PERSONAL

0

2,316

Home, resting

8 years ago552 words

I got home... yesterday? I think it was yesterday? Or maybe the day before? The last week or so has been a blur, mostly. But I'm home now, resting and recovering. Not better - I feel godawful - and I still have potentially bad news waiting for me next week, but for now I'm on a road to recovery. I've been experiencing a lot of bizarre sensations both physical and psychological during the process...

The pain in my head is intense. Like a persistent bolt of white lightning stuck in there, shifting, difficult to pinpoint at any given time. I've got painkillers - paracetamol (which I believe is unnecessarily called something else in places like the USA) and codeine - though the latter apparently causes severe constipation, so I'm having to choose between the abdomen-tingling and psychologically distressing inability to (as they say) 'have a bowel movement' for several days, or the sharp slice through my skull...

I know that's too much information, by the way. It's interesting how even nurses in a medical environment use euphemisms to disguise the disgusting reality of our bodily functions. "Have you passed water?"; "When did you last open your bowels?"; "Was that a number one or a number two?"... I mean, I'd prefer that to bluntly being asked whether I'd 'squeezed out a turd' or something, as I've always been the type to avoid such macho vulgarity as saying I'm going to 'take a dump' (eugh), but it's still a bit odd when regarded from a distance.

I think this has been the longest I've ever gone without producing sausages, though, and the sensations are alien and worrying. Tingly tenderness in the abdomen, a feeling of being solidly bloated. I'm surprised days' worth of food can fit in me like this; I picture this long brown anaconda weaving its way all through my intenstines, and it won't budge. And yet it's not as bad as the headache. Or the filthy feelings from being unable to wash, especially my hair. It feels heavy on my head; like it's made of dry, sticky straw, clumped together.

...Sorry for making you all hot and bothered with the unadulterated sexiness there.

I'm trying various things to remedy it. Senna tablets, fig syrup. They've made something happen, if not as much as I'd like. I suppose my days-long recovery is just going to be unavoidably multifaceted. I wish I could have just stayed in that cloudy daze for days.

I sort of have psychologically though. As I said, the days blur into one, and while I've spent almost all my time since getting home lying in a comfy double bed in the spare room of my parents' house, alone, in my head I've been in various different locations, talking to numerous visitors and well-wishers and the like. Vividly to the point where it may as well have been real. Maybe in a sense it was. I wish I could remember the details better, but only dreamlike feelings remain. A shame.

Anyway, I'm mostly writing this to pass the time; it's difficult to know how to spend these days when the discomfort hinders concentration so much. Writing keeps my mind active, at least, and it's good to know it's not broken. Well, not any more than it was before, at least.