28th March 2015
Hi, guys. I wish you could feel my gratitude over the ethers. I'm sending waves of love and power to you. If you think that's slushy, sorry, but what can I do?
Gray strode into the hospital and read a book in the waiting room. Strode through the doorway into the unknown for the injection and strode out - it was ok, needle hurt a bit but no big deal. We went shopping - needed stuff because routine has fallen apart a bit and strode back in for the X-Ray.
He came out a bit pale but ok - he was quite chuffed with the way he managed the claustrophobia, the machine being an inch from his face one time and all. He said the guy operating the machine asked if he'd injured his shoulder and he told them no, not really. But he didn't remember that his shoulder has been hurting for years, or that he can't lie on it for long, or that it seemed to have come on through constantly hurling the ball for the dogs like an outfielder over the years and is exacerbated by throwing balls or chopping wood.
The younger guy went to speak to the boss man who had a closer look on the screen or whatever - I wasn't in there - and when the scan was over the boss person said, "well, that all seems fine/ok/clear/normal" ... take your pick; Graham doesn't 'do' conversation. Nor did he recall anything else that was said other than general blahings. Conversations to Gray have that same quality of dreams, slipping from the grasp upon wakening and fading into thin air. This is one of those times when that trait is so bloody infuriating!
He was fine with it. I needed him to tell me over and over again what the radiologists/doctors were asking, what he told them, what they said – I controlled my panic to just two, puzzled, “so, what did they say about … ?” Nope. It had gone. But we agreed that a doctor wouldn’t say “that all looks fine” if he’d seen something worrying. He’s just say, “that’s fine, we have all the images and these go to your consultant” – a general blahblah rather than, “well, that all looks fine”. Wouldn’t they?
We got home and neither of us had either the energy or the appetite to cook. (Unfortunately, I’m hampered by ME/CFS – it was a feat of willpower to get through the day and one I physically won’t be able to repeat daily; I’m going to have to carefully plan how I can manage to care for him through whatever treatment he has.)
Graham had some soup and then went to sleep on the settee for the next couple of hours. He had experienced a body blow from the stress. It hits him as trauma, anything to do with his body going wrong, and one of the things I worry about is how he is going to mentally cope with anything invasive and/or debilitating he might have to undergo.
I’ve been trying to gently get him to get his head round what treatment might involve – like saying ‘after a month or so, when you have recovered a bit from whatever, then you can start to do some of that stuff online you wanted to do, even whilst sitting in bed or on the settee’, just trying to get his mind tuned to what Rob had told us on that first meeting – “it won’t be brachywhatsit, it might be radiotherapy or robots poking around in you or a surgeon having a fiddle…6 to 12 weeks…tired but get better .. aids…mmn.. mmn.. mnm.
Blimey, it sounds like I’m mothering him or he’s an imbecile or a right wimp. Actually, he is a wimp (self-confessed) when it comes to illness or operations. He really can’t hack it – when I had treatment for cancer in 2001 he was present bodily but there were invisible birdies tweeting round his head, when he wasn’t wandering off to buy a newspaper because he’d forgotten his book, or grumping at being kept waiting (amongst all the very fearful, sick-looking people). He gets irritated at a cold, and outraged if ever a virus has the audacity to stop him in his tracks.
Illness frightens him – he’s not in control. I guess, now I think of it, it’s quite a masculine trait, this needing to be in control (as in, many men share that quality – I know women do too, get off my case) so it would seem logical for him to dive in and find out just what all the options are, what all the permutations of this f*** illness, now referred to as ‘TFI’, might be, but the fact is, illness, any illness, traumatises him. And I mean, really traumatises. And that’s my other worry – how the hell am I going to help him manage this? He slept for two hours from shock after a bloody X-Ray. But I guess it’s not really ‘just a bloody X-Ray, is it?
Ah, well. “That all looks fine” is what I’m hanging on to right now, and that bit’s over. Sunday, MRI. Will keep you posted.
By the way, you can’t reply to each individual on this site, can you? I mean if I click on ‘reply’ under an individual’s post, it just comes out in the general stream, doesn’t it?
Tell me if I ramble on too much, won’t you? I really mean it – tell me if I’m rambling on too much and sound bites would be better to read through.
XX to you all.
Thanks,