I feel I ought to say something to round off this year…

Dear 2007,

Fuck you.

Sincerely,
Me

I was doing pretty good on the morphine, I had to take the liquid form every three hours though to stay out of pain and that meant very little sleep. Then yesterday, I thought I’m feeling better, I’m also running low on the liquid, why not drop to 5ml instead of 10ml? So I did, for two doses. Then I had a coughing fit. I spent all night holding my head and praying for the sweet release of death. Then there was drama because I was desperate for a hot shower around 5am and the hot water doesn’t turn until around 6am. I thought we could just boost it and I’d be fine, but no. Poor Weasel was up most the night with her stomach then she had to get up to deal with me being all in pain and upset about the no shower thing.

The doctor was great today, he’s upped my background pill morphine, more steroids, written a letter for us to take to the vasculitis people, arranged a chest x-ray [I'm still wheezing and the breathing was so crap today he recommended I not take the methotrexate today just in case] and a note signing me off work for another month. This is four months off work. Crappy.

Talking/laughing is a challenge, I end up coughing still. I still have no sense of taste or smell, in face the only one of my senses that is working properly is touch. But very often I’m in so much misery I don’t want to be touched. Grumble.

50% of me wants to stay up and watch Big Ben chime and the fireworks and happy people and the other 50% of me wants to go to bed and stay there for a year. We’ll see who wins.

Hope everyone enjoys their day/evening tonight and let’s hope 2008 brings good things for us all.

Good things, my best friend from second grade contacted me out of the blue. I got an e-mail from another friend in reply to a message I sent in August*. Weasel agreed to my fiendish plot of her not using her computer for a day. I got the steamer I wanted for Christmas instead of the waffle iron. I wanted both and when I made the list I put the waffle iron first, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted the steamer, so it was nice that that’s what I got. I also got a nice pile of DVDs, CDs and a book†.

Everyone really liked the gifts we got them too, so yay. We got my Mom some software to organise her family photos – she’s been creating an archive of all the photos ever for five years so this should help. We got my Dad some filters and lenses for his new camera, he’s been having a lot of fun with it. We got Mal a beautiful necklace to match the beautiful earrings we got her last year. Doodle & Chance got books and DVDs.

* I never know how much to say to people in these situations, about my illness I mean. So far I haven’t said anything, but there’s only so many vague things I can say before it comes out. It is all I’ve been doing for a year, three months exclusively.

† I barely had the energy to open them and sadly I couldn’t talk on the day [my voice is very hit and miss at the moment] to say thank you properly and laughing a one point brought on a coughing fit which I think put the fear of god into Doodle.

I’ll keep this health update as short as I can. I have been in a lot of pain lately, everything from the neck up. I spent Christmas Day alone in bed. I couldn’t want TV because my eyes were being grumpy about light and I couldn’t read because of my headache. I didn’t want to ruin everyone else’s Christmas so I insisted Weasel got over as planned and have a lovely time. Boxing Day saw me having coughing/crying cycles and fits so Weasel arranged for me to see the out of hours doctor. They gave me an inhaler to help the wheezing that the cough gave me, steroids to help with the swelling/pain, more painkillers and antibiotics [course 17 for 2007!]. The next day I ended up in a coughing/crying/vomiting cycle and fit so Weasel called our doctor and he said he would squeeze me in if we could make it up to the surgery. He’s put me on morphine. There’s a slow release tablet I take twice a day and a liquid I can take every three hours. Last night was rough since I was waiting for the tablets to build in the background. I managed a nice three hour block of sleep between 9am and noon. I’m going to try to stay awake for the rest of the day.

I have a follow-up with my doctor on Monday to review my morphine amounts. Then on the 3rd the vasculitis people will be reviewing everything overall. The doctor showed me that my blood tests are indicating that the methotrexate isn’t working. The graph shows everything coming down until the beginning of December, but since then it has been steadily coming back up. He says he’s going to write them a letter and keep a closer eye on me. In fact, he called this morning to see how I was getting on.

I’m just so tired of being in pain and not living.

Today has felt very strange, I’m not sure why, I suspect it is lack of proper sleep. I wake up every two hours, sometimes because of pain, sometimes because I apparently felt like it. I am coughing less which is wonderful, I’m not sure how I feel about the rest of it yet.

I met Weasel a few days after her 18th birthday in January 1998 [I was 16] on a Tori Amos mailing list. I had a project called Emotional Scars and I invited her to write her story for it. At that time, I’d just survived my most dramatic suicide attempt [October 1997] and subsequent hospitalisation and I was trying to find some hope and comfort from other’s stories.

Over the next 21 months we e-mailed, telephoned, ICQed and in March 1999 we met in person for the first and only time before I moved to the UK in September 1999. I was 18 years old. I’d never been on a plane. I packed up all my stuff and shipped it to the UK in the weeks leading up to my move.

We lived with a friend of Weasel’s initially, in a single room. We got to know each other as real people and figured out how we worked as a couple. I was still on antidepressants when I arrived, I came off them two months after. I had a fear that we would become co-dependent during this phase. I was brand new to the country, very young and inexperienced. I was completely dependent on her for money, shelter, company, food, telephone, computer, everything… it scared me being that reliant on someone else.

Which sort of set the stage for a lot of how I behaved. I took on all the responsibility I could, took charge and got things done. I made every step to ensure that Weasel had her freedom.

Over the years, I began to see Weasel as delicate, I put her on a pedestal and called her princess. She needed protecting and I was the one to do it. I convinced myself that she was incapable and at times she didn’t do much to dissuade me of that opinion.

Then this year happened. I have never been so weak in my entire life. I’ve fallen faster and further than I ever thought I could and Weasel was right there, arms open and she caught me. She’s been holding me up. She’s shown incredible strength, reliability and caring. And I was surprised.

I was an idiot, so very very wrong and doubting her was a gross disservice. What an awful way to learn such a valuable lesson.

So to my wife, on the occasion of our 8th Wedding Anniversary… I love you now more than I ever have which is so scary and surprising. I’m amazed by love’s ability to stretch and grow constantly. You are an incredible woman and I count myself lucky every single day I get to spend with you. You entertain me, comfort me, challenge me and make me want to be a better person. You are my best friend.

I’m filled with adoration and awe.

I’m never going to let you go.

Today is Blanketgirl’s 31st birthday. So let’s all hope she has a wonderful day with many good things. We have ‘em young in my family. My Mom just barely turned 52 [Dad is still 51] and my oldest niece is 11!

I just took 46mg of codeine so I’m feeling pain free for the first time since Monday. God I love codeine and would happily provide any service that the inventor wanted – any service.

My ears have started hurting again which is very frustrating because the only way I was able to watch The Brady Bunch was with headphones which now hurt me. I’m hoping this course of antibiotics corrects this.

I’ve been watching some films that Doodle lent me, among them The Good Girl and The Break-up. Both of these films have been categorised as comedies and I have to disagree. Neither of them were funny. Watching two people break up a perfectly good relationship because they can’t talk to each other or compromise is not funny. Watching a woman go through her life with no ambition and no goals is not funny. They called The Good Girl a black comedy as if that covered it, but I have seen black comedies [I love the The House of Yes for example] and this was not a black comedy. There was nothing funny about this film.

I’m just glad I borrowed them instead of buying them. I actually watched The Break-up to cheer myself up because I’ve been having a miserable day [until I found my new best friend codeine anyway]. It just made me grumpy. It also made me despair for our society where they think this is funny. Where it is acceptable to have such a disastrous break-up that could have easily been avoided with calm conversation and compromise. I sincerely hope that real relationships are not being represented by this sort of crap.

Oh and thank you to Mish who sent Weasel and I a present, it arrived today and is now safely parked under our tree.

I have been half writing this Debbie in my head for three weeks. Unfortunately, I find that I’m really too ill to write it. I’m actually using the media server and the TV because when I tried to use my computer earlier I just sat there coughing and holding my head.

I have officially been ill for a year. My symptoms first showed up on 20th December 2006. Since it was one of my days off I went to the gym as usual, cleaned up a bit and headed into town to meet my colleagues for our Christmas dinner. I felt okay when we started, but as the afternoon went on I felt worse. I did the usual cold remedies for the first few weeks, I gave up on 7th January and saw my GP. He diagnosed a sinus infection and gave me antibiotics – the first of 15 courses. I cannot tell you how much this year has sucked. This has been awful. The frustrating thing is that I pushed myself to do so much this year and people forget how ill I was. I have been taking painkillers pretty non-stop, steaming and douching and deafness. I’m very tired of being ill.

This week has been hard. I have a coughing fit pretty much any time I change position. From sitting to standing, from lying on my left to lying on my right… last night when I went to bed I had a fit and got up to deal with it, this sadly led to a vomiting fit and I ended up completely miserable because I’ve been nursing a migraine since Monday and the coughing makes it worse and the vomiting certainly didn’t help.

My methotrexate book says that one of the side effects is a dry cough, I assumed that was the cause of my cough. So Weasel called the clinic this morning to find out if there was anything they could to do help me. Thankfully they could see me today. They don’t think the methotrexate is the cause. My last blood test showed that I had inflammation, and she thought that might be an infection of some sort so I have another course of antibiotics. I also have another appointment in two weeks to see if the cough has improved.

Meanwhile, I’m pretty miserable and pretty bored since I can’t do anything. I’ve been watching The Brady Bunch. I got the theme in my head the other day so I had a look on BitMe to see if they had it and sure enough they did. I’m only in the second season, but it is entertaining me. I also borrowed a large pile of books and DVDs from Doodle when we were there on Saturday so I guess really it is that I’m bored of watching TV and I’m not well enough to read.

This is by far the most depressing anniversary I’ve ever had.

• ENT went okay today. Sort of hit home that I’m going to be ill for a while.
• Vasculitis people on Friday went okay too. Everyone seems happy with where I am.
• Neither clinic wants to see me again until February.
• My wisdom tooth decided to start hurting me after six months of growing good so it was removed last Thursday.
• A lot has changed in the tooth extraction world in the 13 years it has been since I had a tooth extracted.
• I got a button that says ‘Hard of hearing – Please speak clearly’
• Saturday we went to Weasel’s parent’s house and I did okay. It was tiring but doable, so Christmas can definitely go ahead.
• Methotrexate’s promise of coughing and sore throat have come to pass, so I’ve been on the sofa feeling miserable mostly.
• The other side effect that happened was mouth ulcers. Two of them. Thankfully dentist is awesome and gave me a rinse to sort them out when he took care of my wisdom tooth.
• Scary Go Round is amusing me.
• Sitting at the computer makes me tired at the moment, so I go now.