Writing group

We have the very first meeting of our writing group tomorrow. The task was to write about a couple in a shop buying a bed. But what they are discussing isn't really the bed, it's about some issue in their relationship/some argument that they have been having. Of courese, I have left my offering to the last minute. Here is what I have written so far, in its raw state, no revision:

The Goldilocks Bed

The Goldilocks Bed

‘And how can I help you both on this bright, sunny day?’
‘Got a knife, so I can cut my throat?’ muttered Sally..
‘Erm..sorry, I didn’t quite catch that...’
‘Oh don’t mind my wife,’ said Hal in a jocular tone.’She’s just kidding,aren’t you darling?’

Sally smiled brightly, trying to ignore Hal’s hand clasped none-too lightly around her upper arm. There would be a bruise later, for sure.
‘What we’re after,’ said Hal, with that same forced jocularity, ‘Is, quite simply, a bed.’
‘^Darling, don’t you mean The Goldilocks Bed?’

Alan, 18, barely shaving, palms growing sticky and throat just a tad dry, glanced from one to the other.
‘I, I don’t think I follow you.’
‘Why young man, it’s perfectly simple. We want The Perfect Bed. Not too hard, not too soft, not too wide, not too narrow. Isn’t that right, darling? In fact, it must be Just. Right. We wouldn’t want it clashing with the carpet, it mustn’t look out of place amongst the...
‘Yes, yes, Sally. I think young....Alan, is it? Has the idea.’

Sally smiled sweetly again, although ‘young Alan’ thought he detected the slightest hint of, well, not malice, but something.....edgy.

‘...........and this is the same model, but King size...’
Sally smirked. Flicked at the side of her skirt. Clasped her hands neatly in front. Stole a glance at her watch. Gazed distractedly around the showroom.
‘I think you’ll find, young Alan, that you've shown us this before. Twice.’

Alan stumbled over an apology. Sally waved it away.
‘It’s OK,’ she said in a conspiratorial tone. ‘I expect that before this day is out, we will have seen all of the beds several times over. And what’s the betting that we end up with the first? If we’re lucky.......’

Orange Prize 2011. Grace Williams Says it Out Loud.

The Orange Prize for Fiction Longlist was recently released, so I am hunkering down again in a bid to read my way through it.

I am finding this quite the challenge....the carbamazapine has really messed with my concentration and I find it really hard to actually absorb that which I have read. But...onwards and upwards.

Grace Williams....is a hard story to read. Or I found it so. I thought it was well-written and believable. Believable is why I found it so hard. Set in the middle part of the 20th Century, it recounts the story of Grace, sent to an asylum when she was 11 - a doctor having decided it was best, damaged as she was at birth and subsequently by polio. But Grace and her companions are not the dumb animals that the staff assume them to be and what follows is a rich, and frequently brutal, account of her life 'inside', in particular with a young man called Daniel. In many ways this reminds me of what I can recall of Skallagrig, which I read many years ago.

I am sure that some people may think that the brutalities and abuse handed out in the book were over-stating the case.I don't think so, not for one minute.

Reducing meds.

On absolutely no advice from my doctor I have reduced my carbamazapine by 100mg daily. Last week the crazy itch that I have been having returned with enough ferocity to drive me tothe walk-in clinic at the station. Itching like that can be an indicator of liver problems, always a possibility with this drug. One of my results wasn't great but bilirubin levels were normal, and it is apparently bilirubin that causes the itch. That meant it was the drug itself driving me up the wall, not a side-effect. Anyway, a rash decided to join the itch. I am waiting to hear frommy doctor and hoping that this decrease does not leave me open to another seizure.

in the meantime I havebeen gently enjoying Salzburg. And by that I mean I have pottered about, eaten Sacher Torte, drunk coffee, had brunch and generally was not much of a tourist. The first couple of days were gorgeous and I pottered around the old town. The last two have been very, erm, Scottish in terms of wind and rain. I thought about doing a tour, visitng the 'must-see' places but other health issues were intruding so I just pulled back.

here are a few links to the Mirabell Gardens, which I spoke about above. They are from previous years.


Garden


Garden


Garden

Creative (?) writing

A club I'm a member of is running a week of workshops- all sorts of things from singing to cooking to fire-work ceramics. One of them was Creative Writing, which I thought I would give a go. The class was very enjoyable. One of the exercises was to think of an object and write about it. Three things had to be accomplished within the writing - tell the reader: what the object was; what it could see;how old it was.

Here's my contribution:

Yeah, I know, everyone says babies' bottoms are cute. But look at it from my point of view, will ya? It's all I get to see, day in, day out. And I know some of y'all are into body piercing, and that's fine- if it's a matter of choice. Any idea how it feels, waiting for the stab of that pin? They say hard and fast gets it over with, but I shudder every time.

And that's not the worst. No, I don't mean that. I can cope with the pee and the shit. I can cope with going through it all with the third child, even though my looks are fading and I'm getting a bit worn. The real torture is the wash cycle. Apparently water boarding is illegal now. Try telling that to Jimmy's mum....

sigh

Ich habe ein Stein in meinem Hertz. Am Morgen, faerht meinen Sohn zurück nach Schottland.

Lib Dems- you should be ashamed

Here is a letter from me to the Membership Secretary of the Lib Dems

Dear Mr Seeker,

last year I was proud to be a member of the Liberal Democrats. This year I am appalled and ashamed. And angry.You have let the country down.

You have let X (I have removed details to protect identity here) down. They are not fat cat bankers. They have worked hard all of their life. Now their benefits have been cut
and I am not sure how they are going to keep living in the house which they have struggled to buy for many years. They are not fat cat bankers. They don't get a bonus each
year for failing to do their job. They simply struggle to make ends meet. I wonder how they will manage now?

Your party should be hanging its head in shame. I encouraged people to vote for the Lib Dems- I'm certainly hanging my head in shame.

I shall be cancelling my membership.

Hurrah. A non-diagnosis

'So, doctor,if you were to sum up the last hour for me, to give me a one-line diagnosis that I could give my husband, what would you say the diagnosis is?'
At this point in time I have been awake for more than 24 hours, I've had a one-hour EEG and we have been shooting a lot of shit, so to speak. I need something my brain can get around....

'Well....I have no idea....'

Ok...that sounds like it was a bit of a waste of my life, so maybe I should really start at, well, if not the beginning, somewhere a tad closer to it.

As you will know, I had an 'incident' in the US last month. MRI scan and consultation in the US was followed by a visit to my migraine doctor. He was worried about epilepsy due to certain features of the 'incident', hence my appearance at the neurologist this morning.

The upshot is: I had a seizure but I don't have epilepsy. The incident that I had was very odd in that it had lots of different features of lots of different things, but no overall 'thing' won out. As the doctor said, and I am sure fellow sufferers will agree, migraine brains are odd. They behave differently from other brains. It is possible that I started out with a period of hypo-perfusion in the brain due to low blood pressure, it morphed into a seizure and ended up as a migraine.

Seizures in the brain can happen when the seizure-threshold is reached.In a non-epileptic brain This is usually due to a combination of things: lack of sleep; illness; alcohol; stress; fever; antibiotics. When the seizure happened I was already exhausted- we'd had an amazing, but utterly exhausting, week in Costa Rica. I was already on my knees due to 3 months very bad sleep. I arrived in the US with the mother and father of all sinus infections. At the time of the seizure I was on my third lot of antibiotics. I had drunk a little more than usual in Costa Rica but at the time of the seizure hadn't had anything alcoholic to drink for more than a week due to the particular antibiotic, but when you look at all the other factors it doesn't seem implausible that the threshold was breached.

In addition, the EEG showed some 'peculiarities' which are normally associated with elderly men (WTF???). It isn't unheard of in women or younger men, but if the doctor hadn't got my details he would have assumed the EEG was an elderly man's. Oh well.

. So, plan of attack. Step 1: Do everything I can to lower my risk factors. If I have a fever, take paracetamol or ibuprofen, If I am ill, sleep a lot (no need to tell me twice). Also, continue to work on sorting sleep issue (perhaps move onto Seroquel instead of melatonin). I can continue to drink in moderation. Step two: medication. Can you guess which anti-seizure medication he recommended? Yep, you got it. Topomax. I told him that I regarded Topomax as the work of the Devil and suggested he tried other options. Said options were not to make me: (more) stupid than the migraines were already making me; fat(er) than I am now; ugly. I then gave him the list of medications that I had downloaded from UK epilepsy charity and he went through them all, disregarding them either because they caused one of the above or they would not work in my case. That left carbamazapine.

I will be starting on a very low dose and titrating up to a low dose. There are some side effects but these are generally associated with high doses, which I won't need. Unlike some of the other medications, these side-effects resolve if the dose is reduced or the medication is stopped. I need to go back for another EEG in February when I will be on the full dose. He will also check the blood level of the drug and do a liver-function test. I am sincerely hoping that there won't be any issues there.

Regarding my safety and that of others', I am still not allowed to drive. In my situation if I am seizure-free for two months I can drive again. I am not allowed to go swimming. Very high risk of drowning....

To be honest, it is better than I hoped for. I was worried that even though it would (hopefully) not be epilepsy, that I would be left in a limbo, not knowing what had caused it, no treatment, just waiting for another seizure to happen along. As it is, although the doctor cannot but a 'label' on it, everything he says makes sense.

I can breathe a bit more easily again.