What a revelation its been to sleep – I’ve been sleeping on and off for almost 36 hours, just trying to sleep off a disgusting infection. Its still hovering in the background this morning but it is by no means as bad as it was on Thursday afternoon/night. Everyone keeps saying how much I ‘did not need’ this or ‘did not deserve’ it and how much it may set me back. Actually its been liberating, although I haven’t had the strength to convey what my head has been thinking whilst the body has been tiredly just trying to deal with things. As always my head has been silently following the chemical process by thinking along the same lines – dealing with things…
And so to sleep – not only during the night but during the day has taught me that there is not as much need to feel as vulnerable as I have been feeling and that the restorative nature of sleep is allowed to infiltrate this hospital and will hopefully provide me with the capacity to rest in future now, regardless of whether illness is present or not. It has also allowed me to see the positioning, a hangover from when I had nasal tubes and had to be turned regularly, can change now to allow me to sleep more easily and in a more relaxed fashion – you know there is such a thing as sleeping flat, I don’t have to be upright all the time. And all of this sleeping showed me that my body does know how to use its energy and that I am correct in the places in which I allow it to be distributed and/or not, and its not always towards the eating – sometimes its towards the recovery and resting which must come before there is the energy to eat again.
And fundamentally at no time could my head buy into being at fault in this. In trying to accept responsibility for extreme sickness I could hear Mum saying I was doing too much, too quickly, pushing myself to hard. Whilst all those things may have needed to be heard they had very, very little to do with my susceptibility to an airborn viral infection. My system can fight a lot of things but didn’t want to fight this one for some reason – possibly to give me a couple of days without physio after a strenuous Tuesday session but also to give me not enough strength to fight Dr Gordon on Friday or Natasha. This means that the progress on the dietary regime was not instigated before this weekend and actually I sense that timing wise that is a good thing.
This means that next week Natasha and Dr Gordon are not here. Kelly is – she will liaise with me on Tuesday and I will express my desire to move onwards nutritionally – that sandwich from home. She will probably wish to discuss with St Georges and ultimately if there becomes any problems, without the head honchos around to talk to I will be able to be justified in putting a phone-call directly to St George’s – either Dr Zadeh or the dieticians themselves. This feels an immensely positive way of establishing the groundwork which could set the precedent for the rest of my nutritional intake. I was looking at these women eating fish and chips yesterday lunchtime and whilst out of all the meals it looked edible, after a few mouthfuls it transpired that the chips tasted stale and cold, the fish was hardly fish but soggy batter without protein substance and the peas were boiled to smithereens. The air ice-cream was a sloppy failure and the yoghurts were low-fat sugary substances which they were naively promoting as a diabetic option. The evening’s meal of an innocuous jacket potato was apparently inedible – the insides still raw whilst the outsides burnt to cinders and the whole thing so cold that neither butter nor grated cheese would melt. This even served to show me the quality of the few things that may have just passed the OK test from me – even they were beyond eating by healthy patients. And the sandwiches – egg mayonnaise on brown last night – looked and probably tasted not a patch on the ones I have looked at on the internet from Marks, Waitrose and Tesco. So it is probably a good thing that Kelly – little involved in negotiations so far – is the dietician in charge next week. Hopefully the combined effort of Mum, myself and phone-calls to St George’s will, as I say, establish a framework in which I can hopefully feel the desire to eat the specific foods, and not just put on weight through forcing down disgusting foods which I feel forced to eat in order to get better – that’s not the way to heal this body.
And beyond that – there’s been so many things that have occurred to me. In feeling so specifically tired and ill over the last day or so I have recognised the very important thing that I actually haven’t felt well for nearly five years now. And yet in that cognition there was contained the potential to feel that way. It is a bizarre thing that feeling so sick meant that I could, from a slightly healthier perspective than in HDU, feel real illness and compare it to my general state of health. At the moment, for a long time in my past and for a little while yet into my future, there is the comprehension and physical understanding now that I have not actually been ‘well’ for a long time. My mobility, strength, robustness, susceptibility to infection, weakness and nausea all indicate the ill health from which I have been suffering. It is still part of my everyday life – to feel not quite harmonious internally. And yet I know its simply because I am not of a healthy weight to be functioning with ease yet. All the internal systems need more reserves in order to feel justified in making their demands on my energy in order to regulate my internal operations. And this is building but I have not been well for years – and I’m starting to feel the time when that will arrive. I was shown it by taking a step backwards on Thursday into illness once more.
Nevertheless my BMI is now 12.8 – I weigh 32.75kilos – essentially I have put on 1.5 kilos on this regime. That feels good. Really good for perhaps the first time. And I was talking to people about Mediterranean cruises recently which sounded perfection, and I heard the word ‘Iceland’ yesterday (probably meaning the shop but I interpreted it as the country). For so long these concepts have been pleasures I have been denied through ill health which hasn’t been going anywhere and a mind that has been paralysed as to what to do to progress my health. Since…sometime…I’ve been liberated and these are not far-off, denied dreams…these are realistic possibilities which can and will come. I feel more able to do these things now than ever because I sense the motion now towards the build-up. Cannot believe that this is the first time that this trajectory towards up-ness, growth and sustained upward movement has been relevant and truly sensed within me. And it took a backwards step to see its truth – which I do not mind at all. So this morning I feel a little digestively cautious and though I would have wanted to start Resource drinks yesterday, and even now, I think I am going to start gradually – a digestive biscuit and some orange juice is what I fancy and will have at some point this morning – probably after I’ve showered and freshened up. If this goes well I will begin again on the diet plan, hoping that I haven’t lost too much ground (which I don’t sense I have given that all I’ve done is sleep in the last few days). I feel tender and need to go quietly. If I thought it was sensible I’d have some plain brown bread this morning…but perhaps familiarity is the way to go.
Anyway, this is all specifics, practicalities and inconsequentials…I’ll see how things go and hopefully everything has passed and we are all clear of our infections now. That’s all I’ve got to say, I think…for now at least – Happy Saturday all. xxx
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