Time is a peculiar mistress

I wrote this earlier last week, and had been waiting until I had the energy to draw an accompanying cartoon to publish it. But here we are, a whole week later drowning in assignment tweaking and writing, with still so little energy that no cartoon has been completed. 

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Another night shift. It's been 3 weeks since I last got more than 5 hours sleep, and it'll be another 3 weeks until the end of this permanent dehydrated and sleep deprived fog. A new life line is to be inserted. But for now, I fight to maintain my grip on my existence. I've got into a rhythm now. Tablet on. BBC iPlayer or Google Play are my new best friends. Heat pads warmed, nurse sat on my sofa pressing the buttons when my fingers start to ache. The constant alarming drives through me like a knife. Piercing. Insistent. Soul destroying.

Time has become warped. Reduced down to infusion volumes and the witching hour. Two magic numbers. I look forward with every fibre of my being to seeing the volume fed turn over to 400ml. Or the clock ticking ever onwards, until the hour hand reaches 3am, which ever happens first. Then blissful beautiful blackness and sleep.

As the days draw on, the more I notice the changes. My hips protrude like too mountain summits, separated by a desert plain. Ribs and the buttons of my spine now resemble some kind of weird skeletal xylophone, my legs fragile as matchsticks in an open fire. I hurt. Bones are sharp and even sitting on layers and layers of padded cushions doesn't alleviate the pain for long.

I hate this. I feel like I'm disappearing, and not just from a weight point of view. I feel like I'm sleepwalking through things at the moment. I'm permanently exhausted. Lips cracked from dehydration. A permanent headache from loopy electrolytes, dodgy sugars. I feel like I'm lurching from one crisis to the next. Everything is falling apart.

He lied to me one time too many. As my doctor he should at least be talking to me directly about decisions about my care, NOT passing messages through his minions, ignoring me, and then lying to my face when I confront him about it. His tentacles have reached into my home life, it's disintegrating too. Problems are being brought to light that I had no idea existed, and to be honest STILL don't know if they exist or are a manufactured way of making me feel bad. I feel lost. Confused. Angry. Scared. The situation feels unreal. Like I'm loosing my grip on my reality.

The last few weeks have been full of so much stress and angst. Severe weight loss, sleep deprivation. Add into that unexpected withdrawal symptoms and spasm inducing pain, from the GP slashing my dose of pain relief. When will it all end? Every time I think I've hit rock bottom, the ground swallows me up and spits me out once more. 

As I said, time is a peculiar mistress. It's funny what a difference a few weeks can make.