Festive cleansing.

The tree went up, the tree came down. Christmas was a blaze of visiting revellers from Boxing Day to Twelfth night. The local ones brought flowers and a Christmas cake, as we ate Piccalilly and left over turkey. Hampers of goodwill were brought into the cottage. The South London lot carried in chicken and trifle. The North London contingent brought gifted her famous Thai curry. The Kent lot planted an Amaryllis Lilly in the window sill and lit a bunch of candles. The Brighton lot brought children and chaos whilst the Swedish and American framily sent money via Western Union and a nearly open envelope from Saratoga. I sat in the corner of the settee doing nothing. My eyes closing and my lungs fighting for air, the buffet prepared by everyone else happened around me. I was brought plates of food and flutes of Champagne.
Brass bands and carols.
Joni Mitchell and James Taylor.
Even Michael Bublé did a turn.
We had blazing fires and chestnuts cooked in the hot wood.
‘Wallace and Grommet’ made an appearance as chocolate balls fell off the Christmas adding to the festive splurge.
New year was quiet, we watched Jools Holland – bloody awful – and sipped on biscuity champagne.
Then the twixtmas week started with hospital visits and endless trips to Guys Hospital. I was transferred to Tunbridge Wells after Christmas where I now attend Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
I slide onto a high grey chair, wrapped in my Sherpa blanket, its the room and treatment are cold. I wait to have my plastic pipes cleaned. Sherwan, the nurse, calls me Jen and ma’am, he unwraps syringes and plugs up pipes to the dialysis machine then leaves me with a small cup of hot water and two slices of damp white toast. An hour later I get the choice of three biscuits and anther small slug of water. I’m on a restricted liquid intake otherwise theirs no pint, sorry point. 2.4 litres of water leave my body and by the time I leave – three and a half hours later – I’m feeble and chilled. As the days pass the procedure will take longer and then it’s another trip up to Guys to discuss having a plug in my belly so I can do the dialysis at home.
I call it my cleansing.
Who’d have thought I would be so blasé about it. I go through bouts of disbelief, that its not working and that I will spend three days a week strapped to plastic tubing watching my blood go round and round forever, but it is working. Slowly the weight is going down and my breathing is getting better.
I can sleep on my left and turn round in the bed avoiding the cannula which sits on my chest.
I went shopping.
I went out into the cold bright sunshine. Ive been incarcerated for weeks. Now I have a physio session on Tuesdays and photocopied exercises.
I think I’m one of the youngest in the ward, I dont make eye contact preferring to watch Bafta films. Yesterday I watched Nicole Kidman in ‘Babygirl’ a miss-mash of a soft porn movie. I had to keep closing the lid of my laptop in case Sherwan saw Nicoles knickers being thrown across a hotel floor.
2025 has started with our shower leaking, the cleaner nursing a bad back, the gardener declaring the ground’s too hard and the window cleaner forgetting about us. Sid, the cat, is refusing his food, whilst the last load of logs cost more than a Fiat Panda.
There is no normal to get back to so I’m having to create it.
It includes sitting down for a long time, watching films for a long time, talking on the telephone for a long time, going to bed earlier than I have in twenty years, avoiding the shower so I dont get the dressing wet, nibbling on bits of old food, and waiting for the next telephone call that tells me I have yet another appointment I have to attend.
I rattle with drugs and have stopped shouting at anybody.
I’m one of the lucky ones that is in the system.
The last six months have been a tsunami of treatments and procedures.
Today I have off so I’m sitting watching the old git lay the stove and the cold sun shine on thawing snow. My bag is packed ready for tomorrows frozen onslaught, I’m waiting for a thermal rug I’ve bought so I can feel warm during thee hours of blood work.
This too will pass and then I’ll be able to wash, clean, iron and cook. I want to walk in the forest and skip through the gorse. I want to breathe fresh air where Henry the Eighth shot deer and I want to go for coffee anywhere.
I want to be part of active life and shout at Trump again. Right now I have to be patient and wait for the taste of metal to leave my mouth.
I am grateful to everybody who is supporting me and telling me it’s all good.
So now I know I dont want to die.
Thank you Dr. Willem J. Kolff (1911-2009) who is credited with inventing the dialysis machine, also known as the artificial kidney: In 1943 Kolff created the first working artificial kidney, the rotating drum kidney (RDK), using parts from a washing machine, orange juice cans, and sausage skins.
Big up butchers and Israel for their Jaffa oranges. Big up inventive humans who tinker and make life better for all of us. I do not include Elon Musk by the way I dislike him more than chicken livers with orange peel.
The stoves lit and the ‘oosbind has brought me a small cup of hot water – blessings for small mercies.