Living Without HepC

Monday was an eventful day. It was my birthday and as well as a trip to the HepC clinic and meeting a friend for coffee, we were due to meet Ben & Sofia for dinner in a restaurant. This was a major expedition for me and I suppose I was tetchy to begin with.

Without going into all the tedious and miniscule details, I got irritable about the travel arrangements and, of course, Carol was the recipient. I hadn’t even considered that our usual train route would be disrupted by the current station closures – so the necessary detour threw me. I couldn’t absorb what other route we needed to take and I kept getting more cross with Carol’s solutions (which were quite accurate as it happened).

As Carol reminded me later I was talking in a loud raised voice (ie shouting) and at one stage stating I felt like ‘punching in’ one of those illuminated ads on the walls in the tube station. She also told me that other passengers were clearing the area as I continued to rant loudly. She wasn’t sure she wanted to continue travelling with me. I didn’t care.

By the time we reached the hospital we had arrived at some form of truce but Mynurse quickly ascertained I was in ‘riba-rage’ mode. She was supportive to us both and calmed me down somewhat, using up her lunch break time to do so. It felt so ridiculous to be so vexed about so little and to cause such a fuss.

I am astounded at how impossible it was to control myself. I wouldn’t really have punched in the ad (would have damaged myself in the process!) but I could feel the impulse to do it.

And I felt so badly that Carol received the brunt of it – and she apologised for having upset me. Carers and partners really do have a tough time of it too on this treatment.

I had left this behind me by the time we met our friend from Spain for coffee behind Liberty’s so we spent a pleasant hour in the sunshine. After some browsing in Liberty’s, John Lewis and Selfridges Carol & I met Ben & Sofia for dinner. We had a wonderful evening in which they both took great care of us - and gave me several lovely birthday gifts. We arrived home about 10 pm and I was exhausted.

Reflecting on Monday’s events last evening, it occurred to me that I haven’t felt so emotive, so out of control of my anger and sadness, since I was an adolescent. I can recall those teenage days of not being sure how I could cope with the waves of strong emotions, not sure why I had these feelings, what was going to happen next and a sense I should handle all of it better than I could (and behave ‘grown up’).

I also recalled that sense in adolescence of ‘waiting’ (similar to my current experience of looking forward to the end of treatment). Waiting until this period of my life would come to an end and I would move on to a different place, adulthood.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.