Roll up Roll up! Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, step forward and prepare yourself for the most un-nerving, topsy-turvey show on earth! Your eyes will be deceived, your mind won't believe, you will never be the same again! Your thoughts will be tattered, your soul left shattered, enter only if you dare...behold, if you will, the most wondrous spectacle of the 21st century to date...I give to you....
The Home Haemo Balancing Act!
Standing room at the back.
That's right, ladies and gents: I am currently engaged in a one-woman balancing act in which I try to manage my nocturnal dialysis schedule alongside something much more closely resembling 'normal' life. Everyone's life is a balancing act to some extent: kids, money, work, home...all the elements that make up daily existence need to be juggled, prioritised and considered. My problem is not that I have more to balance than anyone else, but it seems I am profoundly worse at finding the middle ground than all you regular, nice two-kidney'd folk. If I am not clinging to my dialysis regime like it is flotsam in a tsunami, I am disregarding it with the reckless abandon of Paul Gascoigne in Oddbins. The summer was a case in point: out into the small hours, on school nights, partaking in many an extra-curricular activity, all because the taught ropes of dialysis had slackened just slightly. Now it is back to school, literally, for the third and final year of my Masters; at some point I am going to have to get a job (which is a crying shame, because a life of largesse suits me) and I have a flat to keep, friends to visit, family to annoy. My inclination it to scuttle back in the other direction and adhere to my dialysis regime as if my life depended on it...which, er, I suppose it does if you want to be pedantic.
There is nothing wrong with taking dialysis seriously - it is serious. But I am ever-so-slowly letting myself realise that dialysis does not have to happen to the detriment of my own happiness. The conclusion I have come to is this: it is easier to sabotage my chance of happiness by claiming sorry, dialysis! than it is to take the risk. "I wouldn't be able to...that's not for me...some people are just never meant to...": these are all sentence starters I have rolled out with relish over the last six years. At points, they have been relevant - I have been severely restricted for a long time - but now I have ostensibly reached the end of my dialysis journey and with my future stretching out before me I have two options:
1. Figure out how to enjoy myself
2. Grow into an old, cranky, dialysis kook with only Dermot for company
The latter is appealing, because it is low-risk and at least I would never smell of urine....but it is not exactly what I dreamt of as a little girl. The key is letting go just enough, to the point where dialysis is important and regular and safe whilst the rest of my life is manageable, progressive and...nice, I guess. This won't be easy: I have been living a rigid existence for a long time and if you subscribe to a Freudian approach (apologies to the Existentialists amongst you, you know who you are) you might comment on how deeply my defences are entrenched - they won't simply disappear over night. But it comes down to this: I am standing on the stage, the audience is hushed, and the lights are coming up; I can run, or I can act....but whatever I choose, the show must go on.
The Home Haemo Balancing Act!
Standing room at the back.
That's right, ladies and gents: I am currently engaged in a one-woman balancing act in which I try to manage my nocturnal dialysis schedule alongside something much more closely resembling 'normal' life. Everyone's life is a balancing act to some extent: kids, money, work, home...all the elements that make up daily existence need to be juggled, prioritised and considered. My problem is not that I have more to balance than anyone else, but it seems I am profoundly worse at finding the middle ground than all you regular, nice two-kidney'd folk. If I am not clinging to my dialysis regime like it is flotsam in a tsunami, I am disregarding it with the reckless abandon of Paul Gascoigne in Oddbins. The summer was a case in point: out into the small hours, on school nights, partaking in many an extra-curricular activity, all because the taught ropes of dialysis had slackened just slightly. Now it is back to school, literally, for the third and final year of my Masters; at some point I am going to have to get a job (which is a crying shame, because a life of largesse suits me) and I have a flat to keep, friends to visit, family to annoy. My inclination it to scuttle back in the other direction and adhere to my dialysis regime as if my life depended on it...which, er, I suppose it does if you want to be pedantic.
There is nothing wrong with taking dialysis seriously - it is serious. But I am ever-so-slowly letting myself realise that dialysis does not have to happen to the detriment of my own happiness. The conclusion I have come to is this: it is easier to sabotage my chance of happiness by claiming sorry, dialysis! than it is to take the risk. "I wouldn't be able to...that's not for me...some people are just never meant to...": these are all sentence starters I have rolled out with relish over the last six years. At points, they have been relevant - I have been severely restricted for a long time - but now I have ostensibly reached the end of my dialysis journey and with my future stretching out before me I have two options:
1. Figure out how to enjoy myself
2. Grow into an old, cranky, dialysis kook with only Dermot for company
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| Surely there is a middle ground between this... |
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| ...and this? |
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