Life on the list

The winds have certainly changed, from a mild breeze that made the hot, sticky days of July bearable, to blustery, damp gales that seem to have heralded the arrival of autumn when it really still ought to be summer. Perhaps this explains what has happened to me this week. Perhaps it is the shift in the winds, or maybe Jupiter has moved into my thirty-ninth maisonette, but over the last seven days I have miraculously - inexplicably - developed some sort of...irresistible sexual allure. Over the years, I have had an average amount of luck with the opposite sex. A few long term relationships; a handful of undulating flings and plenty of casual encounters to keep my morale and the numbers up. I am nothing spectacular to look at; indeed, until I turned sixteen, I was quite repulsive to look at, having as I did the baffling belief that rocking a combination of short ginger hair, bad skin and puppy fat swaddled in ill-fitting flamable fabric was an acceptable way of presenting myself to t...

Yesterday, I began to feel better. I had survived Friday's dialysis session, or at least a close approximation of it; still, it was a great relief to find the fistula works well, though I am not looking forward to Monday now that I have run out of skin-numbing Emla cream. Having surgery is an un-nerving experience. Upon coming round, you are forced to turn detective to try and explain the array of bizarre sensations you are now experiencing. It is exactly the same as waking up after a particularly heavy night of drinking to find yourself in an unfamiliar bed, inexplicably wearing a West Ham strip and cuddled up to a traffic cone; it obviously happened, you were definitely there and yet you have no conscious knowledge of what went on and now have a myriad of questions that need answers. For a mere forty five minutes, I exited the conscious world and was at the mercy of the surgeons who, fortunately, I trusted to competently repair my fistula and not shave off my eyebrows. Yet with...

I have now been officially plicated. Things got off to a shaky start on Monday when I arrived at dialysis only to be told my appointment at the pre-assessment clinic, the one I had been told to ignore, was now. Fortunately it was only across the hall; unfortunately, it was in the Transplant Clinic, so my joy at my upcoming operation was tempered by sitting down amongst all the glowing post-transplant patients with their stupid working kidneys - smug bastards. I had a mercifully short wait before a boy of all of about twelve popped his head round the door and asked me to follow him down the corridor to a consultation room. He was not, in fact, on work experience; he was (or so he claimed) on the surgical team. He was barely older than me; he could have been one of my mates. When he asked me if I had any questions, I resisted the urge to query how old he was and instead voiced my inherent fear about the possibility of waking-up mid-operation...now who was the immature one. I was pres...

It's probably not normal to be so excited at the prospect of a day in hospital and a spot of light surgery - I am obviously becoming a sycophant to the disease; the operation to have my ghastly fistula plicated has been set for this coming Wednesday. My lovely surgeon JT will cut out roughly a third of the hideous thing and sew it back together - the hope being that it is greatly reduced and still functioning when he has finished. There is a risk that the fistula will be damaged beyond repair during the surgery, in which case JT will have to create another one somewhere else and in the meantime I shall be forced to have another neckline - a Autumn/Winter '10 necessity for any sartorially forward renal patient. But any risk is far out weighed by being able to wear t-shirts again. The surgery has been scheduled for 11 am which means hopefully it will be some time that day; even if I am wheeled down before the day is out, I shall still need a precise confluence of circumstances ...

For a Gemini who ostensibly gets bored easily, I do not like change. In fact, I like things to stay the same. You know where you are when things stay the same; routine and stability will keep you cosseted from the unwelcome surprises of this world, like unexpected bills and charity pop-up shops manned by Stella McCartney. Much as I loathe it, you can always count on the steadfast nature of dialysis. Always the same: needles go in, fluid comes off, needles come out and BAM! you’re done….yes sir, always the same. As day follows night, so dialysis follows Sunday. And Tuesday. And Thursday. It will remain a permanent fixture in my calendar until that hallowed day when I get a new kidney, lest I should become a very permanent fixture in the nearest north London cemetery. I have come to rely on the sharp pang of the needles, the biscuits and ice chips at ten to four and the creeping lethargy that blossoms in the final hour; this is how I cope with dialysis. Yeah, sure, it is pretty rubbish...