Nobody mentioned the cardboard.
What with all the excitement of starting home dialysis, and all the ominous warnings about machine spanner alarms "that will happen once in a blue moon" (and went off four times within the first month), nobody thought to tell me that within a matter of weeks I would have enough empty cardboard boxes to open my own Parcel Force franchise and that they would transform my front room into a Calcutter rubbish tip. With home dialysis, you see, first comes the plumbing, then comes the machine and once you sort of know what you're doing and are desperate to get going, finally you get the stuff, and it all comes in fucking enormous cardboard boxes.
The stuff IN the boxes is crucial. There's packets of plastic tubing; dialysis filters; bicarbonate stacks; put-on packs; take-off packs; saline; needles; syringes; gauze...and every item plays it's part in the harmonious symphony that is a dialysis session. I tear through this shit: doing five sessions a week, I'll use twenty saline bags in a fortnight alone - twenty-one if I use an additional bag to provide make-shift contact lens solution for Mark when we get back to my flat rat-arsed and he's too drunk to get home. The stuff gets used, it vanishes, and all I am left with are the empty cardboard shells it came in as well as a couple of bin liners full of the packaging (don't get me started on the packaging).
I do not know what to do about the cardboard. Periodically, I stick on iPlayer and spend an evening ripping it and flattening it until either the Parks and Recreation double bill finishes or my hands are bleeding from multiple cardboard cuts; this helps minimise the space the cardboard takes up, but I cannot help noticing it is still in my front room. Sometimes I try and cram a load into the flimsy orange recycling bags Lambeth council probably just incinerate anyway, but much of it is too large to fit and I'm already putting at least two bulging bags of empty acid concentrate cartons on the pavement at the end of every week and I don't want my neighbours to think I'm running a crystal meth lab.
So the cardboard sits there, taunting me. And every month, more boxes come. I'm going to end up like one of those hoarders whose houses become so engorged with detritus that they have to scale trash to get to the kitchen, and when they get there they have to bulldoze trash out of the way to get to the oven, and when they open the oven, trash falls out. Eventually the cardboard will reach the ceiling, and inevitably it will topple and kill me, but nobody will know I'm dead until I don't answer the door when the delivery guy arrives to GIVE ME MORE BOXES.
Maybe I'll have a bonfire and burn it all, or maybe I'll develop a taste for it. Cardboard stir fry. Cardboard bake. It's not too far removed from models who chow down on damp tissues - more filling, if anything. Really, I should just make my peace with the fact that as long as I have a dialysis machine in my bedroom, I'll have cardboard in my life; if I want to get rid of it, I'll need to think outside the boxes.
What with all the excitement of starting home dialysis, and all the ominous warnings about machine spanner alarms "that will happen once in a blue moon" (and went off four times within the first month), nobody thought to tell me that within a matter of weeks I would have enough empty cardboard boxes to open my own Parcel Force franchise and that they would transform my front room into a Calcutter rubbish tip. With home dialysis, you see, first comes the plumbing, then comes the machine and once you sort of know what you're doing and are desperate to get going, finally you get the stuff, and it all comes in fucking enormous cardboard boxes.
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| Check out my box |
I do not know what to do about the cardboard. Periodically, I stick on iPlayer and spend an evening ripping it and flattening it until either the Parks and Recreation double bill finishes or my hands are bleeding from multiple cardboard cuts; this helps minimise the space the cardboard takes up, but I cannot help noticing it is still in my front room. Sometimes I try and cram a load into the flimsy orange recycling bags Lambeth council probably just incinerate anyway, but much of it is too large to fit and I'm already putting at least two bulging bags of empty acid concentrate cartons on the pavement at the end of every week and I don't want my neighbours to think I'm running a crystal meth lab.
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| Not easy to explain away |
Maybe I'll have a bonfire and burn it all, or maybe I'll develop a taste for it. Cardboard stir fry. Cardboard bake. It's not too far removed from models who chow down on damp tissues - more filling, if anything. Really, I should just make my peace with the fact that as long as I have a dialysis machine in my bedroom, I'll have cardboard in my life; if I want to get rid of it, I'll need to think outside the boxes.
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