Great, just what London needs...

....another unemployed, freelance writer with a pipe dream and no kidneys. I am 23, an ex-teacher, living in London, (currently) watching Never Mind the Buzzcocks and yes, yes...ok...I'm writing a blog because I want to write professionally. By which I mean, I want to sit on my sofa eating Party Rings and get paid for it.

The reason I'm lucky enough to be able to pursue writing as a career is because I am currently on heamodialysis, awaiting a kidney. Apparently having four hour sessions of dialysis three times a week isn't particularly conducive to a career in...well, anything, as it turns out. If, by reading this blog, you are inspired to sign up to the national donor list, all the better; but this blog is not intended to be dogmatic. 8055 people are currently awaiting an organ transplant in the UK, but organ failure (kidney, in my own case) is a tough sell: we 8055 losers (couldn't even make their own body parts work...dicks) rely on you other 51,991,945 (is that millions? I did it on the calculator on my phone...) to help us out. And it's not sexy. But it can provide some cheap, macabre laughs I shall try and relate - articulately - here.

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The nights are closing in

The final step of my home dialysis journey (bleugh, journey...sounds like I'm on The X Factor) begins on the 22nd July when Nurse Carla will arrive with a sleeping bag and, presumably, some strong coffee, and sit on my sofa all night whilst I perform my first nocturnal session. It is the dialysis equivalent of hiring a wet nurse. During a regular daytime session, nothing should go wrong unless I have lined the machine carelessly with one eye on Only Connect and consequently forgotten to connect/un-clamp/tighten something pivotal. Dermot should behave, stay quiet and not do any of his ghastly alarm-yelping. At night, however, the chances of rolling over onto the tubes and occluding the blood flow, or the needles falling out and slowly bleeding to death, are much higher, what with all the concurrent sleeping I'll be doing; when this happens Dermot senses DANGER and screams at me. Undoubtedly, my first session with Carla will be seamless; I know from experience that it is only ...

Postscript

You wouldn't believe where I am. You could guess, if you've seen the gratuitous images of my self-satisfied gurning face in front of an infinity pool on Facebook...otherwise you might find it hard to imagine the paradise in which I currently find myself. I am in Dubai. Bar Abby Clancey and the cast of TOWIE, is is not everyone's idea of paradise - it actually wasn't mine. It is exciting, exotic and fucking hot, but the skyscrapers and traffic, the desert and cultural deficiency (not to mention the chavs that clutter up the Ritz Carlton these days, I mean honestly...) suggest you'd be hard-pushed to call it paradise. It is vaulted to utopian heights simply because, four-months after the transplant, I am here. My nearest and dearest suffered for seven years as I dreamily aired my wanderlust. Yet the reward of a post-transplant holiday seemed too extravagant a prize for which to yearn - wasn't a life free from dialysis enough? Wasn't having a drink when t...

Run

I decide to go for a run. I decide to go because when I undress in front of the mirror all I see is my rotund belly and bulbous thighs. I grab at them and pull, as though I am trying to rip off the chunks of flesh. This, in contrast to the tired, dry skin on my face, etched with deep lines like carvings in rock. It has not recovered from the eighteen months when it was not nourished, but elsewhere fat is sprouting. I lace my trainers tightly. I don't know the time, I have stopped wearing a watch. I start running, and soon I am fleeing. It feels good: I haven't been able to run recently - thwarted by low blood pressure. Every rusty muscle is in movement, together, sliding back and forth in tandem and I feel slow but I feel fluid. I pull up from my core. I think I am the best runner you will see today because once I watched a tutorial on YouTube with Paula Radcliffe. I run alongside the common, not on the grass; I prefer the solidity of the ground, the heaviness that rises ...

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