Monday 9 March 2009

The pain-nausea continuum

I know I must be really quite ill when a lovely young man offers to come over to see me during his lunchbreak, and I refuse. It's not that I am too tired to receive guests; it just feels as though someone has vacuumed all the energy out of me overnight. I lay in bed with my eyes shut until about 1pm, feeling sick and floppy and very, very sorry for myself: sick to the non-existent back teeth of being feeble and off-colour. I know it is the painkillers that are making me so shaky, but the idea of not taking them is inconceivable, as the little men in the lava boots are still jumping with alarming vigour, and a few of them have been given a new detail which seems to involve firing flaming arrows at my eardrum and then laughing loudly.

I have enough drugs to last me until early next week, although my antibiotics run out this Thursday and my intention is that I will be better by then. Not fully healed, of course, but certainly ready for a glass of white wine. It will have been ten full days since my last alcoholic beverage by then, and it is a terrifying fact that I cannot remember a time when I have been that long without booze. I'm afraid it is several years, perhaps over a decade. Hmmm. Maybe my sickness is actually due to alcohol withdrawal - some sort of hideous cold turkey, where the only remedy is intravenous sauvignon blanc. I admit that it seems a modicum unlikely, but if things don't improve soon, I may be forced to attempt unorthodox solutions.

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