15th April - “Could it be Lupus?”

 

15th April - “Could it be Lupus?”

A few years ago, Sarah and I binge watched House. We loved Hugh Laurie limping his way through episodes of Vicodin addiction and obscure diseases with his hand-picked team. Imagine my thrill then as I lay in my bed over-hearing an effusive surgeon exploring the many options provided by a certain “scan with unusual patterns.”

Keen medical students proffered their diagnoses: “pancreatic cancer, lymphoma, bowel cancer.” Come on I thought someone say, “Could it be Lupus?” Alas, this homage to House provided no such joy, but I was left with the distinct feeling “Thank goodness I’m not that poor bugger”.

“Right, ladies and gentlemen, let’s go and see Mr. Chapman”.

I was that poor bugger and, but for the almost visceral sense of internal collapse, would have vomited everywhere.

I heard little of what followed, only recalling the Litany of Judgments that had been pronounced on me from the ‘confidential’ tutorial in the corridor outside my four-bed bay just minutes before.

The surgeon was puzzled as to my pessimistic outlook, and sought to reassure me, like Julian of Norwich that ‘all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well’...

Yeah right.

De profundis

Oscar Wilde said famously, “There’s only one thing worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about!” 

Now I know that that is not true. I don’t want to be talked about, I don’t want to be an object of interest – no one wants to be an object of interest to the medical world! 

Throughout the day, Psalm 130 seemed all too real. I longed for a single second not thinking about ‘it’, but mortality’s persistent foreboding beat remained, irrational as it was.

The depths of Sheol engulfed me at 2am; the world is a bleak place at 2am. I gazed out of the window, looking in the direction of my home and church and felt a peculiar commixture of joy and pain; security, love, home so near yet so far.

Like Elijah under his juniper tree I perched on my plastic mattress and lamented. Where was my angel to say, “Arise and eat”? The sister came and offered me hospital coffee, and I quoted the Psalmist, “They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.”

The sister was Italian and understood, perfectly, the caffeinated shortcomings of Hospital Instant, we talked of children whilst I main-lined Tramadol.