A rare treat for you: an entry written directly from my hospital chair. Having spent an hour reading Melanie Klein, I am on a roll and though the appeal of Masterchef: The Professionals is very great, I can knock out a blog post and still have two and a half hours left tethered to the machine - ample time to get through two episodes of Masterchef and still get in a bit of Frozen Planet.
The Chef rang me yesterday just as I was finishing work and buttoning up T’s coat (she has a new one which is hilariously two sizes too big for her and adorned with buttons that we have both concluded are “tricky”). He was ringing to confirm our plans for the next two days, and when we got round to today’s agenda he said, “I’m going climbing so I thought I’d just meet you at the hospital and we can go back to yours together.”
Ostensibly, this arrangement has several benefits:
1. I can show The Chef my new coat, which I love (although there’s a strong possibility he will not)
2. He can carry my very heavy – and unfortunately for him, very feminine – loser rucksack
3. I can justify spending a tenner on dinner from M&S
There is also the possibility that The Chef will come into the hospital, but I cannot decide whether this is a good idea or not.
His coming would cement / progress our relationship and induct him into what has hitherto been a cordoned off area of my life. However...I would find it excessively humiliating; he will balk at the sight of the blood and needles etc; he will probably start equating me with my fellow patients, most of whom are one chest infection away from The Big Adjustable Bed In The Sky, and he will almost certainly stop fancying me because a crumpled, child-woman covered in biscuit crumbs, who can’t complete a sentence and totters over to the weighing scales with the gait of Pinnochio on smack isn’t really a partner to be proud of. I suppose I don’t think he can handle it; I definitely want to spare him any more involvement with the murky world of kidney failure than is absolutely necessary. He continues to shag me even though my fistula now resembles the remnants of a twin I consumed in the womb and for that alone he should be commended; besides, I don’t want to actually ask him to come up to the unit – far too needy – and he is unlikely to suggest it, so it seems we are at an en-passe.
There is a strong likelihood that I am being incredibly patronising and the sight of his girlfriend attached to a dialysis machine will arouse in him little more than mild amusement. We are approaching our first Christmas together, you’d think we might have already witnessed each other’s vulnerabilities and decided we still liked each other anyway, but kidney failure is an illness of smoke and mirrors: the mundane hides the extraordinary and a chipper exterior can mask the desperation that rages within. On balance, I would like to maintain the illusion that I’m the normal (if ginger and mildly neurotic) girl he first met and apparently liked all those months ago, even if I do cry at the John Lewis advert. Perhaps I'll just arrange to meet him at the tube.
The Chef rang me yesterday just as I was finishing work and buttoning up T’s coat (she has a new one which is hilariously two sizes too big for her and adorned with buttons that we have both concluded are “tricky”). He was ringing to confirm our plans for the next two days, and when we got round to today’s agenda he said, “I’m going climbing so I thought I’d just meet you at the hospital and we can go back to yours together.”
Ostensibly, this arrangement has several benefits:
1. I can show The Chef my new coat, which I love (although there’s a strong possibility he will not)
2. He can carry my very heavy – and unfortunately for him, very feminine – loser rucksack
3. I can justify spending a tenner on dinner from M&S
There is also the possibility that The Chef will come into the hospital, but I cannot decide whether this is a good idea or not.
His coming would cement / progress our relationship and induct him into what has hitherto been a cordoned off area of my life. However...I would find it excessively humiliating; he will balk at the sight of the blood and needles etc; he will probably start equating me with my fellow patients, most of whom are one chest infection away from The Big Adjustable Bed In The Sky, and he will almost certainly stop fancying me because a crumpled, child-woman covered in biscuit crumbs, who can’t complete a sentence and totters over to the weighing scales with the gait of Pinnochio on smack isn’t really a partner to be proud of. I suppose I don’t think he can handle it; I definitely want to spare him any more involvement with the murky world of kidney failure than is absolutely necessary. He continues to shag me even though my fistula now resembles the remnants of a twin I consumed in the womb and for that alone he should be commended; besides, I don’t want to actually ask him to come up to the unit – far too needy – and he is unlikely to suggest it, so it seems we are at an en-passe.
There is a strong likelihood that I am being incredibly patronising and the sight of his girlfriend attached to a dialysis machine will arouse in him little more than mild amusement. We are approaching our first Christmas together, you’d think we might have already witnessed each other’s vulnerabilities and decided we still liked each other anyway, but kidney failure is an illness of smoke and mirrors: the mundane hides the extraordinary and a chipper exterior can mask the desperation that rages within. On balance, I would like to maintain the illusion that I’m the normal (if ginger and mildly neurotic) girl he first met and apparently liked all those months ago, even if I do cry at the John Lewis advert. Perhaps I'll just arrange to meet him at the tube.
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