It's been over four months since I last posted, my only excuse being that things have been quite busy and there have been some interesting, at times hilarious, developments in my life since that last post. My personal life has changed beyond recognition, as has my work life but I'm not going to go into too much detail, particularly about my love life (apart from to say that it's good and fun and I'm happy!) - I want to see how this story falls into place before I talk about it.
Anyway, I thought it a good time to start blogging again as life is on the move - literally. I've moved out of the family home and into a house share a few streets away. I realised that I was living in total chaos and not wanting to be there and this was making it difficult (or near enough impossible) to focus on the Arbonne business in any kind of systematic way. It was all very stop start stop start and I was going nowhere. I knew I needed to get a bit of order in my life before I could focus on Arbonne and so I've moved into a lovely house where my double room includes a desk (which I'm sat at now, overlooking the garden) and an alcove full of shelves for me to get my life back in order. In some ways I'm traumatised by the chaos I was living in as it really did get pretty bad but I think I managed to block it out in some shape or form. I'm curious to see how life feels now going forwards.
I also finished my last lot of supplements for the kinesiology treatment back at the end of January. Although they'd done a remarkable job of tackling the candida that had obviously been causing problems for many years, my hormones still felt a little wonky and my energy levels were still non-existent. It's difficult to gauge how your energy levels are when you're living in an environment you don't want to be in as you're not at optimum state but I also knew that the kinesiology sessions I'd already had just didn't seem to sort out the energy levels. They were brilliant for lots of other things and identified that my energy levels were suffering due to leaky gut and malabsorbtion of nutrients but no matter how many supplements I took, it never seemed to make any difference. It was a little frustrating as it felt like I was making no progress at all even though I was popping pills furiously and could see some amazing results with other areas of my health. Anyway, I made an appointment to see my kinesiologist at Easter time. On the day of the appointment, she texted to say she had flu and would have to cancel. A little while later I tried to make another appointment but it seemed like a series of calamaties had left my kinesiologist unable to practice for a few weeks, or may a few months. I decided that I didn't want my progress held up by what was going on in my kinesiologist's life so I found another kinesiologist who was based locally and went to see her today.
It feels like the candida has returned in some fashion as my lower belly has stopped being as flat as before. And yes, tests showed that it had returned and I was prescribed one of the supplements I'd taken before plus some others that help to elimate the toxins that are produced when you get rid of the candida bacteria. I don't think I had anything like that in the previous session and I'm wondering why? Today's kinesiologist focused on my depleted energy levels by looking at my diet and making some changes that I consider fairly drastic - it was the first time that I actually felt sad and upset by some of the things I have to give up. As well as taking 24 supplements a day and some weird iron drink 3 times a day, I've been told to give up sugar, peanuts, chemical food additives, coffee, coke, alcohol and cow's milk products. Looking at that list, the things I will struggle with the most are deserts, chocolate and dairy products. These are all things that I don't eat excessively but when I do eat them, they give me great pleasure and I'm just not the sort of person who wants to take out the pleasurable things in life - things in moderation are better. However, having spent £120 on a month's worth of supplements I decided that I might as well do this properly instead of wasting the money and not making any progress. And in all fairness when I look at my diet over the last year or so, at times it has been pretty poor. When you're not in control of your own life, you're not in control of what you eat either. I would tend to eat what was available instead of buying and preparing the things I would normally eat. And I'm sure there was some comfort eating going on - lots of coffee, muffins, chocolate, crisps, coke - hmm, maybe this is a good thing that I'm about to embark on what feels like a boot-camp as my diet had slipped into a poor state without me even being aware...
So I went for my last "normal" meal with S today, off to one of our favourite local places for lunch and ate everything that from tomorrow I won't be able to have. I had a tomato, mozzarella and basil ciabatta with a can of coke, followed by a chocolate fairy cake and a coffee - trying to enjoy it all but most of the time thinking what I'd be able to eat now and how much I'd miss enjoying a bit of chocolate when I sat down for half an hour with the Sunday papers. At times today I have toyed with the idea of not bothering with this regime as it just seems too extreme but then I've had to remind myself that over the last few years I've longed to have normal energy levels, trying to imagine a day when I'd wake up and bounce out of bed, ready and raring to go! I'm lucky that my energy levels have never stopped me from doing anything and I come across as quite an energetic person but feeling tired a lot of the time just makes you feel more weary. So instead of baling, I've decided to do this properly and that's why I find myself blogging again. I thought it might make for quite intersting posts if I chart how I feel over the next month or so as I embark on this energy-seeking journey. I thought it would be interesting to track progress and make a note of just how I get on.
So I've prepared for the big day tomorrow by stocking up on some things that I can eat. Even though I can't eat dairy, it's okay for me to eat produce made from ewe's and goat's milk. As I wandered round the supermarket trying to find some viable alternative options for yoghurt, I spied some yoghurt made from goat's milk and another one made from sheep's milk. I plumped for the goat's milk yoghurt even though I convinced myself that it would taste awful. When I got home, I had a quick taste and found it to be absolutely fine - it tasted of the yoghurt that my mum used to make when I was a kid. I think you just imagine that something is going to taste horrible simply because it's not as widely available as the popular choice of milk. So pleased was I to find that goat's milk yoghurt is actually quite lovely that my dinner turned out to be a bowl of chopped bananas and strawberries with sunflower seeds and yoghurt and honey! However, when I was in the health food shop earlier today and I spied some chocolate that was dairy-free, I thought about getting it but decided that I wasn't quite ready to be disappointed by something that doesn't quite come up to scratch with a gorgeous bar of Galaxy!
Right, I've got to go now and prepare all those pesky supplements for tomorrow. It's going to take a while to get my head round what I need to take when as there are so many and I need to make sure that I've got them in a transportable fashion so that I don't wander off without them....
Monday, 14 June 2010
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Graham Kerner RIP
I hadn't seen or spoken to Graham in over 20 years but when I read the email last night that Graham had passed away from bowel cancer, an incredible sadness washed over me and I blinked back the tears as I tried to sleep.
Graham Kerner was my first proper boss, way back in the late 80s. I had a part-time job in the Crown and Greyhound in Dulwich Village and six months after starting there, the management changed and we got Graham and his then partner Barbara Haigh as the new management team. The old managers (I can't remember their names) were round and cuddly, the new team were not. Graham reminded me of a proper East End wide boy, I don't know if he came from the East End, maybe Bermondsey, and I'd never met a proper East End wide boy but in my mind, that's what Graham was. He looked like Burt Reynolds and seemed like such a grown-up, although he was 34 which I think is very young now. Barbara was a former Playboy Bunny, statuesque and imposing and suddenly at the age of 17, they were my bosses. I was petrified of them at first although they did bring a West End glamour to what had been a very quaint pub in the heart of Dulwich Village.
As I worked in the restaurant, I worked more closely with Barbara as Graham ran the bar. I worked the daytime shift on Saturdays and Sundays and made endless rounds of sandwiches for the punters. Barbara started a Sunday roast and before long, word had spread that the best roast in London could be found at the "Dog" and we'd have a queue forming long before the doors opened at midday. At the tender age of 17, I found myself tasked with making sure everything in the restaurant was ready for service as Barbara would be busy cooking up a storm in the kitchen upstairs, coming down just before midday, knives sharpened and ready to carve up huge joints of meat. I would be stationed right next to her, taking the plates from her and adding vegetables and roast potatoes. It was non-stop for three hours and I kept an eye on things, making sure we didn't run out of anything during service.
The year after Barbara and Graham started running the Dog, I took my A levels and failed miserably. Apart from failing my driving test the previous year, I'd never failed at anything and as my academic disaster was completely my own fault, I experienced what it was like to mess things up and know it was down to you. I hated that feeling and vowed never to go there again. But although academically I was floundering, I was a good employee at the Dog and in the world of work seemed to do okay. I know it's not much, a part-time job to see you through your A level years, but I learnt a lot about how to operate in the work environment, about being professional and reliable and responsible - all things that are essential if you want to succeed in life. Barbara took me under her wing (I'd stopped being scared of her quite quickly) and taught me loads about working in a restaurant and how to do things properly. Apparently Playboy had incredibly high standards and these stayed with Barbara after she left so I lucked out and got some excellent training. Even at home, I still clear plates the way Barbara taught me, a plate in your left hand to scrape leftovers onto, the forks facing forwards, the knives all tucked under the forks and the rest of the plates piled up on your left arm.
The year of the disastrous A levels, I started saving for a car. I'd passed my driving test second time round and my dad had said he'd buy me a small car as he'd done the same for my older sister a few years earlier. The only problem was that my dad wanted to get a non-descript Nissan and I wanted a Volkswagen Beetle. My dad said he wouldn't get me a Beetle and I didn't want the Nissan so I decided to buy the Beetle myself. It was the days before bank cards and if I wanted money, I'd cash a cheque at the bank or sometimes at the Dog. As my cheque book was the only way to get hold of money and I needed to save for the car, I had my cheque book locked in the safe at the Dog with Barbara and Graham under strict instructions not to give me the cheque book until I was ready to buy the car.
The following year, a few weeks shy of my 19th birthday, I asked for the cheque book as I was just about to buy a car. I'd found a bright red VW Beetle 1303S, registration CBO 601L and had promptly fallen in love with it and decided it had to be mine. Cheque book reclaimed I purchased my first car and drove to the Dog bursting with pride! I think Barbara and Graham was equally proud of this achivement and they said something to me that still rings in my ears today. They told me that I would achieve anything I set my mind to, anything at all. I don't know what they saw in me but they saw something, maybe some potential and they said those words that really did change my life. Up til then, I'd spent most of my life in the shadow of my brainy, beautiful, sporty, musical older sister, the one who was going to become a doctor, the one who was going to make my dad's dream come true. As she'd taken up the post of the golden child, there wasn't much left for me apart from ugly duckling rebel and this role I seemed to fulfil without even trying very hard.
I'd been unhappy about the crappy comprehensive I got sent to at the age of 11 and forced my parents to let me going on a sporting holiday for a week in the summer holidays after the first year. I spent a week riding and playing squash and although I was happy to let the squash slide (I think accidently whacking my best friend Claire in the face with the squash racquet might have had something to do with this...), I was hooked on the riding and insisted on carrying on riding at Dulwich Riding School once I was back. Within the Pakistani community I'm sure this was frowned upon, it's not a very Pakistani thing to do but I carried on. This soon turned into working at the riding school as a working pupil and even when word reached my grandmother in Pakistan (via an aunt who'd decided it was disgraceful the amount of time I spent outside of the home) and an angry letter came from my Grandmother to my dad, insisting I gave up riding, I still persisted.
Even though I was the rebel in the family I felt like I was a nobody and a nothing. In your teenage years, it's mainly about academic success and the things I enjoyed and excelled at were frowned upon, things seen to embarrass the family, not things to be proud of. But saying that, my family were great and supportive and would come to any shows I entered - there was a big crowd of them present at the show where my horse reared up as soon as we got into the ring, fell backwards, I fell off and the horse galloped off, defying anyone to catch him again.
Anyway, after failing my A levels I felt horrendous and had no idea what was going to become of my life. The one thing I realised very quickly with the failure was that no-one was going to pick me up and sort things out for me. If I ended up in the gutter, it was up to me to get myself out and make something of my life. So long as there was a doctor in the family, it felt a bit like it didn't really matter what happened to the other three. I felt like I could be brilliant too, just like my older sister but it wasn't going to be academic brilliance and I didn't know that any other kind of brilliance existed. Somewhere deep down inside, I thought I could have a special life, an amazing life, a life that I'd look back on and be proud of but when you feel like a nothing and a nobody, that feeling of what you might be gets tucked away somewhere very deep inside.
So, when Barbara and Graham said those words to me, told me that I would achive anything I set my mind to, something inside of me came alive. I wasn't entirely sure what they could see but belived that they could see something, even if I couldn't and decided to take their word for it. If they belived it, then I could believe it too! I think it was Graham who suggested I look at doing hotel and catering at university, not the original Psychology I'd applied for. Once again, not the best career choice for a muslim Pakistani girl, my mum made me feel like working in the hotel and catering industry was just one notch up from being a lady of the night, it wasn't work to be proud of, it wasn't work to impress your social circle with but I still went ahead and did it. I applied to the University of Brighton and although I still didn't have the grades they wanted, I'd decided that's where I wanted to go and that's where I would go. By that time, I was working full-time in a restaurant (had a year out before university) but would still do the Sunday lunchtime shift at the Dog, so attached I was to the place and the people. The manager at the new restaurant had said I wouldn't get into Brighton because of my grades but Barbara and Graham's belief in me had ignited a fairly fierce belief in myself and I proved him wrong. I might not have had the grades but I wowed them with the interview and go an unconditional offer.
I went off to the University of Brighton in September 1989, all my worldly possessions packed in my bright red Beetle. By this time both Barbara and Graham had moved on from the Dog, moved on personally as a couple and gone their separate ways to run different pubs. Just before I went to university would have been the last time I saw Graham but I kept in touch with Barbara and she would fill him in on what I was up to.
Now when I look back over the last 20 years, I'm amazed by what I've done and achieved. Sometimes I look at my CV and think "you failed your A levels, you should never have done the things you have done". I've lived and worked overseas, most notably 3 years teaching English in Japan. I've got a Masters in International Relations and spent 3 years working at the Foreign Office where I helped to organise a massive press conference for Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, amongst other things. I got the top communications consultancy to create a job for me when I wrote them a spec letter, I've worked with Presidents and politicians, I've had the balls to set up my own business in something I'd never done before but believed I could. The last 20 years, although at times random and seemingly unconnected, were all triggered by two people's belief in me and their words of wisdom and encouragement that I could do anything I set my heart on. Funnily enough, I never went into the world of hospitality after university but my time at Brighton set off it's own chain of events, I got to live and work overseas, make some friends who will be with me for my lifetime and fall truly, madly, deeply in love for the first time whilst on a work placement overseas.
Graham, I know you're no longer with us but from your place as a twinkling star in the sky, I hope you can see this and see just how much difference your words, your belief, your encouragement made to my life, particularly at a time when I wasn't sure I'd amount to much at all. Maybe somewhere deep down inside I might have believed a miracle was possible but it was buried too far away for it to resonate at all. You and Barbara made me believe anything was possible and I took your words and ran with it - your words still ring in my ears today. I wish I'd been able to tell you all of this while you were still alive but I know what I'm like, I'd never have been able to express it without getting choked with emotion but at least I can write it. Thank you to both you and Barbara for being undoubtedly the best bosses I've ever worked for, thank you for everything you taught me but most of all, thank you for your words. They may only have been a few words but they changed a life and for that I will be eternally grateful. We may not have been in touch over the last 20 years but I have always carried you and Barbara in my heart, you've always been there on the adventures and I have never forgetten, will never forget the profound impact you both had on my life in my gangly late teenage years!
Graham Kerner was my first proper boss, way back in the late 80s. I had a part-time job in the Crown and Greyhound in Dulwich Village and six months after starting there, the management changed and we got Graham and his then partner Barbara Haigh as the new management team. The old managers (I can't remember their names) were round and cuddly, the new team were not. Graham reminded me of a proper East End wide boy, I don't know if he came from the East End, maybe Bermondsey, and I'd never met a proper East End wide boy but in my mind, that's what Graham was. He looked like Burt Reynolds and seemed like such a grown-up, although he was 34 which I think is very young now. Barbara was a former Playboy Bunny, statuesque and imposing and suddenly at the age of 17, they were my bosses. I was petrified of them at first although they did bring a West End glamour to what had been a very quaint pub in the heart of Dulwich Village.
As I worked in the restaurant, I worked more closely with Barbara as Graham ran the bar. I worked the daytime shift on Saturdays and Sundays and made endless rounds of sandwiches for the punters. Barbara started a Sunday roast and before long, word had spread that the best roast in London could be found at the "Dog" and we'd have a queue forming long before the doors opened at midday. At the tender age of 17, I found myself tasked with making sure everything in the restaurant was ready for service as Barbara would be busy cooking up a storm in the kitchen upstairs, coming down just before midday, knives sharpened and ready to carve up huge joints of meat. I would be stationed right next to her, taking the plates from her and adding vegetables and roast potatoes. It was non-stop for three hours and I kept an eye on things, making sure we didn't run out of anything during service.
The year after Barbara and Graham started running the Dog, I took my A levels and failed miserably. Apart from failing my driving test the previous year, I'd never failed at anything and as my academic disaster was completely my own fault, I experienced what it was like to mess things up and know it was down to you. I hated that feeling and vowed never to go there again. But although academically I was floundering, I was a good employee at the Dog and in the world of work seemed to do okay. I know it's not much, a part-time job to see you through your A level years, but I learnt a lot about how to operate in the work environment, about being professional and reliable and responsible - all things that are essential if you want to succeed in life. Barbara took me under her wing (I'd stopped being scared of her quite quickly) and taught me loads about working in a restaurant and how to do things properly. Apparently Playboy had incredibly high standards and these stayed with Barbara after she left so I lucked out and got some excellent training. Even at home, I still clear plates the way Barbara taught me, a plate in your left hand to scrape leftovers onto, the forks facing forwards, the knives all tucked under the forks and the rest of the plates piled up on your left arm.
The year of the disastrous A levels, I started saving for a car. I'd passed my driving test second time round and my dad had said he'd buy me a small car as he'd done the same for my older sister a few years earlier. The only problem was that my dad wanted to get a non-descript Nissan and I wanted a Volkswagen Beetle. My dad said he wouldn't get me a Beetle and I didn't want the Nissan so I decided to buy the Beetle myself. It was the days before bank cards and if I wanted money, I'd cash a cheque at the bank or sometimes at the Dog. As my cheque book was the only way to get hold of money and I needed to save for the car, I had my cheque book locked in the safe at the Dog with Barbara and Graham under strict instructions not to give me the cheque book until I was ready to buy the car.
The following year, a few weeks shy of my 19th birthday, I asked for the cheque book as I was just about to buy a car. I'd found a bright red VW Beetle 1303S, registration CBO 601L and had promptly fallen in love with it and decided it had to be mine. Cheque book reclaimed I purchased my first car and drove to the Dog bursting with pride! I think Barbara and Graham was equally proud of this achivement and they said something to me that still rings in my ears today. They told me that I would achieve anything I set my mind to, anything at all. I don't know what they saw in me but they saw something, maybe some potential and they said those words that really did change my life. Up til then, I'd spent most of my life in the shadow of my brainy, beautiful, sporty, musical older sister, the one who was going to become a doctor, the one who was going to make my dad's dream come true. As she'd taken up the post of the golden child, there wasn't much left for me apart from ugly duckling rebel and this role I seemed to fulfil without even trying very hard.
I'd been unhappy about the crappy comprehensive I got sent to at the age of 11 and forced my parents to let me going on a sporting holiday for a week in the summer holidays after the first year. I spent a week riding and playing squash and although I was happy to let the squash slide (I think accidently whacking my best friend Claire in the face with the squash racquet might have had something to do with this...), I was hooked on the riding and insisted on carrying on riding at Dulwich Riding School once I was back. Within the Pakistani community I'm sure this was frowned upon, it's not a very Pakistani thing to do but I carried on. This soon turned into working at the riding school as a working pupil and even when word reached my grandmother in Pakistan (via an aunt who'd decided it was disgraceful the amount of time I spent outside of the home) and an angry letter came from my Grandmother to my dad, insisting I gave up riding, I still persisted.
Even though I was the rebel in the family I felt like I was a nobody and a nothing. In your teenage years, it's mainly about academic success and the things I enjoyed and excelled at were frowned upon, things seen to embarrass the family, not things to be proud of. But saying that, my family were great and supportive and would come to any shows I entered - there was a big crowd of them present at the show where my horse reared up as soon as we got into the ring, fell backwards, I fell off and the horse galloped off, defying anyone to catch him again.
Anyway, after failing my A levels I felt horrendous and had no idea what was going to become of my life. The one thing I realised very quickly with the failure was that no-one was going to pick me up and sort things out for me. If I ended up in the gutter, it was up to me to get myself out and make something of my life. So long as there was a doctor in the family, it felt a bit like it didn't really matter what happened to the other three. I felt like I could be brilliant too, just like my older sister but it wasn't going to be academic brilliance and I didn't know that any other kind of brilliance existed. Somewhere deep down inside, I thought I could have a special life, an amazing life, a life that I'd look back on and be proud of but when you feel like a nothing and a nobody, that feeling of what you might be gets tucked away somewhere very deep inside.
So, when Barbara and Graham said those words to me, told me that I would achive anything I set my mind to, something inside of me came alive. I wasn't entirely sure what they could see but belived that they could see something, even if I couldn't and decided to take their word for it. If they belived it, then I could believe it too! I think it was Graham who suggested I look at doing hotel and catering at university, not the original Psychology I'd applied for. Once again, not the best career choice for a muslim Pakistani girl, my mum made me feel like working in the hotel and catering industry was just one notch up from being a lady of the night, it wasn't work to be proud of, it wasn't work to impress your social circle with but I still went ahead and did it. I applied to the University of Brighton and although I still didn't have the grades they wanted, I'd decided that's where I wanted to go and that's where I would go. By that time, I was working full-time in a restaurant (had a year out before university) but would still do the Sunday lunchtime shift at the Dog, so attached I was to the place and the people. The manager at the new restaurant had said I wouldn't get into Brighton because of my grades but Barbara and Graham's belief in me had ignited a fairly fierce belief in myself and I proved him wrong. I might not have had the grades but I wowed them with the interview and go an unconditional offer.
I went off to the University of Brighton in September 1989, all my worldly possessions packed in my bright red Beetle. By this time both Barbara and Graham had moved on from the Dog, moved on personally as a couple and gone their separate ways to run different pubs. Just before I went to university would have been the last time I saw Graham but I kept in touch with Barbara and she would fill him in on what I was up to.
Now when I look back over the last 20 years, I'm amazed by what I've done and achieved. Sometimes I look at my CV and think "you failed your A levels, you should never have done the things you have done". I've lived and worked overseas, most notably 3 years teaching English in Japan. I've got a Masters in International Relations and spent 3 years working at the Foreign Office where I helped to organise a massive press conference for Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, amongst other things. I got the top communications consultancy to create a job for me when I wrote them a spec letter, I've worked with Presidents and politicians, I've had the balls to set up my own business in something I'd never done before but believed I could. The last 20 years, although at times random and seemingly unconnected, were all triggered by two people's belief in me and their words of wisdom and encouragement that I could do anything I set my heart on. Funnily enough, I never went into the world of hospitality after university but my time at Brighton set off it's own chain of events, I got to live and work overseas, make some friends who will be with me for my lifetime and fall truly, madly, deeply in love for the first time whilst on a work placement overseas.
Graham, I know you're no longer with us but from your place as a twinkling star in the sky, I hope you can see this and see just how much difference your words, your belief, your encouragement made to my life, particularly at a time when I wasn't sure I'd amount to much at all. Maybe somewhere deep down inside I might have believed a miracle was possible but it was buried too far away for it to resonate at all. You and Barbara made me believe anything was possible and I took your words and ran with it - your words still ring in my ears today. I wish I'd been able to tell you all of this while you were still alive but I know what I'm like, I'd never have been able to express it without getting choked with emotion but at least I can write it. Thank you to both you and Barbara for being undoubtedly the best bosses I've ever worked for, thank you for everything you taught me but most of all, thank you for your words. They may only have been a few words but they changed a life and for that I will be eternally grateful. We may not have been in touch over the last 20 years but I have always carried you and Barbara in my heart, you've always been there on the adventures and I have never forgetten, will never forget the profound impact you both had on my life in my gangly late teenage years!
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Anonymous posters....
Although this blog is in the public domain, for all intents and purposes it's private. People don't stumble across it when doing a Google search (unless of course they're putting my name into Google) and the only people who know of it would be people who know me. I generally know who reads my blog, who knows about it. However twice I've had some pretty nasty comments left by anonymous posters - the first time it happened, I left it up there. The second time, last week, I decided against allowing the comment but thought I'd write about it here instead.
You see, what my anonymous posters don't know is that my blog is pretty much private and if anyone leaves nasty comments, even if they don't have the balls to attach their name to them, I know immediately who it is. Both times it's happened, the guilty person has flashed into my mind while I've read the comments and although I won't name them here, I will refer to them as MK and HR. "How can you be so sure?" you may be thinking. Well, both have done things in the past which makes it very easy to work out who the coward is hiding behind the anonymous nastiness. HR questioned whether I suffer from NPD. I had no idea what NPD was, put it into Google but that only came up with New Product Development and I don't think I suffer from that. HR is someone who likes to read alot about personality disorders, talks about narcissists, I can only imagine it's something to do with that. But by using the term NPD, really gave yourself away you silly cow! Funny thing is, even before any of this happened, I had thought to myself that HR reminds me of MK and their actions show them to be even more similar, not just in their lives but in their behaviour. Also, the comments they made, the things that seemed to piss them off so much, well these were the same things they'd got pissed off about before....
Both have sent me some pretty strong nasty emails in the past. The thing with sending something like this is that you see what someone's style is, what gets them, what language they use. I'm very lucky in that I don't really have shit people in my life so when anyone gets horrible and angry, they are in a tiny minority and they stick out like sore thumbs. Obviously I don't really have anything to do with people when they behave like this but they still seem to like to see what I'm up to. Both have had certain expectations of me (that I've not known about) and then got incredibly upset when I haven't behaved in the way that was expected. Personally I think they over-react, maybe they just get upset that I don't care for them the way I might do for others....
The similarities continue between the two. I'd describe both as having a victim mentality, their lives are car-crash horrors and both choose to use the very public face of the internet to share their woes with the world. I've read stuff that they've both written and cringed in embarrassment on their behalf - at times it's been excrutiating, reading how bad their lives are, how abysmally they've been treated, the shit that continues. Both seem to be angry about stuff, both have suffered physical abuse at the hands of partners.
The latest anonymous comment in response to my post "Numb" went like this:
"If you weren't so horribly self absorbed maybe you'd have brain space to think about how your mother feels rather than how you feel. You you you! Ever considered you suffer from NPD?
Well, anonymous poster 2 (HR), let me discuss here. I re-read the post to see what I'd written and it talked about my parents deteriorating health more than anything else. Obviously I'd written about my reaction to it all (going completely numb when I went into auto-pilot) but I'm not in the head of anyone else, I can't write about how anyone else is feeling, only what I'm feeling. I'm not a journalist, it's not for me to try and prise out how my mum is feeling but it is for me to be there in the hospital when she's needed her family around her for support. No I don't know exactly how my mum feels but she probably doesn't either. Even if she does, having spent a lifetime hiding her feelings away, I'm not sure she'd even have the language to express how she's feeling. But this much I know, she has been petrified and this I have seen etched in her face as we've sat for hours in hospital waiting rooms, passing away the time, waiting for a diagnosis that took weeks to come. I've been sat next to her and heard her saying prayers in Arabic under her breath, praying that everything will be fine. After she had the bone marrow biopsy, I was on one side of her hospital bed, my dad on the other, both holding her hands because that is what she needed at that moment, that is what she wanted. I was in the room when the consultant finally said the words that we'd all been dreading, that she has cancer and would need chemotherapy.
So HR, anonymous poster 2 (you know who you are and so do I) - you may not like me but frankly I don't care. However, you have proved yourself to be a pretty low-level human being for leaving nasty comments at a very difficult time for my family and me. My mum has just been diagnosed with cancer and you write things like this? The level of hatred in your heart is alarming but I think I've said that to you in the past anyway. To leave them anonymously shows you to be a spineless pathetic coward, if you think all these things about me, have the balls to say them to my face (well at least post under your name). You are a sad, pathetic, lonely individual and if I ever see you, well I think I may just laugh at you. I am lucky not to have a life like yours...
You see, what my anonymous posters don't know is that my blog is pretty much private and if anyone leaves nasty comments, even if they don't have the balls to attach their name to them, I know immediately who it is. Both times it's happened, the guilty person has flashed into my mind while I've read the comments and although I won't name them here, I will refer to them as MK and HR. "How can you be so sure?" you may be thinking. Well, both have done things in the past which makes it very easy to work out who the coward is hiding behind the anonymous nastiness. HR questioned whether I suffer from NPD. I had no idea what NPD was, put it into Google but that only came up with New Product Development and I don't think I suffer from that. HR is someone who likes to read alot about personality disorders, talks about narcissists, I can only imagine it's something to do with that. But by using the term NPD, really gave yourself away you silly cow! Funny thing is, even before any of this happened, I had thought to myself that HR reminds me of MK and their actions show them to be even more similar, not just in their lives but in their behaviour. Also, the comments they made, the things that seemed to piss them off so much, well these were the same things they'd got pissed off about before....
Both have sent me some pretty strong nasty emails in the past. The thing with sending something like this is that you see what someone's style is, what gets them, what language they use. I'm very lucky in that I don't really have shit people in my life so when anyone gets horrible and angry, they are in a tiny minority and they stick out like sore thumbs. Obviously I don't really have anything to do with people when they behave like this but they still seem to like to see what I'm up to. Both have had certain expectations of me (that I've not known about) and then got incredibly upset when I haven't behaved in the way that was expected. Personally I think they over-react, maybe they just get upset that I don't care for them the way I might do for others....
The similarities continue between the two. I'd describe both as having a victim mentality, their lives are car-crash horrors and both choose to use the very public face of the internet to share their woes with the world. I've read stuff that they've both written and cringed in embarrassment on their behalf - at times it's been excrutiating, reading how bad their lives are, how abysmally they've been treated, the shit that continues. Both seem to be angry about stuff, both have suffered physical abuse at the hands of partners.
The latest anonymous comment in response to my post "Numb" went like this:
"If you weren't so horribly self absorbed maybe you'd have brain space to think about how your mother feels rather than how you feel. You you you! Ever considered you suffer from NPD?
Well, anonymous poster 2 (HR), let me discuss here. I re-read the post to see what I'd written and it talked about my parents deteriorating health more than anything else. Obviously I'd written about my reaction to it all (going completely numb when I went into auto-pilot) but I'm not in the head of anyone else, I can't write about how anyone else is feeling, only what I'm feeling. I'm not a journalist, it's not for me to try and prise out how my mum is feeling but it is for me to be there in the hospital when she's needed her family around her for support. No I don't know exactly how my mum feels but she probably doesn't either. Even if she does, having spent a lifetime hiding her feelings away, I'm not sure she'd even have the language to express how she's feeling. But this much I know, she has been petrified and this I have seen etched in her face as we've sat for hours in hospital waiting rooms, passing away the time, waiting for a diagnosis that took weeks to come. I've been sat next to her and heard her saying prayers in Arabic under her breath, praying that everything will be fine. After she had the bone marrow biopsy, I was on one side of her hospital bed, my dad on the other, both holding her hands because that is what she needed at that moment, that is what she wanted. I was in the room when the consultant finally said the words that we'd all been dreading, that she has cancer and would need chemotherapy.
So HR, anonymous poster 2 (you know who you are and so do I) - you may not like me but frankly I don't care. However, you have proved yourself to be a pretty low-level human being for leaving nasty comments at a very difficult time for my family and me. My mum has just been diagnosed with cancer and you write things like this? The level of hatred in your heart is alarming but I think I've said that to you in the past anyway. To leave them anonymously shows you to be a spineless pathetic coward, if you think all these things about me, have the balls to say them to my face (well at least post under your name). You are a sad, pathetic, lonely individual and if I ever see you, well I think I may just laugh at you. I am lucky not to have a life like yours...
Thursday, 31 December 2009
2009 - a rather strange year...
If 2008 was quite possibly the single most intense year I've ever had, 2009 was the polar opposite, the most low-key year in all my adult life. I guess if you've pelted through life for two decades, having a quieter year is to be expected even though it can be difficult to live. When I'm used to all years having some highlights, a year like this feels like nothings happened. Of course many lovely things have happened but everything gets pitched against past experiences, past highs - so you have to hit even higher for it to nudge into conciousness.
Low-key doesn't mean bad though as I can see many good things that happened in the year. However as my recent past has been marked by some major achievements every year (usually in the work sense), 2009 has felt as if I've been laying strong foundations for the next chapter. I have no idea what lies ahead in this next chapter, I know that I want it to include my own family but as ever, this remains the one area of my life where I feel I have no control. At the end of the day, what is going to happen will happen - at times I do wish it would hurry up a bit though!
When I moved back to London from Ibiza in March, my flat was rented out and as I didn't have any work immediately, I took the safe option of moving back into the family home. It's not a decision I would have made by choice, it was more a decision of circumstances. In previous years, work has come my way fairly easily and I expected more of the same, even during the recession. However, something had changed fundamentally in what I wanted from work. I'd achieved all I needed to achieve on a personal work level before I left for Ibiza (and I never would have gone if I still felt I hadn't reached the peak that I'd been so determined to get to for a number of years) and deep down inside I knew that I wanted to find a way of working that would give me the freedom, flexibility and finances to live a life between London and Ibiza - and neither of the two things I'd done before would allow that. When the Arbonne opportunity came my way, as soon as I grasped the business potential, I realised I'd found the thing that could make my dream a reality, I just have to work it and it will happen. But the set up means that you're not necessarily making big money immediately - you take the biggest pay cut ever in a bid to earn more than you've probably dreamt was possible.
Back in London, staying at my parents house and with little money and initially no work meant socialising disappeared from any scale of importance. Also when I'm feeling slightly off-kilter as I did when I returned to London, I only want to see those I'm closest to. I spent a lot of time with Claud and the boys - with Kymani and Elias as my godsons, it only felt natural to go and hang out with them and they always lifted my spirits when I saw them. Staying in Dulwich meant that my nearest neighbour turned out to be Wilding, only two streets away. We embarked on a lot of spontaneous socialising in East Dulwich and by the time he moved out of the area a couple of weeks ago, I found myself considering him one of my best friends, certainly one of a handful who I would confide in about anything.
This sort of more spontaneous socialising suits me better - with Wilding, most of the time one or the other would call or text suggesting meeting up and an hour or two later and that would be it. No foreward planning, no getting diaries out to consult when we both had a free window - I think the only times I saw him when it was slightly more "organised" was when he was either DJing or doing one of the podcasts live. With Claud and the boys it was a little more planned but by days, not weeks in advance. Whenever I was free, I'd slot in with whatever they were doing which meant I've seen a lot of the boys this year. By Easter it was becoming apparent that they recognised me and even Kymani who takes a long time to warm to people was coming round to me. Now he'll be more excited to see me than twin Elias, but I'm very much a part of both of their lives.
One of the things I really didn't like about life before I moved to Ibiza was how difficult it was to see friends, spontaneity was a word that just didn't seem to feature in most people's vocabularies. You'd have to consult diaries and plan weeks or even months ahead to get a two-hour slot with someone you considered a close friend. The main consequence of that is by the time you meet up, have said hello and got past the "how are you" bit, it's time to go home again. And so it goes on, every time you meet up, you never get past the "how are you bit" so you end up feeling somewhat disconnected with people. It's fine if they're social acquaintances who you only see out and about and it's normal to have a 3-second conversation but strange with people you'd consider closer. Maybe I was at fault as I seemed to have a lot of friends and would flit between different people, different groups. I saw a little bit of lots of people.
It's been different this year, at first through circumstance and now I wouldn't choose it to be any other way. I've spent a lot of time with just a few people and consequently I feel I've got much deeper, stronger, tighter bonds with them. When my mum first went into hospital in November, it was Claud and Wilding who were the only two people who knew what was going on. They provided constant support, always asked how my mum was, always asked if we'd had any results. They are the two people in London I know I can go to if I'm feeling wobbly, if I feel in need of a hug. And the great thing is, having spent so much time with them the past few months, I feel completely at ease being totally open with them. So even though I haven't liked not having much money, not feeling work has completely taken off and being back in my childhood home, something very positive, very special has come out of it, as it seems it always does!
I didn't focus on Arbonne until the beginning of October and used August and September to jetset around, doing all the things I wanted to do, all the things that if I'd been working full-time (even for myself) would have been impossible to do. I gallavanted around and it all felt quite decadent and at times a bit reckless but I'm glad I did it! There was only one week in those two months when I wasn't getting on a plane but I still found myself at the airport as Simone was in transit and I wanted to get a couple of hours with her. My two trips to Ibiza meant spending a lot of time with Octavia as I was staying with her and that was just brilliant! She has to be my favourite person on the island and the first person I'll see I can stay with whenever I head over there. I flew up to Edinburgh for the night as Wilding as doing another live show of the Perfect Ten. Ten days later I flew back up to Scotland for Daryl's wedding in the Highlands, against the beautiful backdrop of Loch Lomond. And then a day after getting back to London from my second trip to Ibiza, I jetted off again to LA to celebrate Carly's birthday with her. So although this year has felt very low key, it has been very much friend-focused and I think deep down inside, that was something I wanted, needed, had been looking for.
The other thing that I'm aware of is that after three years of kinesiology treatment, I finally feel that I'm back to normal. When I last went to see the kinesiologist at the beginning of October, I was acutely aware of the fact that my hormones were still wonky and I found myself wondering if I would ever feel better, would I ever be okay again, would I ever find myself feeling normal again? In that session, the problem that came to the fore was candida in my stomach, quite possibly the reason why I looked and felt constantly bloated in my lower stomach. No matter how many sit-ups I did a day, my lower belly just had a mind of its own. I was given a whole heap of supplements to take for four months, with a secondary supplement to try and balance the hormones. When I started the course of supplements I was feeling truly horrendous and once again wondered when, if ever, would I be better?
But I was determined to take the supplements properly, the correct number every day and not miss any days out. The first month I didn't see or feel any results but by the second month, my bloated stomach disappeared and other stomach problems I'd had eased away too. And amongst all of this, it felt like my hormones were back to behaving normally. I'd hate to think what state I would have been the last few weeks while we've been having parent health scares if my hormones were still all over the place. I probably would have plummeted and then had to drag myself out again from the lowest depths. Yet now, having to face some fairly stressful situations, I held it all together and got on with things, my hormones not preventing me from functioning properly. Further research into candida showed that it can cause a hormonal imbalance or depression and so this may have been one of the major problems all along. Finally I feel like my insides are back to being healthy and I can resume normal life where health is concerned.
So 2009 is definitely not a year when nothing happened. But what's been going on has been part of this foundation I've been laying for what is around the corner. I feel like I'm ready for whatever it is and once it comes, I can spring into action, knowing my health is back, I think I've dealt with any other outstanding issues and grown and developed and created a bedrock of incredibly strong, loyal, brilliant friends. When next year kicks into action and whatever magic coming my way comes, I'll look back at this time and be thankful that I got everything in order so I was ready for the next chapter!
Low-key doesn't mean bad though as I can see many good things that happened in the year. However as my recent past has been marked by some major achievements every year (usually in the work sense), 2009 has felt as if I've been laying strong foundations for the next chapter. I have no idea what lies ahead in this next chapter, I know that I want it to include my own family but as ever, this remains the one area of my life where I feel I have no control. At the end of the day, what is going to happen will happen - at times I do wish it would hurry up a bit though!
When I moved back to London from Ibiza in March, my flat was rented out and as I didn't have any work immediately, I took the safe option of moving back into the family home. It's not a decision I would have made by choice, it was more a decision of circumstances. In previous years, work has come my way fairly easily and I expected more of the same, even during the recession. However, something had changed fundamentally in what I wanted from work. I'd achieved all I needed to achieve on a personal work level before I left for Ibiza (and I never would have gone if I still felt I hadn't reached the peak that I'd been so determined to get to for a number of years) and deep down inside I knew that I wanted to find a way of working that would give me the freedom, flexibility and finances to live a life between London and Ibiza - and neither of the two things I'd done before would allow that. When the Arbonne opportunity came my way, as soon as I grasped the business potential, I realised I'd found the thing that could make my dream a reality, I just have to work it and it will happen. But the set up means that you're not necessarily making big money immediately - you take the biggest pay cut ever in a bid to earn more than you've probably dreamt was possible.
Back in London, staying at my parents house and with little money and initially no work meant socialising disappeared from any scale of importance. Also when I'm feeling slightly off-kilter as I did when I returned to London, I only want to see those I'm closest to. I spent a lot of time with Claud and the boys - with Kymani and Elias as my godsons, it only felt natural to go and hang out with them and they always lifted my spirits when I saw them. Staying in Dulwich meant that my nearest neighbour turned out to be Wilding, only two streets away. We embarked on a lot of spontaneous socialising in East Dulwich and by the time he moved out of the area a couple of weeks ago, I found myself considering him one of my best friends, certainly one of a handful who I would confide in about anything.
This sort of more spontaneous socialising suits me better - with Wilding, most of the time one or the other would call or text suggesting meeting up and an hour or two later and that would be it. No foreward planning, no getting diaries out to consult when we both had a free window - I think the only times I saw him when it was slightly more "organised" was when he was either DJing or doing one of the podcasts live. With Claud and the boys it was a little more planned but by days, not weeks in advance. Whenever I was free, I'd slot in with whatever they were doing which meant I've seen a lot of the boys this year. By Easter it was becoming apparent that they recognised me and even Kymani who takes a long time to warm to people was coming round to me. Now he'll be more excited to see me than twin Elias, but I'm very much a part of both of their lives.
One of the things I really didn't like about life before I moved to Ibiza was how difficult it was to see friends, spontaneity was a word that just didn't seem to feature in most people's vocabularies. You'd have to consult diaries and plan weeks or even months ahead to get a two-hour slot with someone you considered a close friend. The main consequence of that is by the time you meet up, have said hello and got past the "how are you" bit, it's time to go home again. And so it goes on, every time you meet up, you never get past the "how are you bit" so you end up feeling somewhat disconnected with people. It's fine if they're social acquaintances who you only see out and about and it's normal to have a 3-second conversation but strange with people you'd consider closer. Maybe I was at fault as I seemed to have a lot of friends and would flit between different people, different groups. I saw a little bit of lots of people.
It's been different this year, at first through circumstance and now I wouldn't choose it to be any other way. I've spent a lot of time with just a few people and consequently I feel I've got much deeper, stronger, tighter bonds with them. When my mum first went into hospital in November, it was Claud and Wilding who were the only two people who knew what was going on. They provided constant support, always asked how my mum was, always asked if we'd had any results. They are the two people in London I know I can go to if I'm feeling wobbly, if I feel in need of a hug. And the great thing is, having spent so much time with them the past few months, I feel completely at ease being totally open with them. So even though I haven't liked not having much money, not feeling work has completely taken off and being back in my childhood home, something very positive, very special has come out of it, as it seems it always does!
I didn't focus on Arbonne until the beginning of October and used August and September to jetset around, doing all the things I wanted to do, all the things that if I'd been working full-time (even for myself) would have been impossible to do. I gallavanted around and it all felt quite decadent and at times a bit reckless but I'm glad I did it! There was only one week in those two months when I wasn't getting on a plane but I still found myself at the airport as Simone was in transit and I wanted to get a couple of hours with her. My two trips to Ibiza meant spending a lot of time with Octavia as I was staying with her and that was just brilliant! She has to be my favourite person on the island and the first person I'll see I can stay with whenever I head over there. I flew up to Edinburgh for the night as Wilding as doing another live show of the Perfect Ten. Ten days later I flew back up to Scotland for Daryl's wedding in the Highlands, against the beautiful backdrop of Loch Lomond. And then a day after getting back to London from my second trip to Ibiza, I jetted off again to LA to celebrate Carly's birthday with her. So although this year has felt very low key, it has been very much friend-focused and I think deep down inside, that was something I wanted, needed, had been looking for.
The other thing that I'm aware of is that after three years of kinesiology treatment, I finally feel that I'm back to normal. When I last went to see the kinesiologist at the beginning of October, I was acutely aware of the fact that my hormones were still wonky and I found myself wondering if I would ever feel better, would I ever be okay again, would I ever find myself feeling normal again? In that session, the problem that came to the fore was candida in my stomach, quite possibly the reason why I looked and felt constantly bloated in my lower stomach. No matter how many sit-ups I did a day, my lower belly just had a mind of its own. I was given a whole heap of supplements to take for four months, with a secondary supplement to try and balance the hormones. When I started the course of supplements I was feeling truly horrendous and once again wondered when, if ever, would I be better?
But I was determined to take the supplements properly, the correct number every day and not miss any days out. The first month I didn't see or feel any results but by the second month, my bloated stomach disappeared and other stomach problems I'd had eased away too. And amongst all of this, it felt like my hormones were back to behaving normally. I'd hate to think what state I would have been the last few weeks while we've been having parent health scares if my hormones were still all over the place. I probably would have plummeted and then had to drag myself out again from the lowest depths. Yet now, having to face some fairly stressful situations, I held it all together and got on with things, my hormones not preventing me from functioning properly. Further research into candida showed that it can cause a hormonal imbalance or depression and so this may have been one of the major problems all along. Finally I feel like my insides are back to being healthy and I can resume normal life where health is concerned.
So 2009 is definitely not a year when nothing happened. But what's been going on has been part of this foundation I've been laying for what is around the corner. I feel like I'm ready for whatever it is and once it comes, I can spring into action, knowing my health is back, I think I've dealt with any other outstanding issues and grown and developed and created a bedrock of incredibly strong, loyal, brilliant friends. When next year kicks into action and whatever magic coming my way comes, I'll look back at this time and be thankful that I got everything in order so I was ready for the next chapter!
My favourite song of 2009....
It's been another year where I haven't bought that much new music, or even listened to many new albums. However, even in the musical drought, I did get hold of the new Prefab Sprout album "Lets change the world with music" and that ended up being my favourite album of the year (I listen to it every night as I drift off to sleep) as well as providing me with my favourite song of 2009.
The song is "God Watch Over You" and is the fourth track on the album. Being so blase about religion, I actually struggled in the beginning with loving a song so much that talked about God. But I fell in love with the lyrics and have accepted the song for the beautiful words, even if they do mention God. I understand the meaning, the spirit of the song, to care about someone so much that you want them to be forever protected and what a beautiful sentiment that is. Here are the lyrics, let them capture you too!
God Watch Over You
I've no time for religion,
maybe doubt's a modern disease?
Then I look at you, and here's what I do,
I wear holes in both my knees.
I pray that God protects you,
and if he is busy elsewhere
may his legions speed
in your hour of need
and surround you till he's there.
I pray that God protects you...
God watch over you
every minute, every moment
God watch over you
every minute, every moment
God watch over you (and if you fall)
May he stretch out his arm and catch you,
keep you from harm, or sweep you
into his palm...but...
God watch over you
God watch over you
I've told your guardian angel
not to let you out of his sight
or attempt to fly - if he sees you cry
he's to stand his ground and fight,
I've warned your guardian angel...
God watch over you
every minute, every moment
God watch over you
every minute, every moment
God watch over you (and if you fall)
May he stretch out his arm and catch you,
keep you from harm, or sweep you
into his palm...but...
God watch over you
God watch over you (and if you fall)
God watch over you
God watch over you
God watch over you
I love the way that Paddy McAloon puts lyrics together. In the first verse, the last line "I wear holes in both my knees" - although the words are actually nonsensical, they immediately create an image of someone on their knees, praying fervently. He projects an image using words that don't actually make sense. Although this is quite normal for a Sprout song and the lyrics on this album are nowhere near as bonkers as they have been on other albums.
The whole album is linked by the dual themes of music and religion. And when I hear someone sing so passionately about music, all it makes me want to do is put down some roots somewhere (I've been living like a hobo for nearly two years now), get all my stuff out of storage, set up my decks, sort out my CDs and albums and make music a big part of my life again!
The song is "God Watch Over You" and is the fourth track on the album. Being so blase about religion, I actually struggled in the beginning with loving a song so much that talked about God. But I fell in love with the lyrics and have accepted the song for the beautiful words, even if they do mention God. I understand the meaning, the spirit of the song, to care about someone so much that you want them to be forever protected and what a beautiful sentiment that is. Here are the lyrics, let them capture you too!
God Watch Over You
I've no time for religion,
maybe doubt's a modern disease?
Then I look at you, and here's what I do,
I wear holes in both my knees.
I pray that God protects you,
and if he is busy elsewhere
may his legions speed
in your hour of need
and surround you till he's there.
I pray that God protects you...
God watch over you
every minute, every moment
God watch over you
every minute, every moment
God watch over you (and if you fall)
May he stretch out his arm and catch you,
keep you from harm, or sweep you
into his palm...but...
God watch over you
God watch over you
I've told your guardian angel
not to let you out of his sight
or attempt to fly - if he sees you cry
he's to stand his ground and fight,
I've warned your guardian angel...
God watch over you
every minute, every moment
God watch over you
every minute, every moment
God watch over you (and if you fall)
May he stretch out his arm and catch you,
keep you from harm, or sweep you
into his palm...but...
God watch over you
God watch over you (and if you fall)
God watch over you
God watch over you
God watch over you
I love the way that Paddy McAloon puts lyrics together. In the first verse, the last line "I wear holes in both my knees" - although the words are actually nonsensical, they immediately create an image of someone on their knees, praying fervently. He projects an image using words that don't actually make sense. Although this is quite normal for a Sprout song and the lyrics on this album are nowhere near as bonkers as they have been on other albums.
The whole album is linked by the dual themes of music and religion. And when I hear someone sing so passionately about music, all it makes me want to do is put down some roots somewhere (I've been living like a hobo for nearly two years now), get all my stuff out of storage, set up my decks, sort out my CDs and albums and make music a big part of my life again!
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Numb...
Otherwise known as not feeling anything. That's how the last week or so has been. Nothing to do with the cold weather we've been having, everything to do with both parents being admitted to hospital just before Christmas. Back in the middle of November, my dad collapsed. Not quite in front of me but I was in the room and had my back to him. I turned to see him with his head and upper body collapsed on the dining table, he looked like he had gone. I screamed and turned away, hitting my forehead at the same time (I have no idea why I do this but I've noticed that when I witness something bad, I hit my forehead - can anyone explain this?). Then I turned back and went to him, all the while in a state of panic and fluster. My aunt and uncle were there too and my mum was in the kitchen. We were all panicking and I realised that at least one person needed to get a grip and take control of the situation so I picked up the phone and dialled 999. By this time my dad had lifted his head from the table, announcing he'd "just been resting". For a split second I thought I'd over-reacted but then I'd seen him looking dead and decided that he was under-playing the scene, not me over-playing it.
My dad kept insisting he was fine but I wasn't convinced and carried on with the 999 call. At some point, he had another attack and although he remained upright because we were holding him, his eyes went funny and he wasn't really there. My mum came into the room and asked him how he was. "I'm fine" he replied. "He's fine" my mum said, followed by "you can cancel the ambulance, he's fine...". She then tried to give him some water and his breakfast until I told her not to. The first paramedic arrived pretty promptly, followed by the ambulance and a second crew of paramedics. They checked him out, said we'd done the right thing by calling 999 and took him off to hospital for a full check-up. I had to go with him even though I hate hospitals and my older sister Rahila followed behind, bringing my mum with her. While we were in A&E waiting to see someone, my dad asked me what happened. I asked him how much he remembered. He remembered me coming into the room but not much else after that. The next thing he remembered was after the first paramedic had arrived. It dawned on me that there was a period of about ten or fifteen minutes he had no recollection of and it was during this time he was insisting he was fine.
Once Rahila arrived at the hospital, I left in a daze and complete state of shock. I know this was the case as I went to the bus stop and didn't even register that I was stood at the wrong bus stop. It was only when a few of the right buses went straight past even though I was trying to stop them that I realised something was amiss. Eventually I got on the right bus and got home. I was in shock by what had happened but more in shock by the reaction of both parents, insisting that everything was okay. My parents tend to deal with things by that great Pakistani trait, sweeping everything under the carpet and being in total denial about things, particularly when they are staring right at them. It's a trait that frustrates me but it seems as if many people are too scared to look at what's going on and hope that by brushing things under the carpet, it will magically disappear. Sometimes the crap under the carpet is so big it creates a mountain with the person sat precariously on top, convinced that everything is okay but that's only because they can't see the big pile of crap they're sat on.
Once back home, my parents told others that the reason my dad had collapsed was because he'd been making breakfast or hadn't had breakfast - anything to gloss over the fact that something might be wrong. And it's amazing how people will buy this. They told the same story to my brother and I heard him relaying it to one of the neighbours who'd come to ask how he was. I went out and told my brother that his story was in fact incorrect - my dad has a history of mini strokes, although this time the hospital think it may be something to do with his heart. My brother told me the same thing had happened a few years ago when he'd been there with my mum. They'd done nothing as my dad had come round and said he was fine. Turned out my dad had collapsed last year as well at the time of my brother's wedding and once again, came round quickly insisting he was fine. And once again, nothing was done...
After this episode with my dad and seeing the level of denial that people operate under, I decided to go to a hospital appointment my mum had the following Friday. Her haemoglobin count has been plummeting which means something is wrong. The local rather useless GP's clinic had put her on iron tablets but still the haemoglobin level kept going down. In the meeting with the Consultant, my mum insisted she was perfectly okay but with the haemoglobin count continuing downwards, the Consultant said that she wasn't perfectly okay and they wanted to admit her straight away so they could investigate further. She wanted to go home to get her things so I made her stay and wait for a bed, sending my dad home instead to get her things. After hours of waiting a bed finally came up and we could leave her in the hands of the hospital staff. While we were waiting for a bed, another Consultant came to see my mum. He mentioned the term myeloma and my ears pricked - this was the term Rahila had asked about when I'd called her to say they were going to admit my mum. In the meeting with the first Consultant, I hadn't known what to listen out for but after talking to my sister (she's a doctor so knows these sorts of things), I knew to listen out for myeloma even though I had no idea what it was. The doctors suspected my mum might have myeloma and wanted to do a bone marrow biopsy to see if that was the case. I asked the Consultant what myeloma is and he wouldn't tell me as he said it upsets people and I should look on the internet.
Once I got home, I spoke to Rahila and told her what the Consultant had said. She said not to look up what myeloma was but by saying that, I did exactly that. Switched on my computer, went to Google and typed in myeloma. It didn't take long to discover that myeloma is bone marrow cancer, it's not curable and it's rare. Via the internet I found out that my mum might have cancer. When I went to bed that night I lay there worrying and after a few hours of not being able to sleep, got up and phoned my cousin in Dallas who is one of the many doctors in the family and we'd been trying to get hold of him. He asked me if they were testing for myeloma and I said yes. When I went back to bed, still unable to sleep, I found myself projecting forwards in a world where my mum does have myeloma and I had to stop myself - you can't react to something if you're not sure about it which leaves you not being able to have any emotional reaction at all. And you have to remain in emotional limbo until there is a confirmed diagnosis.
My mum stayed in hospital for a week. I went into auto-pilot, juggling work around being at the hospital between 2-8, the normal visiting hours. Work was busy and it was good to have something else to focus on at an otherwise trying time. It made me realise that I need the parameters of work to help me cope during challenging times. My mum was scared about the biopsy, about how painful it would be. Every time a nurse or doctor came to see her, she'd keep asking the same thing "will it hurt, will it be painful?" She wanted to have as many people as possible there when she had the biopsy and for every visitor she had who was in some ways connected to the world of medicine, she asked if they could be there for the biopsy. We knew she couldn't be on her own when the biopsy happened and it turned out that both me and my dad were there when the procedure finally took place.
My dad and I had to wait outside the room while they did the biopsy. My dad was still talking about going to Pakistan (they were due to go the following Sunday). Even though the Consultant had advised against travelling when my mum had been admitted, my dad still thought she might be okay in time to travel on Sunday. I had to tell him that they wouldn't be going to Pakistan on Sunday even though he was convinced it might still be possible. I felt like the person who was spoiling all their fun, telling them they couldn't do the one thing they always do and maybe spend the whole year looking forward to.
Once the biopsy was done, we could go back into the room. My mum was lying on the bed looking shocked. When she saw us, she started to cry. I had to tell her not to cry as that would make me cry and then we sat with her, either side of her bed, holding her hands. At one point, my mum asked me to lean in so she could hug me. I guess she needed the human contact and it made me wonder if I hadn't of been there, would she have asked my dad for a hug? Probably not. A lot of Pakistani people of my parents generation have no physical contact with their spouses in public. I've never seen my parents hold hands or embrace or hug, nothing natural and spontaneous - it's strange growing up in a household where there is no natural affection between parents for children to see. My mum doesn't even call my dad by his name, preferring to use the term "soon yay" which translated from the Urdu means something like "listen here". In fact, a Japanese friend of my sister's was staying at the house for a while and she actually thought my dad's name was "soon yay" as that's how she heard my mum call him and assumed that was his name.
My mum came out of hospital a few days later and had to go back the following week for the biopsy results. Another week of waiting in limbo, unable to react. I went to the hospital the following week and although she was seen by a specialist myeloma consultant, they still couldn't give us any definitive results and had to go back two weeks later. Another two weeks of not knowing, being in emotional limbo, not being able to react. I found the time trying. My closest friends knew but I realised that I couldn't tell other close friends as I wasn't sure what I was going to tell them - my mum might have cancer. But then she might not. Being in limbo is tiring, whatever it's about but this kind of limbo is particularly tiring.
Two weeks later, the week before Christmas, we went back to the hospital to get the results. The doctors confirmed what they suspected - my mum had myeloma and would need to start treatment. This time they had to explain what myeloma was, they had to tell my mum and dad that it was cancer and she would need to start a course of chemotherapy. The bombshell finally dropped, my mum's ill, she's been ill for a while, probably a couple of years or more. She couldn't say she was perfectly okay anymore as there was now the proof to prove that that wasn't the case. I wasn't sure how my mum or dad would react to the news. I wasn't sure how I'd react either. Both parents were okay, subdued but okay. My mum didn't start crying and I thought she might. I didn't start crying either and I thought I might. Much later I realised that I was on auto-pilot, had been on auto-pilot since my dad collapsed and there's no room for emotion here.
After the diagnosis, I called Rahila to tell her. While we'd been in the meeting, my phone had been switched off and when I switched it back on again, I could see that my younger sister Alia had called a number of times and sent texts. When I spoke to Rahila I asked her whether I should tell Alia over the phone or go and tell her? Alia is prone to getting very emotional and upset by things like this and I wasn't sure how best to handle it. Rahila said it would be okay to call her so I did. When I told her that they had confirmed myeloma she burst into tears and kept asking "are they sure, are they sure?" This was pretty hard as although I can keep my own emotions in check, when others around me start crying that's when I start to lose it. And I didn't want to lose it in the corridor of King's College Hospital with lots of people passing by. I'm sure they're used to it but I'm not.
My mum had to start the course of chemotherapy straight away and as it's something that can be taken at home, I left my parents in the pharmacy to wait for a big bag of drugs while I went home and then on to dinner with friends - finally I could tell my nearest and dearest what was going on. Actually only three of my best friends knew that anything was up, Claud and Wilding in London and Simone in Abu Dhabi. They were a constant source of support in the limbo period, calling, texting, emailing to see if there was any news, to see how I was. Wilding sent me a text, asking how everyone was, how I was. And I replied honestly, I didn't know how I was because I just seemed numb, I didn't feel anything. Even once the bombshell had dropped, no reaction happened. I waited for a great rush of emotion but nothing. Obviously I didn't feel happy or joyful but I didn't feel scared or sad or broken-hearted either, I just didn't feel anything. And for someone who feels everything, who is very much in tune with feelings and emotions and lives life by how they feel about something, it was strange to feel nothing.
When I came back from work the next day, I asked my mum if she had started the treatment. She hadn't as she'd come down with a cold or flu. When my parents left the hospital the night before, they stepped out into the cold, rainy night and got a bus back to Dulwich. On that short journey home, my mum picked up a bug and couldn't start the treatment until she was well again. A few days later, I noticed that my dad's right eye was droopy and he had a rash on his head. I asked him about it and he said that his eye had been like that for a few days and the rash was dermatitus. I called Rahila to tell him about my dad's eye (she's an opthamologist) but she was out shopping so I left a message with my nephew instead. The next day we all got together at Rahila's for her birthday lunch. As soon as Rahila and her husband Andrew (also a doctor) saw my dad, they said he had shingles and needed to start medication immediately. As it was a Sunday, Andrew took them both to A&E instead of hunting around for a pharmacy that might be open. As soon as they saw my mum, they said she had pnumonia and admitted her straight away, particularly after the myeloma diagnosis. My dad was given medication for the shingles and came back home again.
So, before the reality of my mum's myeloma had a chance to even begin to sink in, she was back in hospital with pnuemonia, caught on the bus home after being diagnosed. My dad probably came down with shingles at the same time. A part of me wonders how much they managed to fight things off while they believed that everything was okay but as soon as they found out that my mum has a form of cancer, something inside of them just collapsed. Not one fell, they both did. A few days after my mum was admitted, my dad was brought back into A&E by Rahila. He'd had a home visit by the doctor who was not happy with his worsening condition and when Rahila saw him later that evening, she said she was bringing him straight in. I was already at the hospital with my mum. She'd been kept in isolation while they tested for Swine flu but once they got the results that she didn't have the virus, she could be moved onto a Haemotology ward. Once again we waited for a bed and I asked the nurses if I could wait until she was moved and they said yes. Once my dad came in, I went down to A&E to see him. When I explained to the nurses where I was going, they expressed the disbelief that I felt, one parent already in, the other just being brought in. And this is with two people who until this year have not had any major health issues that have involved overnight hospital stays. I never imagined that 2009, this strange year that so many have hated and can't wait to see end, would have been the year that my parents literally began to crumble in front of me.
When I got down to A&E and saw my dad, I started laughing. My dad started laughing too. The situation was quite surreal and unbelieveable and it felt like I'd accidently walked onto the set of some Hollywood Christmas movie. My dad looked like a tom cat that had been scrapping. His face was swollen and his eyes had practically disappeared. The shingles had left him with sores and scabs all over one side of his forehead and head and he had stubble. I don't think I've ever seen him with stubble, so fastidious is he with his shaving. At one point he was sat next to a guy who was a bouncer who'd been attacked. My dad looked as damaged as this man who'd been hit by a few and had his head stamped on. I finally left the hospital at around two and collapsed into a tired heap in bed.
With both parents in hospital, life revolved around them and their health. I was on auto-pilot, not being aware of much else. With it being the Christmas period, you don't even have work to distract you for a few hours, to add a bit of normality in an otherwise bizarre period. I took a day off on Boxing Day and got out of London, went to see friends and get fed. Even just a few days of hours spent at the hospital leaves you physically drained and exhausted and in my case, hungry. After a few days of eating hospital sandwiches, I needed to go and get fed, as well as have a little escape. After the hospital on Christmas Day I went off to Claudette's house for Christmas dinner and then away again on Boxing Day for a lot more food and time spent with friends. I thought this break would refresh me a bit but when I went back to the hospital on Sunday, I felt weepy and hungry and if I did feel any emotions, they were anger and frustration, not the emotions I was expecting to feel. On Monday night as I tried to sleep but found I couldn't, it felt like someone had whacked me round the head with a shovel and I had all this anger and frustration inside of me with no place to come out.
The next morning I made an appointment to see the counsellor attached to the department my mum is a patient of. It was really good to talk to her and start to come to terms with what had happened. The thing that I found most strange, probably struggled with the most (apart from incredible exhaustion, even after ten hours sleep a night) was that apart from feeling angry and frustrated, I didn't feel anything else. I didn't feel scared by my parents' mortality or the cancer diagnosis, I didn't feel sad, I didn't worry, I just didn't seem to feel anything that I would have expected to feel. For someone who is so in tune with emotions and knowing how I'm feeling, to go through so much and not feel a thing just seemed bizarre. I don't hide from my feelings but it seemed they were hiding from me. This leaves me with the problem of not knowing what to do, what I want to do, what I don't want to do - I've always used how I feel about things to take action, my feelings guide me so when you have no feelings, your terms of reference for how you live your life, how you function, have been whipped away from you with nothing to replace them.
The counsellor said this is normal, when you go into auto-pilot, you have to do, not feel, the priority is to be practical, not emotional. Also I won't let my feelings surface until I feel I'm somewhere where I feel comfortable and relaxed - I may be staying at the family home but it's not my home - until I'm somewhere I feel truly comfortable, the feelings will remain hidden. After this was explained to me and the counsellor assured me that my feelings would return, it made me realise this emotional void I've been living recently is a lot of people's reality. So weird, I'm finding it difficult to feel nothing and so many people make themselves feel nothing or hide from their deepest feelings and emotions as a way of coping with day to day life. I'd choose the full range of emotions any day. It's been worrying not knowing when exactly my feelings will return, when I'll begin to feel "normal" again. It helps that I know all the things I can do to make me feel better (I'm in pursuit of good feelings, the bad ones can just stay away) and even just a short run today made me feel just that little bit normal. Talking to my friend Soraya in Ibiza shed light on what I was going through a little more as she said one of her friends was experiencing exactly the same thing. Even just talking to her made me smile and feel happy again. So, it feels like the numb feeling is starting to lift in time for a new year, a new decade! Just as well, I didn't want to go into 2010 feeling emotionally lost and numb....
My dad kept insisting he was fine but I wasn't convinced and carried on with the 999 call. At some point, he had another attack and although he remained upright because we were holding him, his eyes went funny and he wasn't really there. My mum came into the room and asked him how he was. "I'm fine" he replied. "He's fine" my mum said, followed by "you can cancel the ambulance, he's fine...". She then tried to give him some water and his breakfast until I told her not to. The first paramedic arrived pretty promptly, followed by the ambulance and a second crew of paramedics. They checked him out, said we'd done the right thing by calling 999 and took him off to hospital for a full check-up. I had to go with him even though I hate hospitals and my older sister Rahila followed behind, bringing my mum with her. While we were in A&E waiting to see someone, my dad asked me what happened. I asked him how much he remembered. He remembered me coming into the room but not much else after that. The next thing he remembered was after the first paramedic had arrived. It dawned on me that there was a period of about ten or fifteen minutes he had no recollection of and it was during this time he was insisting he was fine.
Once Rahila arrived at the hospital, I left in a daze and complete state of shock. I know this was the case as I went to the bus stop and didn't even register that I was stood at the wrong bus stop. It was only when a few of the right buses went straight past even though I was trying to stop them that I realised something was amiss. Eventually I got on the right bus and got home. I was in shock by what had happened but more in shock by the reaction of both parents, insisting that everything was okay. My parents tend to deal with things by that great Pakistani trait, sweeping everything under the carpet and being in total denial about things, particularly when they are staring right at them. It's a trait that frustrates me but it seems as if many people are too scared to look at what's going on and hope that by brushing things under the carpet, it will magically disappear. Sometimes the crap under the carpet is so big it creates a mountain with the person sat precariously on top, convinced that everything is okay but that's only because they can't see the big pile of crap they're sat on.
Once back home, my parents told others that the reason my dad had collapsed was because he'd been making breakfast or hadn't had breakfast - anything to gloss over the fact that something might be wrong. And it's amazing how people will buy this. They told the same story to my brother and I heard him relaying it to one of the neighbours who'd come to ask how he was. I went out and told my brother that his story was in fact incorrect - my dad has a history of mini strokes, although this time the hospital think it may be something to do with his heart. My brother told me the same thing had happened a few years ago when he'd been there with my mum. They'd done nothing as my dad had come round and said he was fine. Turned out my dad had collapsed last year as well at the time of my brother's wedding and once again, came round quickly insisting he was fine. And once again, nothing was done...
After this episode with my dad and seeing the level of denial that people operate under, I decided to go to a hospital appointment my mum had the following Friday. Her haemoglobin count has been plummeting which means something is wrong. The local rather useless GP's clinic had put her on iron tablets but still the haemoglobin level kept going down. In the meeting with the Consultant, my mum insisted she was perfectly okay but with the haemoglobin count continuing downwards, the Consultant said that she wasn't perfectly okay and they wanted to admit her straight away so they could investigate further. She wanted to go home to get her things so I made her stay and wait for a bed, sending my dad home instead to get her things. After hours of waiting a bed finally came up and we could leave her in the hands of the hospital staff. While we were waiting for a bed, another Consultant came to see my mum. He mentioned the term myeloma and my ears pricked - this was the term Rahila had asked about when I'd called her to say they were going to admit my mum. In the meeting with the first Consultant, I hadn't known what to listen out for but after talking to my sister (she's a doctor so knows these sorts of things), I knew to listen out for myeloma even though I had no idea what it was. The doctors suspected my mum might have myeloma and wanted to do a bone marrow biopsy to see if that was the case. I asked the Consultant what myeloma is and he wouldn't tell me as he said it upsets people and I should look on the internet.
Once I got home, I spoke to Rahila and told her what the Consultant had said. She said not to look up what myeloma was but by saying that, I did exactly that. Switched on my computer, went to Google and typed in myeloma. It didn't take long to discover that myeloma is bone marrow cancer, it's not curable and it's rare. Via the internet I found out that my mum might have cancer. When I went to bed that night I lay there worrying and after a few hours of not being able to sleep, got up and phoned my cousin in Dallas who is one of the many doctors in the family and we'd been trying to get hold of him. He asked me if they were testing for myeloma and I said yes. When I went back to bed, still unable to sleep, I found myself projecting forwards in a world where my mum does have myeloma and I had to stop myself - you can't react to something if you're not sure about it which leaves you not being able to have any emotional reaction at all. And you have to remain in emotional limbo until there is a confirmed diagnosis.
My mum stayed in hospital for a week. I went into auto-pilot, juggling work around being at the hospital between 2-8, the normal visiting hours. Work was busy and it was good to have something else to focus on at an otherwise trying time. It made me realise that I need the parameters of work to help me cope during challenging times. My mum was scared about the biopsy, about how painful it would be. Every time a nurse or doctor came to see her, she'd keep asking the same thing "will it hurt, will it be painful?" She wanted to have as many people as possible there when she had the biopsy and for every visitor she had who was in some ways connected to the world of medicine, she asked if they could be there for the biopsy. We knew she couldn't be on her own when the biopsy happened and it turned out that both me and my dad were there when the procedure finally took place.
My dad and I had to wait outside the room while they did the biopsy. My dad was still talking about going to Pakistan (they were due to go the following Sunday). Even though the Consultant had advised against travelling when my mum had been admitted, my dad still thought she might be okay in time to travel on Sunday. I had to tell him that they wouldn't be going to Pakistan on Sunday even though he was convinced it might still be possible. I felt like the person who was spoiling all their fun, telling them they couldn't do the one thing they always do and maybe spend the whole year looking forward to.
Once the biopsy was done, we could go back into the room. My mum was lying on the bed looking shocked. When she saw us, she started to cry. I had to tell her not to cry as that would make me cry and then we sat with her, either side of her bed, holding her hands. At one point, my mum asked me to lean in so she could hug me. I guess she needed the human contact and it made me wonder if I hadn't of been there, would she have asked my dad for a hug? Probably not. A lot of Pakistani people of my parents generation have no physical contact with their spouses in public. I've never seen my parents hold hands or embrace or hug, nothing natural and spontaneous - it's strange growing up in a household where there is no natural affection between parents for children to see. My mum doesn't even call my dad by his name, preferring to use the term "soon yay" which translated from the Urdu means something like "listen here". In fact, a Japanese friend of my sister's was staying at the house for a while and she actually thought my dad's name was "soon yay" as that's how she heard my mum call him and assumed that was his name.
My mum came out of hospital a few days later and had to go back the following week for the biopsy results. Another week of waiting in limbo, unable to react. I went to the hospital the following week and although she was seen by a specialist myeloma consultant, they still couldn't give us any definitive results and had to go back two weeks later. Another two weeks of not knowing, being in emotional limbo, not being able to react. I found the time trying. My closest friends knew but I realised that I couldn't tell other close friends as I wasn't sure what I was going to tell them - my mum might have cancer. But then she might not. Being in limbo is tiring, whatever it's about but this kind of limbo is particularly tiring.
Two weeks later, the week before Christmas, we went back to the hospital to get the results. The doctors confirmed what they suspected - my mum had myeloma and would need to start treatment. This time they had to explain what myeloma was, they had to tell my mum and dad that it was cancer and she would need to start a course of chemotherapy. The bombshell finally dropped, my mum's ill, she's been ill for a while, probably a couple of years or more. She couldn't say she was perfectly okay anymore as there was now the proof to prove that that wasn't the case. I wasn't sure how my mum or dad would react to the news. I wasn't sure how I'd react either. Both parents were okay, subdued but okay. My mum didn't start crying and I thought she might. I didn't start crying either and I thought I might. Much later I realised that I was on auto-pilot, had been on auto-pilot since my dad collapsed and there's no room for emotion here.
After the diagnosis, I called Rahila to tell her. While we'd been in the meeting, my phone had been switched off and when I switched it back on again, I could see that my younger sister Alia had called a number of times and sent texts. When I spoke to Rahila I asked her whether I should tell Alia over the phone or go and tell her? Alia is prone to getting very emotional and upset by things like this and I wasn't sure how best to handle it. Rahila said it would be okay to call her so I did. When I told her that they had confirmed myeloma she burst into tears and kept asking "are they sure, are they sure?" This was pretty hard as although I can keep my own emotions in check, when others around me start crying that's when I start to lose it. And I didn't want to lose it in the corridor of King's College Hospital with lots of people passing by. I'm sure they're used to it but I'm not.
My mum had to start the course of chemotherapy straight away and as it's something that can be taken at home, I left my parents in the pharmacy to wait for a big bag of drugs while I went home and then on to dinner with friends - finally I could tell my nearest and dearest what was going on. Actually only three of my best friends knew that anything was up, Claud and Wilding in London and Simone in Abu Dhabi. They were a constant source of support in the limbo period, calling, texting, emailing to see if there was any news, to see how I was. Wilding sent me a text, asking how everyone was, how I was. And I replied honestly, I didn't know how I was because I just seemed numb, I didn't feel anything. Even once the bombshell had dropped, no reaction happened. I waited for a great rush of emotion but nothing. Obviously I didn't feel happy or joyful but I didn't feel scared or sad or broken-hearted either, I just didn't feel anything. And for someone who feels everything, who is very much in tune with feelings and emotions and lives life by how they feel about something, it was strange to feel nothing.
When I came back from work the next day, I asked my mum if she had started the treatment. She hadn't as she'd come down with a cold or flu. When my parents left the hospital the night before, they stepped out into the cold, rainy night and got a bus back to Dulwich. On that short journey home, my mum picked up a bug and couldn't start the treatment until she was well again. A few days later, I noticed that my dad's right eye was droopy and he had a rash on his head. I asked him about it and he said that his eye had been like that for a few days and the rash was dermatitus. I called Rahila to tell him about my dad's eye (she's an opthamologist) but she was out shopping so I left a message with my nephew instead. The next day we all got together at Rahila's for her birthday lunch. As soon as Rahila and her husband Andrew (also a doctor) saw my dad, they said he had shingles and needed to start medication immediately. As it was a Sunday, Andrew took them both to A&E instead of hunting around for a pharmacy that might be open. As soon as they saw my mum, they said she had pnumonia and admitted her straight away, particularly after the myeloma diagnosis. My dad was given medication for the shingles and came back home again.
So, before the reality of my mum's myeloma had a chance to even begin to sink in, she was back in hospital with pnuemonia, caught on the bus home after being diagnosed. My dad probably came down with shingles at the same time. A part of me wonders how much they managed to fight things off while they believed that everything was okay but as soon as they found out that my mum has a form of cancer, something inside of them just collapsed. Not one fell, they both did. A few days after my mum was admitted, my dad was brought back into A&E by Rahila. He'd had a home visit by the doctor who was not happy with his worsening condition and when Rahila saw him later that evening, she said she was bringing him straight in. I was already at the hospital with my mum. She'd been kept in isolation while they tested for Swine flu but once they got the results that she didn't have the virus, she could be moved onto a Haemotology ward. Once again we waited for a bed and I asked the nurses if I could wait until she was moved and they said yes. Once my dad came in, I went down to A&E to see him. When I explained to the nurses where I was going, they expressed the disbelief that I felt, one parent already in, the other just being brought in. And this is with two people who until this year have not had any major health issues that have involved overnight hospital stays. I never imagined that 2009, this strange year that so many have hated and can't wait to see end, would have been the year that my parents literally began to crumble in front of me.
When I got down to A&E and saw my dad, I started laughing. My dad started laughing too. The situation was quite surreal and unbelieveable and it felt like I'd accidently walked onto the set of some Hollywood Christmas movie. My dad looked like a tom cat that had been scrapping. His face was swollen and his eyes had practically disappeared. The shingles had left him with sores and scabs all over one side of his forehead and head and he had stubble. I don't think I've ever seen him with stubble, so fastidious is he with his shaving. At one point he was sat next to a guy who was a bouncer who'd been attacked. My dad looked as damaged as this man who'd been hit by a few and had his head stamped on. I finally left the hospital at around two and collapsed into a tired heap in bed.
With both parents in hospital, life revolved around them and their health. I was on auto-pilot, not being aware of much else. With it being the Christmas period, you don't even have work to distract you for a few hours, to add a bit of normality in an otherwise bizarre period. I took a day off on Boxing Day and got out of London, went to see friends and get fed. Even just a few days of hours spent at the hospital leaves you physically drained and exhausted and in my case, hungry. After a few days of eating hospital sandwiches, I needed to go and get fed, as well as have a little escape. After the hospital on Christmas Day I went off to Claudette's house for Christmas dinner and then away again on Boxing Day for a lot more food and time spent with friends. I thought this break would refresh me a bit but when I went back to the hospital on Sunday, I felt weepy and hungry and if I did feel any emotions, they were anger and frustration, not the emotions I was expecting to feel. On Monday night as I tried to sleep but found I couldn't, it felt like someone had whacked me round the head with a shovel and I had all this anger and frustration inside of me with no place to come out.
The next morning I made an appointment to see the counsellor attached to the department my mum is a patient of. It was really good to talk to her and start to come to terms with what had happened. The thing that I found most strange, probably struggled with the most (apart from incredible exhaustion, even after ten hours sleep a night) was that apart from feeling angry and frustrated, I didn't feel anything else. I didn't feel scared by my parents' mortality or the cancer diagnosis, I didn't feel sad, I didn't worry, I just didn't seem to feel anything that I would have expected to feel. For someone who is so in tune with emotions and knowing how I'm feeling, to go through so much and not feel a thing just seemed bizarre. I don't hide from my feelings but it seemed they were hiding from me. This leaves me with the problem of not knowing what to do, what I want to do, what I don't want to do - I've always used how I feel about things to take action, my feelings guide me so when you have no feelings, your terms of reference for how you live your life, how you function, have been whipped away from you with nothing to replace them.
The counsellor said this is normal, when you go into auto-pilot, you have to do, not feel, the priority is to be practical, not emotional. Also I won't let my feelings surface until I feel I'm somewhere where I feel comfortable and relaxed - I may be staying at the family home but it's not my home - until I'm somewhere I feel truly comfortable, the feelings will remain hidden. After this was explained to me and the counsellor assured me that my feelings would return, it made me realise this emotional void I've been living recently is a lot of people's reality. So weird, I'm finding it difficult to feel nothing and so many people make themselves feel nothing or hide from their deepest feelings and emotions as a way of coping with day to day life. I'd choose the full range of emotions any day. It's been worrying not knowing when exactly my feelings will return, when I'll begin to feel "normal" again. It helps that I know all the things I can do to make me feel better (I'm in pursuit of good feelings, the bad ones can just stay away) and even just a short run today made me feel just that little bit normal. Talking to my friend Soraya in Ibiza shed light on what I was going through a little more as she said one of her friends was experiencing exactly the same thing. Even just talking to her made me smile and feel happy again. So, it feels like the numb feeling is starting to lift in time for a new year, a new decade! Just as well, I didn't want to go into 2010 feeling emotionally lost and numb....
Sunday, 29 November 2009
End of a decade
I was reading the Observer Music Monthly's feature on music from the last decade and it suddenly struck me that we're just over a month away from one decade ending and a new one starting and I hadn't even realised until today. I was so baffled by this that I asked out loud "does this decade end this year or next?". My friend Lucy said next year but as I sat there, counting the years from 2000 to 2009 on my fingers, it dawned on me that the decade was coming to a close...
It feels like the decade it trying to end quietly, without anyone noticing, a bit like someone leaving a party without saying good-bye to anyone as they don't want people to know they've left. It feels like the noughties are trying to sneak out, tip-toe away without anyone making too much fuss. Is there something strange going on or is this what happens when you're a decade older and wiser? I know in general it's been a strange year globally because of the recession but even without that, I can't quite decide how I feel about this year. Generally when I look back over the year, I can easily identify the highs and the not-so-highs and the year will have a particular feel to it, it'll get lodged in my memory bank for particular reasons. 2009 just doesn't feel like that....
I can see the good things that have happened in the year, but these have often been the result of an otherwise not great situation - they've been the silver linings to my clouds. It's not been an ecstatically high or horribly low year but it's coming to an end and I'm not sure quite how I'll remember it.
I remember 1989 coming to a close and the excitement of a new decade about to start. Excitement tinged with a little apprehension, you're 20, you think you know everything about everything but actually you know nothing as you have little or no life experience. You're excited about what the new decade will bring but at the same time wondering what exactly it will bring and all you can do is wonder. The Berlin Wall had come down a few months earlier, I'd left home and started university and the adventure had just begun. Soul II Soul were singing about a new decade, I'd just read an article that profoundly changed my life as it resonated in a way that nothing had done before.
The end of 1999 seemed to be an even bigger affair for everyone, not just the end of a decade but the end of a millenium. Everyone was wondering if there'd be an IT meltdown just as we welcomed in the year 2000. It seemed like a big deal then but imagine it now - technology has leapt so far forwards that if you took away the internet and mobiles and other gadgets from people, even for a few hours, there would certainly be a meltdown - of the human kind....
Lets see what this new decade brings!
It feels like the decade it trying to end quietly, without anyone noticing, a bit like someone leaving a party without saying good-bye to anyone as they don't want people to know they've left. It feels like the noughties are trying to sneak out, tip-toe away without anyone making too much fuss. Is there something strange going on or is this what happens when you're a decade older and wiser? I know in general it's been a strange year globally because of the recession but even without that, I can't quite decide how I feel about this year. Generally when I look back over the year, I can easily identify the highs and the not-so-highs and the year will have a particular feel to it, it'll get lodged in my memory bank for particular reasons. 2009 just doesn't feel like that....
I can see the good things that have happened in the year, but these have often been the result of an otherwise not great situation - they've been the silver linings to my clouds. It's not been an ecstatically high or horribly low year but it's coming to an end and I'm not sure quite how I'll remember it.
I remember 1989 coming to a close and the excitement of a new decade about to start. Excitement tinged with a little apprehension, you're 20, you think you know everything about everything but actually you know nothing as you have little or no life experience. You're excited about what the new decade will bring but at the same time wondering what exactly it will bring and all you can do is wonder. The Berlin Wall had come down a few months earlier, I'd left home and started university and the adventure had just begun. Soul II Soul were singing about a new decade, I'd just read an article that profoundly changed my life as it resonated in a way that nothing had done before.
The end of 1999 seemed to be an even bigger affair for everyone, not just the end of a decade but the end of a millenium. Everyone was wondering if there'd be an IT meltdown just as we welcomed in the year 2000. It seemed like a big deal then but imagine it now - technology has leapt so far forwards that if you took away the internet and mobiles and other gadgets from people, even for a few hours, there would certainly be a meltdown - of the human kind....
Lets see what this new decade brings!
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