a child, a khaki-green piece of crinkled frond leaf, supposedly from Jurassic times or some such.

You watered and it “magically!” came alive. Then it would die back, – “resort to its prehistoric state” – until I gave it some H2o.

But no. It’s too far gone today. And not quite THAT simple.

How do you revive mould? Not with water.

I. Hate. Foil.

I hate foil

I hate its noise, its thunderous trembling, the electric crackle when torn, the metallic crunch when it is folded or scrunched. It kills me, goes straight to my teeth, to the mercury successive dentists poked into my teeth, when I was a child, scared, white as a sheet, and it HURTS me

My first memory of a dentist was late. I was 4 or 5. I’m sure I should have seen one before that.  I don’t recall being taught how to clean my teeth either, that’s not to say that I wasn’t. It’s just not to say that I was

In addition, I lived above a sweet shop. I was a female Agustus Gloop. With an Essex accent, the old sort not this vajazzled, befuddled interloper that has swaggered across the Atlantic and landed at Southend before working its way into our brains like a raucous, orange ear worm

I digress. I lived above a sweet shop. I developed a liking for sweets. I developed a sweet tooth. I developed tooth decay. Turns out it’s a natural cycle! Who knew? So I was toddled off to a dental practice, which in those days, early to mid 70s, always seemed to be in someone’s house

A tall, weird-smelling man with black hair and an accent like my doctor’s, Dr. Schwarzman, ushered me into a tiny room with the most enormous chair I’d ever seen, which I heaved myself up and into. Very comfy. All went well until first the Probes and explorers came out, then the drill started up..

From that second on even the smell of a dentist’s waiting room made me shiver with dread. I hated everything about the experience. The little card with my appointment written on it. The opaque window which slide open suddenly to reveal the receptionist. The square-set dental nurse with the 1940s hairstyle and flowery perfume. The strange angle of the door into the surgery. The weird angle of the dentist’s chair. The music he played on the radio. His smarmy charm. His greased back hair and his slick grin, his huge teeth.

I can’t talk about the injections and the drilling and the succession of sadistic dental practitioners that followed. It makes my teeth squeal, scream and screech.

And ever since, the sound, touch and sight of foil always makes me teeth feel as if I’m chewing a piece of the stuff. It’s worse now, as post-transplant, and they only told me this as I was leaving hospital, “You really need to take care of your teeth” because of having no immune system…

(Now you tell me!)

My last dentist, N7 Dental Care on Holloway Road, quietly dropped this particular NHS patient from their books. Given that I had developed such a screaming, flesh-crawling, break out in sweats, go catatonic, phobia of dentists, I wasn’t that bothered.

But now the lil ol’ pegs are crumbling when I crunch on a crisp, or cracking when I bite on cashew, or sticks to a piece of gum? One bit just fell out as I was walking across the floor of the hospital ward! I have impacted wisdom teeth too, oh joy.

The pain is like having foil dug into an open cavity with a metal “explorer” – that thin silver instrument that he wields then strikes, it’s a spike digging into your bicuspid. At the moment I have that’s in one molar all the time, irrespective of care, cleaning or pain management.

If  you currently booze a lot, at least make sure you clean your teeth before you pass out. And use sunscreen. When I was younger and all this started, I thought, “I’ll wait until they all fall out and then get them replaced.” Now that they’re disappearing, I really want to hold on to them.

Oh. Yes, just remembered. I hate foil. Why?  Because it’s pill refill day and they don’t come in bottles anymore.

Invisible OCD …?

Do people notice my OCD, do you think? Does the woman at LoveFilm who opens my envelope notice that I turn the disc around so that the title is straight across the middle and in line with the information panel? Does she notice that I’ve trimmed the envelope because I can’t stand ragged edges?

Does the lad at Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-blockbuster notice that I always put the discs and the sleeves and the cards all the right way up and facing the right way, so that whoever opens it can see what they are right off?

Does anyone notice how neatly my stamps are applied?

Does the chap at the convenience store notice how my coins are always in order of size, with the Queen’s head turned to face upwards, and all aligned so that she is upright? Does he ever spot that all of my banknotes are in size order, all facing the correct way too?

I wonder if his customers ever spot me tidying the sweets up while I’m waiting to be served? Poking a Kit-kat back into line, shuffling Quavers back, pulling Wispas forwards. Taking fruit sticks from the barrel and stacking them like logs.

I am fairly sure that people don’t notice me counting my steps, unless it’s  exceptionally loud out there (except for my first home, I’ve always lived on arterial roads) when I mumble them.

If I were to go into a McDonalds or KFC, would they notice that how I fold up all of my rubbish, making each crease as sharp as I can between my finger and thumb, finger and thumb, finger and thumb?

If I was in Waitrose would they spot how everything I put on the conveyor buh-buh-buh-belt is sorted by size, except for eggs and other delicates, and is all facing the right way (ie towards the cashier) with the pack face upwards, or the label forwards, or stacked neatly?

And all of those people waiting, do they see me folding my receipt into four exact rectangles, and fold my banknotes the same way, in order of value, high to low, making sharp creases between my finger and thumb, finger and thumb, finger and thumb.

I haven’t described it very well. It’s digging into a bag go crisps and pulling out two nice ones and a broken piece.

I don’t think that people do notice. I think I probably want them too. But not in the off licence. It’s complicated and unfortunately, I can’t put sort it  all out neatly into rows.

Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-bugger it.

Fit for the JOB Not Fit for Work

An example?

He served as a member of the environment, transport and the regions select committee from 2001 until he was promoted to the Opposition Whips’ Office in 2002, moving to become a spokesman on health later in the year. He became a spokesman on education and skills in 2003, and following the 2005 general election he became a member of the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, and since the election of David Cameron as the leader he has served as the Shadow Secretary of State for Transport. In June 2007, he was made Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, a post he held until January 2009 when he became Shadow Home Secretary.

THIS IS RIDICULOUS!

If a 47 year-old presented a CV with that many job changes on it to an interview they would put the applicant down as inconsistent, non-committal, inexperienced, and show them the door.

The chap in question has a BA Hons in History so it seems sensible, does it not, to place him somewhere where that might be of use – the Home Office, perhaps?

Yet successive Governments insist on this appalling business model of employing a builder to run schools and replacing him 2 years later with a nurse to run the transport infrastructure, with neither of them knowing the first thing about budgeting.

That’s not to say that they couldn’t. It just makes more sense to have someone who has knowledge and experience when they’re running the fucking country, don’t you think? Play to your strengths, as they say. A Government cannot be a run by “whoever runs into the Cabinet Room and gets the seat first… And… GO!”

I always joked that if a potential member of public office couldn’t finish a game of SimCity then they couldn’t stand for election. More and more, I think it should be mandatory.