staying upright is your best bet.
The next morning you are going to feel sick again, but won’t be. Instead you will notice how something like a nuclear reaction seems to be going off below your diaphragm. You will carry your sick bucket around the house with you, sit near the loo for long periods, and walk close to hedges when you leave the house. You will pee almost constantly. If you remember to drink fluids as we encouraged you it will run clear. If you forget, your pee will look like
Pinot Noir
and stink like a sewer. This is normal.
You will lie awake at night and ‘wake up’ fully at hours previously known to you through baby-care. You will notice the dark and the cold, your thoughts clanking in your head as they pace through your skull. You will get up ‘for one more pee’ only to throw the towel in at 5.02 sitting inthe kitchen leafing through old copies of
The Express and Echo
, convinced that you recognise the photograph of the child on page 3.
You will take twenty minutes to down all your drugs. It is not the swallowing you find hard, just the sheer quantity. You like them best with chocolate milk. Then a banana. Then some dried apricots. Then some toast. Then some marmite, on the knife. You notice you have not been making any bowel movements. You eat more dried apricots, more toast. You ‘leave it a day’. And find you go twice, either side of lunch, which is baked beans on toast plus extra toast with bread and butter while you wait for them to cook. You find you have ‘limitless’ energy, the kind which sends you into town to the library and considering buying coffee. You smile a lot, especially at the school gate. The nuclear reaction seems to be dying down a bit. You go out for pizza. It is really not so bad, were it not for the headaches. You try a tiny sip of wine over supper. You wake with an axe through your head. This goes on all week. Except you skip the wine. You call the hospital. They tell you this is normal.
Just when you are ‘used to things’ it hits you like a wave or sudden gust from behind a street corner. Fatigue is in everything you do. You lift your head from the pillow and it hurts. You notice your slippers make little scraping noises as you shuffle from room to room. You stay in one room, near the telly; you give thanks for the remote control. The phone rings but you do not answer it, even though it is six inches across the bed from you. You start to sleep for hours, waking from dreams about playing team sports as a teenager. But you crave sleep. You think you look good curled up.
And then the shivers start. Somewhere in your back above your kidneys a tense pulse that begins warmly and ends in a shudder near your spine throws long electrical currents. You think of an octopus, a giant squid. You think of
Dr Who
. You think of
Fawlty Towers
, what you wouldgive to be watching it for the first time, with your father, scarcely able to believe your luck, your luminous happiness. And then it goes. It comes back when you cook the children pasta. It is one of your best sauces ever and you are bent double. You notice you have run out of pepper. You think about ringing the hospital. While the children eat, they joke and eye you, warily. You tell them it is nothing. You go back to feeling merely exhausted. It has snowed outside. The government have won a vote. England are back in the Test. You know you will survive.
Sunday 5 March
Morning
Propped up in bed listening to Tatty reading
Old Yeller
to Shim, one of her favourite childhood books. Amazon really is a great thing. Waterstone’s just go ‘Uh?’ at you. She does a great Southern drawl, very expressive,
Gone with the Wind
vs.
Steel Magnolias
, her favourite films.
Saturday I had energy, until about one minute after lunch, and the day was dazzling. We walked into town with the boy, changed CDs at the library and ate paninis at BTP. I have a really heavy cold and spend most of the night coughing. At BTP a
The next morning you are going to feel sick again, but won’t be. Instead you will notice how something like a nuclear reaction seems to be going off below your diaphragm. You will carry your sick bucket around the house with you, sit near the loo for long periods, and walk close to hedges when you leave the house. You will pee almost constantly. If you remember to drink fluids as we encouraged you it will run clear. If you forget, your pee will look like
Pinot Noir
and stink like a sewer. This is normal.
You will lie awake at night and ‘wake up’ fully at hours previously known to you through baby-care. You will notice the dark and the cold, your thoughts clanking in your head as they pace through your skull. You will get up ‘for one more pee’ only to throw the towel in at 5.02 sitting inthe kitchen leafing through old copies of
The Express and Echo
, convinced that you recognise the photograph of the child on page 3.
You will take twenty minutes to down all your drugs. It is not the swallowing you find hard, just the sheer quantity. You like them best with chocolate milk. Then a banana. Then some dried apricots. Then some toast. Then some marmite, on the knife. You notice you have not been making any bowel movements. You eat more dried apricots, more toast. You ‘leave it a day’. And find you go twice, either side of lunch, which is baked beans on toast plus extra toast with bread and butter while you wait for them to cook. You find you have ‘limitless’ energy, the kind which sends you into town to the library and considering buying coffee. You smile a lot, especially at the school gate. The nuclear reaction seems to be dying down a bit. You go out for pizza. It is really not so bad, were it not for the headaches. You try a tiny sip of wine over supper. You wake with an axe through your head. This goes on all week. Except you skip the wine. You call the hospital. They tell you this is normal.
Just when you are ‘used to things’ it hits you like a wave or sudden gust from behind a street corner. Fatigue is in everything you do. You lift your head from the pillow and it hurts. You notice your slippers make little scraping noises as you shuffle from room to room. You stay in one room, near the telly; you give thanks for the remote control. The phone rings but you do not answer it, even though it is six inches across the bed from you. You start to sleep for hours, waking from dreams about playing team sports as a teenager. But you crave sleep. You think you look good curled up.
And then the shivers start. Somewhere in your back above your kidneys a tense pulse that begins warmly and ends in a shudder near your spine throws long electrical currents. You think of an octopus, a giant squid. You think of
Dr Who
. You think of
Fawlty Towers
, what you wouldgive to be watching it for the first time, with your father, scarcely able to believe your luck, your luminous happiness. And then it goes. It comes back when you cook the children pasta. It is one of your best sauces ever and you are bent double. You notice you have run out of pepper. You think about ringing the hospital. While the children eat, they joke and eye you, warily. You tell them it is nothing. You go back to feeling merely exhausted. It has snowed outside. The government have won a vote. England are back in the Test. You know you will survive.
Sunday 5 March
Morning
Propped up in bed listening to Tatty reading
Old Yeller
to Shim, one of her favourite childhood books. Amazon really is a great thing. Waterstone’s just go ‘Uh?’ at you. She does a great Southern drawl, very expressive,
Gone with the Wind
vs.
Steel Magnolias
, her favourite films.
Saturday I had energy, until about one minute after lunch, and the day was dazzling. We walked into town with the boy, changed CDs at the library and ate paninis at BTP. I have a really heavy cold and spend most of the night coughing. At BTP a
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