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Dialysis: will cure what ales you

It is a rare day that I am eager to get to dialysis, but today is one of those days: I am hungover. Having felt fine earlier this morning, I now have the shakes and a hint of nausea, compounded by dizziness and the general malaise associated with mild alcohol poisoning.

During the worst hangovers of my university days, I often lay prone, moaning softly, and lusted after the ability to somehow clean out my system and rapidly expel all the murky toxins. Dialysis, take a bow. In a couple of hours, my blood will be filtered, cleaned and returned to me; I will feel as though I never had a drink and be thinner and healthier as well.

It's all Andy's fault. He bought the bottle of wine home to accompany the stir-fry I made (of which half ended up on the floor) and after a couple of glasses it made sense to finish off the vodka from last weekend. It was Andy, too, who suggested just going out for a quiet drink to cap the night off...one turned into four and we stumbled back in - after stopping at the petrol station for Pringles and a Bounty - around 2 am.

That is why today I feel like I am composed entirely of fluid. I am Fluid Girl. I can feel the fluid pressing against the inside of my legs. I feel like a water-bed. I feel dirty inside with all the alcoholic poison I can't excrete. All the mucky fluid I drank last night is just hanging out inside me, making lost-distance calls and eating my expensive cheese. Mocking me.

I shall practically be running to the hospital today, with a pit-stop at M&S to stock up sandwiches. I'll be begging them to ram those needles in and get started and cure me of this God-awful sensation. It makes me wonder how I ever survived pre-dialysis and whether, post-transplant, I'll be able to nip back to the unit for a quick sesh, just a couple of hours or so, y'know, just to take the edge off. After dialysis today, I'm doing it all again tonight. God help me tomorrow...Monday will seem like a long way off.

Comments

  1. My partner is a renal patient of some years and has a very similar outlook to yourself. This particular post mirrors some of the times we've had together.

    Keep up the blog, I love the writing style, you should apply for a job with "Punch Magazine"

    ReplyDelete

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