To far alone

Yesterday ran a way with me and I found myself with tears in my eyes frequently. It started to go wrong when I actually managed to first remember to make a phone call and second when they actually answered my call. I received an appointment to go for Breast Screening, I knew where the unit was and strangely it is right in the middle of Glasgow just a short distance from Central Station. I decided to ask a few questions about getting there and what would happen when I got there because of my needing help. Just as going to the hospital I was going to have to arrange an ambulance and the stair climber but when I asked about what the would happen on arrival, I felt myself going in to a sort of panic. The clinic is in a very public area and there a about 8 steps from the road to the doors which of course would mean a slow climb in the public eye just to get in there. Now that may sound like nothing to you but lets step through what this day would really mean to me.

First as always would be the getting ready and the stress that alone seems to cause along with the added fatigue. Next getting out of the house and into the ambulance, not a nice trip down the stairs but neither is what I spotted on the last trip out, that people in the blocks near ours, leaning out trying to see who and why the ambulance is sat in their street. I can only imagine how much that would happen at the other end. This building is not a hospital and it is on a very public road where hundreds of people go by and like it or not that will mean loads of them starring, to get up those steps would take a couple of minutes and of course I haven’t added in yet that Adam couldn’t be with me, as they won’t let him come with me in the ambulance. After climbing those stairs in full view of all those on their lunch break, and once actually in there well the person had to think about this bit but said eventually that she thought there was a wheelchair. Next would be the lift and then waiting for the scan where, she said it would take a few minutes but getting the scan done, she thought was possible from the wheelchair, it just meant adjusting the machine. Then all the problems with getting clothes off and on before having to go through everything in revers eventually getting home. Just sat here on the phone discussing it I was getting into a panic about it all, my head was spinning about how I could and would manage it and I was terrified, I couldn’t do all that by myself, there are just too many possibilities of things going wrong. It was completely stressing me out and I got into such a spin that I was a stuttering word less mess, but I managed to cancel the appointment. There is just no way I would be able to manage all of that, even now when calm I know I can’t manage it, it is just too much.

I have gone form the wildly nutty over confident person to one who can’t even think about a simple journey. If I was going to an actual hospital I would be fine, I have done this three times in the past few months it is where this place is and the fact I can’t have Adam with me to take over when I got lost. 5 mins on the phone and I was a wreck, tears and shaking and fear.

The evening found me back in tears and this time well it was understandable, I was watching children in need. Seeing those families and what kid have to go through, well you would have to be very hard person in deed to not have a lump in your throat and tears in your eyes. Having lost a child my heart went out to those parent who had lost theirs and the tears where all over the place, understandably.

Alone

I have reset everything I do on twitter and the new format will start at mid day today with at reduced output I should now have some time to start on what I have talked about for a long time now, a book. I still haven’t worked out if I am just going to e-publish or look for a publisher but I don’t see I have a lot to think about on that score without a book to do either with. lol I am both excited and worried about heading out into something new but that is natural and if I wasn’t I would also know that I am wasting my time, with out fear and excitement a new endeavor is bound to fail before it starts as they are the things that add passion to anything in life. I am not actually going to start until tomorrow morning as I have something else I need to get done today so that everything is cleared out of the way and I will have no excuses not to get going.

It is a wonderfully quiet Sunday morning and I have the living room windows open yet the silence is only disturbed occasionally by a lone car. Days like this are strange I always wonder when there are no cars where the people are, and what is happening that I don’t know about, it feels so odd to be in a city without audible sounds that confirm the existence of the thousands that live here. I even checked the news channel just in case, well everyone could be inside watching something major, even when I can’t get out of the house I still have to know what is happening out there. I think actually that is another thing that I would put down as required to survive being housebound, you have to maintain a healthy interest in the world, I may not be out there any longer but I haven’t in anyway forgotten about it’s existence. I can see that it would be very easy to turn everything in on myself, as I don’t really need to know what the weather forecast is or what the latest thinking on business matters are, in someways actually I think it is more important now than it was before.

Although my blog is clearly about me and my way through all of this, if I actually sat here all day everyday thinking about what was hurting and what it meant and how I was going to keep going for the rest of my life, well I would really go mad and probably stop existing very quickly. Looking outside of my nest and continuing my interest in everything that interested me before, helps me to feel still part of the greater world, and that is really important. Anyone who is housebound will tell you there is a cruel fact, your fiends disappear one by one. When they are the ones who always have to come and see you and you can’t go and see them, when they don’t know any longer what to talk about, when coming to see you makes they feel guilty that they are still out and about, and when they can’t deal with watching you get more and more ill, they vanish. When you loose your physical link to outside, and outside no longer visits you have to do it yourself. So yes I do still continue in someways where I was before but I do it not as a way of looking back but as a way of looking at the now and what is now to everyone else as well.

I often feel very alone and that is very different from lonely, I feel alone not because I don’t see others but because I don’t see others like me and as stupid as that sounds that is what I want, I want to know others are also surviving and I want to know I am not the only one facing the problems I do daily. I think that is were Twitter has helped a lot, just hearing other voices coming back telling me they feel the same, or some that my words are their voice have helped me through what in many ways has been a rough year as loosing my job multiplied every problem I already had by a factor of 100. So now it is time to write, time for my next step on my path through this mess I now live happily.