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I must have been the only teacher in Christendom (for "teacher" read: lowly teaching assistant)not forward to half term. I was kind of dreading it, in fact. Sure, I could sleep in until mid-morning and my clothes would be safe from paint and sticky hands for an entire week, but as the holiday approached, my anxiety grew: five days without (*dramatic pause*) routine.

Routine. I cling to it like a leech because I've found I can just about manage dialysis as long as EVERYTHING STAYS EXACTLY THE SAME FOREVER. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I wake up, I go to work, I go to hospital, I stagger home, I eat and I sleep; on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I wake and go to work, I arrive home and write, I go to the gym and get on with my live sex show on th...er, I have dinner and an early night. Without work, my carefully constructed regime is in tatters and all I have to orientate my week are the sessions at the hospital and, though I do enjoy my M and S sandwich, I don't relish the bits the blood/the needles/hospital smell. Without my routine to keep me afloat, I am forced to tread water in the choppy sea of time, and I am no Ian Thorpe - I'm the kid trying to turn my pyjama trousers into a buoyancy aid without swallowing too much water.

With dialysis as my only focus I have too much time with my own thoughts and I descend into melancholy, which is more poetic (pretentious) way of saying I feel fucking sorry for myself. My psyche embarks on a looped thought pattern that begins with me fretting about my career and culminates, obviously, in my resigned acceptance of never getting married via a quick pit stop to mull over how unattractive I am. This slide show of despondency begins the moment I open my eyes in the morning and plays until I go to bed at night when, lest a good night's sleep should cure my neurosis, I dream that I am driving cars that are out of control.

Monday: Half Term, Day 1: I am convinced I shall never experience happiness again. On Tuesday, I spent a lovely afternoon with Mum;  I enjoyed lunch with Amy and Maisy on Wednesday and revised a significant chunk of The Book which made me feel productive in the evening, but these mere glimpses of joy were anomalies in an existence of darkness. Everything seemed to be against me: my potential NVQ course only has a September intake, my Next delivery still hasn't arrived and I've been having some shockingly bad hair days. Going back to work was the only thing to cure what ails me (and how pathetic is that?!) yet now I am panicking at the thought of having two weeks off at Christmas. There is definitely something wrong with me (asides, from the kidney failure and what not).

*

Having now been back for a week, I am back to my old chirpy self, in part because I had an excellent progress review meeting on Thursday which outlined how happy the school are with what I am doing - quite amazing, really, seeing as 94% of the time I don't know what I'm doing. The meeting also gave me an opportunity to come clean about my medical situation; it must have been weighing on my mind more than I'd realised because I feel a great sense of relief now it is out in the open. My line manager not only assured me that my job was secure until the end of this academic year (at least), but if the hospital ring, I am at liberty to jump up in the middle of numeracy and shove children out of the way...she may have worded it differently.

So yeah, ok, my life is so sad that work is the most exciting thing I have going on. I don't have a boyfriend; I don't have any money and I don't have any kidneys, but actually, I'm ok with all of that because I also have a job I love, family and friends and The X Factor is back TV. My job offsets the dialysis - that's why it is so important to me, but one day, I won't have dialysis to contend with and I shall have to go back work full time...I bet the idea of a week off won't be so unappealing then.

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