Skip to main content

Hospi-style

I have long since given up on making an effort with my appearance when I go to the hospital. When it comes to dialysis, comfort trumps style every time and I have not managed to work out how to amalgamate the two, hence things tend to get a little...casual. If I didn't have to get on the tube to get there in the first place I would probably not even bother getting changed out of my pyjamas. It's not like there is anyone I am trying to impress: most of the guys on my unit are only eligible because their equally elderly wives have died and I draw the line at hitting on widowed octogenarians, no matter how lean times currently may be. This is assuming, of course, that they are not blind and/or asleep. Where, or where, are the gorgeous young doctors? If they exist, I certainly have never, in all my time spent at that wretched hospital, come across them.

When I arrived for dialysis last week, I spotted a sign just inside the door advertising a beauty products sale down on the ground floor. The thought of make-up and moisturisers was certainly incongruous with the plain, sterile conditions of the hospital. I couldn't help wondering from whence these products had appeared - they were probably just flogging all the leftovers from the geriatrics who hadn't made it that week. I wasn't sure I really wanted Ethel's mascara (God rest her soul) so wasn't overly disappointed to see I had missed the whole weird hoopla anyway.

In actual fact, it can be quite liberating to care so little about how you look, and for it to matter to such a small extent. Even the Kate Mosses of this world would be hard pushed to make a dialysis machine this season's must-have accessory or rock needle-in-the-arm chic with any great aplomb. What I wear to the hospital is dictated not by the pages of Vogue, but by what garment is comfortable to sit down in for 4 hours and whether it allows easy access to my fistula. You've got to think input versus output: in this case, the effort required to transform me into anything remotely close to what might be considered attractive would be energy totally wasted when it is only the kindly Phillipino nurses who are going to benefit. The day a blonde, athletic, well-dressed young doctor strides down my ward will be the day I bury my head in a paper bowl and fake a sudden onset of vomiting.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
2 comments
Read more

Moving on

My 1st post from my new digs! And I can't think of a better way to spend a fiver than on 24 hours worth of internet (so this might be the first and last post for a while...) As moves go - and I have done three now - it was incredibly straight-forward. With the help of Scottie (the Man who came with The Van), my brother (the older - younger had absconded to Birmingham for as yet unknown purposes) and Maisy (more on her later) I loaded up said Van in less than an hour then drove down to Clapham with ma bru (I have been watching Blood Diamond again) and un-pakced said Van in a remarkable twenty-minute burst, ably assisted by Adam and James who had no excuse as they can see my front door from theirs. I say "I" loaded The Van: I was actually summarily dismissed as too weakly to do more than shift boxes seven inches through the french windows. It was in fact Maisy who did most of the first-leg hard graft: she returned from her nineteenth trip to The Van to report that Scott...
2 comments
Read more

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 ...
1 comment
Read more