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Consistency of One

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, but I am secure in the knowledge that it will forever more be thus.

Oh, wait, no…hang on – today something completely unprecedented happened. Precisely half way through today’s session, the machine began to alarm. When my nurse Abby finally ambled in, the expression on her face (befuddled) and tone of her voice (high-pitched concern) led me to understand that all was not as it should be. I even paused ER (admittedly not that hard, season 14 is rubbish) to see what all the fuss was about. Abby mumbled something about air in the tubes. The machine kept alarming. Now Abby was tugging at them, yanking them clear off the machine. I glanced nervously at my arm, very conscious that whatever was going on up that, I was still very much attached down this end. I watched with increasing alarm as blood began to flow the wrong way up the tubing into the hanging saline bag, turning the clear fluid red like a scene from Jaws. My plaintive questions as to what was happening fell on deaf ears and my imagination went into warp speed, creating images of saline speeding down towards my needles like a tsunami and my fistula exploding.

It turned out my top needle had clotted. This has never, ever happened to me before. The bottom needle was fine, but when Abby disconnected the one above it, a tacky line of blood stretched out like mucus. For some inexplicable reason, my blood was just too sticky for dialysis today. As it transpired, a clotted needle is an easily rectifiable problem: you give it a quick flush with 3 mls of saline. At the moment of discovery, however, I did not know this. In hindsight, the surge of mild hysteria I was beginning to feel was perhaps a tad disproportionate to the situation. But at the time, when you have two whacking great needles lodged into you arm, and said needles are connected to a machine in which a fair percentage of your blood resides, and you are pretty keen for that machine to work efficiently so that said blood comes back to you, the words, “something is wrong…” are right up there with, “Dermot proposed to his girlfriend” as those that you never, ever want to have to hear.

Perhaps my embarrassing over-reaction can be attributed to the fact that my life in general has been quite unsettled of late. Term ended ten days ago and whilst I am in no way complaining about five weeks of free time and stain-free clothing, the routine established by the work/hospital combo is so encompassing I needed the first week just to find my sea legs.

For weeks, my horoscopes have also been predicting shifts on the domestic front and this came to pass today. My Housemate moved out on the weekend and this evening, the lovely – but very much not him – Caroline moved in. I have yet to decide what has been worse: walking past his empty shell of a bedroom, every last vestige of him stripped away, or seeing the room replete with somebody else’s stuff: a stark illustration that he is gone. The thought that he will soon leave indefinitely on a jaunt around the world is not nearly as bad as the knowledge he won’t ever come home again. Suddenly, even his drunken early hour entrances seem endearing. I have known all along that I was going to miss him, but…well, I just really hope this faze passes expediently.

Still, day will follow tonight and come Friday it will be time for dialysis all over again and normalcy will be restored. I take solace in the idea that nothing lasts forever, because it affirms that mean ol' dialysis, too, will eventually come to an end. However, for as long as I must endure it, all I can hope is that dialysis remains, at the very least, a steadfast constant in an ever-changing present.

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