Guts

I’m up north. Grimstone. Bleakley. Hades-on-Sea. Whichever you prefer.

I’m here to take care of my grandmother. She’s got diverticulitis, which apparently is inflammation of the diverticulum, which apparently is an abnormal sac or pouch formed at a weak point in the wall of the alimentary tract. Twisted guts to you.

She went to the doctor last week. On the way to the doctor, she twisted her ankle and fell in the street, scraping her knee and cutting her hand. No one helped her up. As she was righting herself, a police car pulled up. They were looking for an elderly woman who matched my grandmother’s description. What for, I cannot say. My grandmother said she wasn’t the one they were looking for. Eventually the policeman questioning her noticed that her hand was bleeding. ‘Are you alright?’ he said.

‘No,’ my grandmother answered.

So they gave her a lift to the doctor where she was eventually prescribed an antibiotic called doxycycline. Unfortunately, some of the side effects of doxycycline are nausea, abdominal pains and vomiting. So my grandmother went to the doctor with pain; one day later she had pain and puking. She stopped taking the antibiotics.

I got here on Saturday afternoon, and she wasn’t very well at all. She looked awful in fact. And her voice was half a shadow.

I guess the only thing potentially worse than watching an old person in pain is watching a young person in pain. But then I don’t know. At least with a young person, you’re pretty sure that whatever it is, they’re probably going to get better.

I had a horrible thought the other day. It was wholly knee-jerk, but that doesn’t make it any easier to live with. It was when I heard my grandmother was ill, and it was, ‘Oh, well, if she dies, at least I won’t have to pay her back the money I owe her.’ That’s a pretty horrible thought, I’m sure you’ll agree. And believe me, I’m not proud of it. And I don’t want her to die. On the contrary, I want her to get better, and to feel great and to live long enough for me to be able to buy her a house nearer to other people who care for her. But realistically, that might mean both of us living into our two-hundreds. But if that’s what it takes, that’s what I want.

Christ, existence is horrific at times, isn’t it? Isn’t it though?

Having said that, she feels better today. I scrambled her an egg this morning and put it on a piece of toast, and thus far she’s managed to keep it down. Also, she’s doing the Daily Mail crossword (I know, I know, but what can you do?) and we’re listening to Smooth Radio Northeast (I know, I know – they even have something called ‘Smooth Unplugged’ – imagine that if you can). Also, she said she doesn’t know what she would have done if I hadn’t come up for the weekend. She’d have walked backwards and forwards, she said, from the bedroom to the kitchen, making tea and being sick.

So it’s good that I’m here. Not so good that I have to leave on Monday and leave her on her own to shuffle back and forth making tea and being sick.

But she’s going back to the doctor on Tuesday. Plus she’ll have other visitors next weekend. Plus she reckons she’s getting better. She says time is a great healer and all things must pass. She said she’ll either get better or it’ll turn into something nasty, and there’s no point worrying about that. At which point I went into the kitchen and felt quite, quite miserable.

Life is fucking unbearable. No, not life. Death. But there’s no point worrying about that.

We've just started to watch Little Miss Sunshine. I brought it with me. It was the only remotely grandmother-friendly film I own. I forgot about Alan Arkin's character taking coke in the opening montage. Grandmother made a noise. 'Oh, it's not one of them junkie films, is it?' she said. If she's not careful, I'll make her watch Bad Lieutenant.

[Book] Snake Oil

I’m pretty sure there isn’t a week goes by in which my body doesn’t do something to surprise me. Something unpleasant I mean. More often than not there’s a reason for this. Sometimes there isn’t. At the moment, for example, my left elbow causes me great pain whenever I touch it, and I think there’s something loose moving around under the slack and gnarled skin. Similarly my knee is rather sore and wearing the small hat of a large scab. These pains, however, are quite clearly the result of my spectacular fall last weekend, when I slipped on a rogue CD case whilst sprinting for a bus in Camberwell and bounced along the wet pavement, landing in a heap in a puddle in considerable pain. Then there’s my anus. At the moment my anus seems constantly angry and when I poop it bleeds. This of course is merely a reflaring of my haemorrhoids, which occurs every few months and which I put down to poor diet. Too many Wispas and pizzas, not enough spinach and bran. So far, so logical. Every now and then, however, I get a pain I can’t explain. Like the gut-stab that came a couple of years ago and still occasionally recurs. The doctors I saw couldn’t explain it either and in the end I put it down to stress. I reckon it probably was stress too. I’m a great believer in the power of the mind to make manifest physical unpleasantness. I also believe that the mind can cure things, merely by thinking positively. I also believe in telekinesis and spoon-bending. Fuck it, why not? In for a penny…. So recently, when a reader of this here blog with whom I’d been in email communication offered to send me a copy of a book which, she promised, would be good for everything that ailed me, I said sure. I said of course. I said why the hell not. Heal Your Body by Louise L Hay arrived in the post last week. In the foreword to the book, Ms Hay writes the following:

‘This little book does not “heal” anyone. It does awaken within you the ability to contribute to your own healing process. For us to become whole and healthy, we must balance the body, mind and spirit. We must take good care of our bodies. We need to have a positive mental attitude about ourselves and our life. And we need to have a strong spiritual connection. When these three things are balanced, we rejoice in living. No doctor, no health practitioner can give us this unless we choose to take part in our healing process.’

Now I don’t know about you, but I like this kind of rot. It appeals to the old hippy in me, to the white witch who wants to strip naked and run through dew-drenched glades scoffing mushrooms and rubbing dock leaves on my farmers. She continues:

‘I suggest you make a list of every ailment you have ever had and look up the mental causes. You will discover a pattern that will show you a lot about yourself. Select a few of the affirmations and do them for a month. This will help you eliminate old patterns you have been carrying for a long time.’

So, that’s what I did. Affirmations by the way - or 'new thought patterns' - are stock phrases which, through repetition, help to instil positive mental attitude. When I’d made my list of ailments, I discovered there were quite a lot. Here are a few, together with probable cause and appropriate affirmation, of the most choice: Now, at this point you’re either nodding to yourself and thinking, ‘Yes. Yes I can see that kidney stones are most probably caused by undissolved anger’, or else you’ve got an IQ of more than four and you’re thinking, ‘This woman is nuts’. Well, that’s probably your resentment talking. When I first dipped into this book, I was amused. Then I grew furiously angry. Then I calmed down a bit and just felt bemused. I don't think she's nuts though. Louise Hay is actually an enormously successful, enormously wealthy self-help guru and self-publishing sensation. She’s sold tens of millions of books through her own publishing company, Hay House. Her life story has been made into a film. Millions of people love her and credit her with having – through her words and her philosophy – helped them to heal themselves. To the cynical eye, however, just about everything about Hay smacks of charlatanism. From her unconfirmed claims that she cured herself of ‘cancer of the vagina’ to the free audio download available on her website, which is entitled ‘Receiving Prosperity’. From the life-coaching and spiritual learning centers to the fact that she studied under notorious transcendental fornicator Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Charlatanism, however, is in the mind of the charlatan, and therefore only Hay herself can know if she actually believes that which she preaches. If she believes it, then she’s genuine. If on the other hand, she doesn’t believe it, then of course she’s merely a thoroughly bad egg, lining her pockets with the gold of the gullible and desperate. Or is she? Even if that were true I mean, even if she were making the whole thing up and laughing all the way to the bank – if people still find comfort in her teachings, does it actually matter? Just like God, you may not approve or believe, but if it works for people, you can’t really deny or begrudge them that, sad simple creatures though they clearly are. But then there’s this: This is difficult to come to terms with. Being told that blackheads are ‘small outbursts of anger’ is one thing. Being told that the human immunodeficiency virus is caused by self-denial and sexual guilt is quite another. Because it’s not. It’s a virus. And Hay’s take on it smacks of homophobia...

...

But is it? If you would like to read the rest of this wonderful review, Stan recommends you go here and purchase a copy of The Little Book of Shame. Not only does it contain the article you're currently reading, it also contains around 50 others, and all for the incredible price of whatever price it happens to be at the moment. You lucky thing you. 

Feedback Friday :: Taking Control

bulk :: 18st 2 (every cloud has a silver lining – stomach lining in this case but it all counts)
cigarettes :: 0
alcohol units :: 12
runs :: 2 (by runs I mean me lumbering through the park of course; not ‘the runs’)
the runs :: 500
stars out of ten for Control :: 1
stars out of ten for Juno :: 10
Colleen McLoughlin’s IQ :: 4
Get Well Soon cards received :: 2 (awww)

Well, I’m pretty much all better now. I’m still a little flimsy in the stool department but the running and the retching are over, thank God. Thank you for all of your kind wishes and warm words. Ange did come over last night, after work, and she made me leak and sweet potato soup. Then Keith came over with a copy of Juno, which made my heart bleed. ‘You’re just a big old softy, aren’t you?’ said Ange, but I couldn’t answer because I was blubbing into a cushion. I recommend it. Not blubbing into a cushion, but… actually yes, damn it, I recommend that too. Ange and Keith had never met before. They got on very well. When they left, they left together. Ange gave Keith a lift home. It gave me a peculiar and not particularly pleasant feeling.

One thing to have come out of the last few days which is particularly pleasant however, is the weight loss. I’ve lost much more than I would have, had it not been for the constant expulsion of stuff. And although I feel weak now, and still with the occasional twinge, I do feel somewhat purged. Not exactly born again, but certainly wide awake. In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that the norovirus has actually done me some good. For a while there it was like being eaten alive from the inside out by a double-headed anorexic poltergeist, but at the end of it, I feel positively lithe.

Ooh, something else that made me feel good through making me feel bad - Control. I watched it yesterday afternoon. (I was malingering a little by yesterday, and needed to treat myself.) Ian Curtis. What an incredible bore. Never have I watched a man drift toward suicide so slowly. ‘Do it, Ian! For God’s sake, man! If you want to bore yourself to death, that’s fine, but please, please don’t take me with you.’ And I’m sure he couldn’t have been so horribly unsympathetic in real life. I bet that in real life, he had a sense of humour. I bet there was something in him to make you care for him, something to make you melt a little just to see him suffer. But no. In the film, nothing. Just a flat, stale coward of a man, with one halfway decent song. Horrible film. While I was watching it I actually had to walk away and be sick at least three times.

‘It all looked so vividly real to my fortysomething eye that, frankly, I thought I'd died and gone to Q-magazine-reading 50-quid bloke heaven. And when John Cooper Clarke came on playing himself, a support act to Joy Division when they were called Warsaw, I pretty well levitated out of my seat with sheer happiness, and had to be tied back down with guy-ropes. What a fantastic film this is… a film about England, about music, about loneliness and love; there is melancholy in it, but also a roar of energy. I thought it might depress me. Instead I left the cinema walking on air.'

- Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

‘This loveless farrago made me puke up my guts and shit myself. And not in a good way. Six thumbs down…’

- Bête de Jour, Hell's Bells and Elbows

And don’t even get me started on Colleen. I caught the last half hour of Colleen’s Real Women last night. Never was a woman so unintentionally antagonising as Colleen McLoughlin. Or maybe it is intentional. You can see she has a mean streak. Either way, she riles me. It’s not just her tiny brain and glans-grater of an accent either. It’s more that she’s just so unfit to be on TV. She can’t do any of the things that the job requires. She can’t think on her feet, she’s unpleasant on the eye (and yes, every single TV presenter should be physically adorable) and most importantly, she’s got no discernable personality. Let alone talent. She’s not even an average civilian. She’s like Max Gogarty. She’s there because of who she knows. TV should be about genuinely interesting people, and Colleen McLoughlin is anything but genuinely interesting. And it really gets my goat. I could crush a grape, I really could. I could pulverise a plum.

Speaking of small, sweet furry things, no word back from Grace as yet, but I did get another card from Sally. Wishing me good health.

God, I feel spicy.

It’s a horrible, vile day outside, but I think I need to venture into the air today. I’ll have to spend the weekend catching up with work, so for now I think I might drive somewhere nice, eat something hearty and hale, and prepare myself mentally for the challenges ahead. I don’t know what, exactly, but there are always challenges ahead. So I’ll just do some fairly vague mental preparation. Then I might watch This is England again. Now there’s a film.

Here's wishing a good weekend to all and sundry.

Curse of the Nurse

My skin is aching.

It is colder than a witch's fridge and yet, I am sweating.

Every few minutes a tiny dwarf in my gut jabs at my innards with a sharpened spoon.

I can't keep my eyes open but I can't seem to sleep.

I feel like I've taken a handful of mysterious pills from an old lady's handbag - I feel spaced and confused, like I don't know what's going on. But I do know. I know exactly what's going on.

I feel really pissed off because I know that in a few hours' time, I'll be sitting on the loo, throwing up between my legs.

It's taken me about half an hour to type this.

I have to go now. I expect I'll be back by Friday.