Whose more insane, me or the rest of society? Read the following blog of bollocks and decide for yourself.
A horrendous weekend experience.
Published on July 22, 2008 By Scotteh In Health & Medicine

All last week I had been feeling rather unwell. I was urinating like a fountain statute and my stomach would often enjoyed imitating the sound of a distressed heard of cattle, highly unpleasant I must confess.

The Friday previously I had been  on what we like to refer to as a 'Bender', starting from about 6pm right through until 8am the following morning, walking home from a girls flat clutching a half empty bottle of Blossom Hill, muttering and cursing at random aspects of society I’d encounter on my 6 mile walk home.

I awoke the following morning, well afternoon with my head reaping the horrors I had sewn into it the previous evening.

During the week I felt certain that any pains and issues I was encountering were a result of either the inherently large amounts of alcohol consumed, woefully inadvisable positioning during sex or the sex itself.  

Thursday arrived and any form of caffeine was replaced was jugs of water, in a rather vain attempt to flush my kidneys in preparation for the coming onslaught that would be this weekends excursion into the bars and clubs of Preston.

 I was rather concerned still at this point and decided to go see my local GP (doctor), he didn’t seem that concerned after I mentioned the previous Friday, but never the less opted to take a blood sample from me to ensure it wasn’t anything other than over indulgence that I was suffering from. He also advised me to replace the jugs of water with cartons of Ocean Spray cranberry juice. His mentioning the brand raised ones brow slightly, perhaps their on commission? It wouldn’t surprise me after all the privatization initiatives our NHS is currently being exposed to.

I went back into work and began hacking away at my chores; it was at this point I received a call from my sister. I sighed, I am a miserable bastard at times, this being one of them.

After abruptly asking her what she wanted she paused, before informing me that my mother had taken ill and been sent home from work with a chronic head ache. “She’s not herself, I’m telling you.” She informed me.

I rushed home, hoping that she was merely overreacting and that I would be able to just turn around and have to explain rather foolishly to my bosses that it was a false alarm.

This wasn’t the case and she was clearly in distress. I convinced her (stubborn is an understatement when it concerns my mother) that we needed to go to the hospital and so we did.

Anyways after some initial testing they wanted to give her a scan to see what was causing the issue. I’m rather pathetic at comforting people and more to the point I’m rather selfish and hate getting upset over issues. So I decided to keep myself busy by calling close relatives (my father was in another country at this point) and picking up my younger brother and sister brining them to the hospital.

 

I got back into the hospital to find my mother no longer in the Accident and Emergency department, after some enquiries I found out she had been moved to Neurology.

The scans had come back inconclusive, they weren’t sure if it was swelling on the brain, bleeding on the brain or something else. It was late, and most of the neurologists had gone home, so they wanted to keep her in over night and conclude the testing the following day.

I sat with her for a while, she seemed better, they had given her some pain killers so that had seemed to of done the trick. You’ve got to love drugs, the double edged sword of modern society, either pulling you out of distress or plunging you directly into it.

At around 9pm we were told that visiting hours were over and we’d have to go home, my sister stayed with my Mother, I envied her ability to comfort her, but was glad she was here.

I came home via the Fish and Chip shop, a portion of large chips with some battered fish and curry source, nothing like lining your arteries with chip fat to make a family crisis sink to the back of your cranium, delicious!

On my way to bed I felt the sharp pain coming from my side and lower back once again. It had been there all day, but I had other things on my mind. I made my way into my room and stared into thin air for a few moments, worrying to some extent, but mostly just tired. The pain was still there, it wasn’t bad in anyway, and it was more like an awareness of whatever digestive organ that was in distress.

I felt around my lower back just trying to massage it slightly as to allow me to get some much needed rest. I then suddenly noticed a small lump, I initially dismissed it as perhaps a knot in my back, but this was quite low down, I went over it again and it was still there, but worse still it was coming from the exact position of where the pain throughout the day had been emanating from.

My breathing slowed as my mind frantically searched my brain for possibilities. I had considered the symptoms of the past few days, I was certain I hadn’t any real problem with my kidneys initially because to be frank I’d be in excruciating pain and unable to stand. This was different however; a lump suggested to me (an untrained professional) that it was something serious.

I had been doing my weight training but hadn’t felt anything go, but that wouldn’t explain the issue of why I needed the toilet more often than I needed to scratch my back side.

I then just tried to convince myself that it was merely some infection or a swollen gland on my kidney perhaps.

I was in a state of extreme paranoia; I felt the relationship between the awareness of the lump and the recursive striking pain on my side that had hampered me the past few days. I kept coming back to some form of growth, worse still a growth relating to one of my important organs and my mind raced, it had been a hugely stressful day already.

My relationship with my mother is a very close one and losing her is the biggest fear I have. The second biggest fear after losing my own relatives is my own mortality. I was now, in my own mind at least, and confronted with both.

Some of you, especially those in the medical profession, might be beside themselves about now and rightly so, but in my own mind I was convinced something was wrong.

I lay there wrestling my thoughts, I wanted nothing more than to drift off and wake up early in the morning, get to the doctors and get one of these issues dismissed, but alas, I couldn’t. Every train of thought led me back to one of the two issues.

I was cold and felt probably for the first time in my life real fear. It was more like feeling emptiness or perhaps inevitability. I suspect some people at this point would turn to god, and I wanted to also, or whatever it was that governed the outcomes of our reality.

I walked to the doctors the following day still convinced it was bad, embarrassing really, personified I guess by the fact I was close to tears in the doctors surgery when Louis Armstrong’s – What A Wonderful World floated out of the radio.  

The doctor dismissed the lump as a muscle spasm from my training; he took a sample either way, probably to make me feel less like a hypochondriac.

 

I then went from the doctors to the hospital, the test results had come back negative, and my mother was out of the woods. Never the less they wanted to keep her in over the weekend to see a specialist on the Monday to try an identify the cause of the headaches.

 

We sat and laughed for some time, I felt bad because we were surrounded by people whom hadn’t just been let off so to speak, but I selfishly ignored it as there wasn’t many times I was able to get along with my Mother one on one, one of the few unfortunate aspects of having many siblings.

 

The walk home was surreal and dreamy, no anguish at society, no noticing how petrol stations were upping petrol prices, a group of Jehovah’s witness walked past and offered me a bible, I thanked them but declined, as opposed to diving head first into a ferocious theological debate over how the book of revelations was wrote by a man on magic mushrooms, I was at peace.

 

I thanked whatever it is, God, fortune, fate, alignment of stars, the relationship between Atoms and their sub-atomic particles, which allowed for the events to unfold the way they did. I had tasted fear, masked thankfully by uncertainty, like a tea spoon of hot soup; the heat masks the true taste. It was enough for me though.

 

This was a personal article, wrote for purely selfish reasons, sorry if it wasn’t interesting for you, but thanks for reading none the less.

 


Comments
on Jul 22, 2008

You should have taken the bible and walked on.....there are still some things in life free and this would or could have given you a life changing experience. 

Glad everything is ok tho.  A wake up call perhaps? 

 

on Jul 22, 2008

Cheers KFC.

A wake up call maybe, i'm still drinking Cranberry Juice if that counts for anything .