#ive been through the same thing at nhs hospitals i thought the pain was going to kill me. my mom shielded me from the light too

[phleb0tomist]

yep, i’m still ME-posting!

so another young woman with severe ME is being denied basic sensory accommodations in an NHS hospital. carla’s parents have been advocating tirelessly for her and even taking turns physically shielding her from the unnecessary light that is causing seizures, pain, and loss of consciousness. if carla’s symptoms were unexplained then maybe i would understand why the hospital keeps trying to expose her to lights, but she’s literally diagnosed with very severe ME, where the body cannot adjust to sensory input, so forgive me for finding it evil and pointless to do the thing that makes her illness worse. this is the norm for how hospitals treat people with ME and it’s inescapable if you want to receive any medical care at all like the feeding tube that carla needs

link to article and news video

[miumiu-chan]

Miyase Go STORY 1 Chapter 10-4

Subbed video: STORY-1 10-4

-Rulong’s Apartment-

[RULONG]: “Ohh, it’s about ready to drink.”

[RULONG]: “The fragrance is also good. Here, go ahead and have some.”

[REI]: “............”

[RULONG]: “Hm~m, Little Flower, you refused the water earlier too.”

[RULONG]: “If you stubbornly don’t take anything in, you’ll need an IV later?”

[REI]: “......Why aren’t you having some as well?”

There was only one cup. It could be poisoned.

[RULONG]: “There’s no poison in it, so don’t worry. I still don’t completely know what drugs are effective against Little Flower.”

[RULONG]: “And showing hospitality with tea is the manners of “Licorice”.”

[REI]: “Licorice......?”

[RULONG]: “It’s kanzō*.” (T/N: the Japanese word for licorice, because he says Licorice in English.)

I knew what it was. It was a plant often used in herbal medicine.

[RULONG]: “The leaves we used for the shag flavor earlier are also licorice.”

[REI]: “Shag......?”

[RULONG]: “The hand-rolled cigarette.”

That smell that was different from the aroma of the craft tea, I remembered it.

At the same time, remembering Miyase-san's coldness, I felt suffocated.

[RULONG]: “That shag is also made by my family.”

[RULONG]: “The previous generation who was also the founder was a really great merchant, you see.”

[RULONG]: “It was the first licorice-flavored shag ever invented, and that’s why it became the organization name.”

[RULONG]: “——so, since you’ve heard that much already, why not drink?”

[RULONG]: “Because from the point that you trust me and take the tea into your mouth, Little Flower will be semi-family.”

[REI]: “Semi-family......?”

[RULONG]: “Those that you can talk more about with than with other people, yeah?”

The temptation in the sweet scent was strong.

This person properly saw through my regret and inferiority.

For the DCD, my current self was nothing but a burden.

At the very least, I wanted to collect information.

[REI]: “......-, I will drink it now.”

[RULONG]: “Go ahe~ad ♪”

I didn’t really get the taste of the craft tea that was in my mouth.

I just felt the temperature on my tongue and swallowed mechanically.

[RULONG]: “Congrats. With this, Little Flower and I are no longer complete strangers.”

[RULONG]: “Do you want to ask anything?”

Rather than considering the intention of the induction, I chose the option to openly question him.

[REI]: “What do you intend to do with the flower drugs from now on?”

[RULONG]: “Ah, that? I can't answer that. Sorry.”

[RULONG]: “The only things I can tell you are personal things.”

[REI]: (Personal......)

[REI]: “......That Miyase-san is trying to crush the Kujo Family with you”

[REI]: “......Does he hold a grudge because of his mother’s suicide?”

[RULONG]: “Before answering, Little Flower has to present the information that you have.”

[REI]: “Miyase-san’s mother was confined by the Kujo Family's predecessor, and suffering from a mental illness chose to die——is what I know.”

[RULONG]: “Anything else?”

[REI]: “In the same year, the Kujo Family predecessor also died......”

[RULONG]: “That's right. Go-chan’s papa, committed suicide after Go-chan's mama.”

[REI]: “H......!”

[RULONG]: “Licorice, you know, doesn’t respect people who waste their own lives.”

[RULONG]: “Life is the biggest consumable, it’s the best product.”

[RULONG]: “That’s why, I’ll give a hint to Little Flower, who is trying hard to collect information without giving up on your attachment to living even in this situation.”

-Kujo House / Living Room-

[KUJO]: “——Go, is now a good time?”

With the news of my mother’s death, abandoning everything except breathing, I answered without looking at Soma-san.

[MIYASE]: “What is it......? Right now, I can’t talk about any decent things.”

[KUJO]: “Father died.”

What idiotic things are you saying, I ridiculed.

[MIYASE]: “The fake funeral is over already, isn’t it?”

[KUJO]: “He’s really dead.”

[MIYASE]: “........................Ha?”

An intense breathlessness hit me, as if my throat was clogged by the incense burner. I felt nauseous.

Unable to stand it, I lifted my face slowly and Soma-san was reflected in my sight.

He was also looking straight at me.

[KUJO]: “He seems to have been put together with Ryoko-san’s coffin.”

[KUJO]: “An excessive use of a drug was detected in the body.”

[KUJO]: “——It was the same illegal drug as Ryoko-san’s.”

The hairs on my whole body stood on end at once, and I tried to strongly hold down the vomit.

I couldn't vomit anything, because even the gastric juice had frozen in my empty organs.

[MIYASE]: “What are you saying……?”

[KUJO]: “Go, I——“

[MIYASE]: “Shut up.”

[KUJO]: “——“

[MIYASE]: “Soma-san......”

[MIYASE]: “...——When you said “I do not hold a grudge against you” to my mom, what did you mean?”

[KUJO]: “............”

[MIYASE]: “I am sure you said that to my mom yesterday.”

[MIYASE]: “I kept on thinking about what it meant.”

[KUJO]: “That was——“

[MIYASE]: “Were they words of sympathy towards a mistress?”

[KUJO]: “It’s not!”

[MIYASE]: “How is it not!”

I grabbed Soma-san's collar and pressed him against the wall with fury.

When I looked at his pained expression at a close distance, I calmed down a little.

[MIYASE]: “......Just now, you said “it’s not”, didn’t you.”

[KUJO]: “............”

[MIYASE]: “Please explain. So that I can understand.”

[KUJO]: “-............”

[MIYASE]: “Explain it! Nii-san*!!” (T/N: Big brother)

My grip tightened up on his collar.

Rather than pressing him, it was as if I was clinging on to him.

I hit his body against the wall. I glared one-sidedly.

Is this sibling interaction?

Because I didn’t know how to do something like depend on my brother.

[KUJO]: “......Go, I think of you as my brother.”

[MIYASE]: “——!”

Pulling away the hand that was touching, I staggered a step back, and distanced another step back.

There was no “explanation”.

This person admitted that he was insulting my mother's existence, while calling me his “brother”.

He went out of his way to say “You are not guilty”, and heavily pressed that blame onto my mother.

[MIYASE]: “You are......the same as Kujo Soichiro. With that arrogance.”

[MIYASE]: “——To the extent that it robs people of their lives.”

[KUJO]: “Nh......”

[MIYASE]: “You are———...er.”

[MIYASE]: “You are not my brother.”

-Rulong’s Apartment-

[REI]: “No way......-, is that really true?”

[RULONG]: “My family’s researcher is a perfectionist.”

[RULONG]: “Researching everything as detailed and obsessively as possible.”

[REI]: “Then......after all, Miyase-san holds a grudge against the Kujo Family because of his mother, and wants to take revenge……”

[RULONG]: “That’s what I thought. Go-chan too.”

You “thought”......?

[REI]: “Does that mean that the current perception is different?”

[RULONG]: “Little Flower should have understood it from the Hanafuda game earlier.”

[RULONG]: “In Go-chan’s case, not just the cards in his hand, even the set couldn’t properly be seen.”

[REI]: “......Even Rulong-san can’t see all of Miyase-san?”

[RULONG]: “I can't give you any more hints.”

[RULONG]: “Because I don’t trust Little Flower completely.”

[RULONG]: “Even if I said we’re family, it’s still semi.”

[REI]: “That there’s hints means that there is an answer after all.”

[RULONG]: “What do you think? I wonder if Little Flower can see through the meaning of the set that Go-chan made.”

[REI]: “If you know anything, please tell me now......!”

[RULONG]: “And what if I said I was involved in the death of Go-chan's mother?”

[REI]: “Eh......-“

[RULONG]: “But, we’re a family. A family*.” (T/N: he usually says family in English but the second one he said in Japanese, kazoku.)

[RULONG]: “And with that, the serious talk is over ♪”

[REI]: “——!”

Suddenly I was hugged tightly by the waist, and my neck was bitten sweetly.

[REI]: “H......! P-Please stop......!”

[RULONG]: “I~ don’t wanna.”

[RULONG]: “This flower tea, in my country you give it to a woman you want to sleep with.”

[RULONG]: “You feel down because of Go-chan’s coldness, right? I’ll comfort you.”

[REI]: “Wai-! Really st——“

[MIYASE]: “You promised not to touch the product.”

[REI]: (Miyase-san......!)

[RULONG]: “Ah, you’re back.”

[MIYASE]: “Rulong, let go.”

[RULONG]: “Why? Go-chan doesn't need Little Flower, right?”

[RULONG]: “A Japanese woman has a clean and good smell from her moist skin, it’s making me feel a special excitement.”

[REI]: “N-No......!”

The appearance of me being embraced by him was seen by Miyase-san.

Although I was desperately struggling, his restraint was skillful as if it wasn’t a big deal to him.

[RULONG]: “Even if you resist, I’ll still do it. It actually makes me burn more.”

[REI]: “!”

[MIYASE]: “............Do as you like.”

[REI]: (No way......!)

He left.

The closed door resonated with a dry sound.

The view of his back that disappeared was on the other side of it.

......This was the first time I saw Miyase-san's back so clearly.

We were always next to each other or talking face-to-face.

Such a person, now was——...

[RULONG]: “Hmm, will it take about 15 seconds?”

[REI]: “Eh......”

The sound that seemed to cancel my confusion was the sound of the door opening and closing fiercely——

[MIYASE]: “Rulong, if you wanted to uselessly stir me up, you’ve succeeded.”

[RULONG]: “A~ha. It hasn’t even been 10 seconds, Go-chan really is the best.”

Miyase-san, who had a smile like it was plastered on, approached me, 

And firmly pulled my arm so that I got up from the reluctant Rulong-san’s knees.

[RULONG]: “You should’ve just done that from the beginning. I’ll leave you two alone.”

Saying it as if he knew it all, he went out of the room.

-Rulong’s Apartment / Corridor-

[RULONG]: “Having Little Flower reach Go-chan’s set by herself is my reserved card.”

[RULONG]: “Xiao Go, I won’t lose*.” (T/N: He says this in Chinese. Xiao is like a term of endearment that just means “small” or “young.”)

[the-magnus-archives-archiver]

First Aid

Case: 0121102

Name: Lesere Saraki Subject: Nightshift at St. Thomas Hospital, London Date: February 11th, 2012 Recorded by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

I’m a nurse at St Thomas hospital, down in Lambeth near Waterloo Station. Technically these days I work at Guys and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, but Guys Hospital is at a completely different site the other side of London, so for the sake of clarity, I work at St Thomas. Christmas is one of the worst periods to be working at a hospital, and in the Accident and Emergency department it’s even more unpleasant. Pensioners who can’t afford to properly heat their homes, drunken party-goers who overindulge and hurt themselves, even just people who didn’t look where they were going and slipped on a patch of ice. Christmas brings out the side of people that always seems to lead them to the hospital, so I was relieved last year when I got my shift pattern and learned my last A&E shift of the season was going to be on the 23rd, two full days before Christmas itself. That was the good news. The bad news was the 23rd was also the Friday immediately before the big day, and that meant people finishing work for the holidays and going out for some celebration. When you work in Accident and Emergency, there are few words that fill your heart with such dread as the word “celebration”.

That night wasn’t as bad as some I’d seen, a few broken bones and a couple of drug-fuelled injuries, but no fights or angry drunks, which was a blessing. It must have been about half-past one in the morning that the ambulance arrives. They had radioed ahead and we knew that we had a pair of severe burn victims being brought in, so we were as ready as we could have been. I was heading out to meet the ambulance, when I noticed that the A&E waiting room was totally silent. I looked around and there were all the people there that I expected to see, some cradling obvious injuries, but none of them made a sound. They continued to stare at their phone, read books, comfort one another, but not one of them spoke. I didn’t have much time to really consider what I was seeing as, at that moment, I heard the ambulance pull up outside and ran off to see to the patient. 

By the time I arrived, they were already wheeling him out and the doctor was assessing his burns. The doctor’s name was Kayleigh Grice and she was a junior doctor at St Thomas. She started giving some instructions to myself and the EMTs, but I was struck by how quietly she was speaking to me. She didn’t whisper but every word was quiet, as though it was a real effort to get them out. Nobody else seemed to notice, so at the time I assumed the effect was due to my own lack of sleep. I’ve always had difficulty adjusting to the late nights and this time had been particularly bad. We finished transferring him to a treatment room, the only available one we had that night, and the doctor and EMTs returned to get the other patient while I began dealing with the burns on the first one. 

I’m 48 years old, and I have been a nurse for most of them, so I’ve seen a good number of burns in my time. I was prepared for some deeply unpleasant scenes when the call came in, as bad burns can be some of the nastiest injuries you see working in a hospital. These ones surprised me. They were second-degree, which is severe, but not usually such as to require hospitalisation, except that they appeared to cover his entire body. Every inch of exposed skin showed signs of this burning and, cutting away his clothes, it became apparent that the damage had spread there as well. Anything hot enough to cause this sort of effect should have damaged his clothing or even melted them onto the skin in places but they were utterly unharmed, as though he had been dressed after he’d been burned or the heat had passed right through his clothes without touching them.

He was a tall man, heavy-set with the sort of build I associated with an athletic middle age. Any hair he might have had was gone, apparently burned off, and his clothes were a nondescript black suit and white shirt. He didn’t scream or cry or moan in pain, and in fact the doctor had had to check his pulse when he’d come in to confirm he was still alive. He was, but as far as I could tell he appeared to be sleeping peacefully.

I had just started treatment when the second patient was wheeled in. He was in almost identical shape to the first, except for the fact that the burns seemed to stop at his neck, along a clear line. It was as though he’d been wearing a choker that the damage couldn’t get above but his neck was bare. He was smaller than the first man, and younger, I’d guess in his mid-thirties. He was clean-shaven, but had long hair dyed completely black. He wore a similar suit to the older man, except that over the top he wore a long black leather coat, just as undamaged as the rest. It looked new, and I felt quite bad having to cut it off him, but we had to confirm how extensive his injuries were. Like the first, he was completely covered in almost uniform second-degree burns, except for what at first I thought were small black scorch marks. Looking closer, I saw that they were eyes. Small, tattooed eyes on every one of his joints: his knees, his elbows and even his knuckles, as well as just over his heart. I would have  expected the burns to have almost destroyed tattoos that small but instead they were unblemished and the skin about a centimetre around each one also didn’t seem to have been affected.

To say I was unsettled by this would have been something of an understatement. I barely noticed when the Dr. Grice and the EMTs returned. They seemed to be talking normally now, and discussing who these two people were. Apparently the fire brigade had responded to reports of a blaze in a building site near St Mary’s churchyard, and had turned up to find the two men lying unconscious. There had been no fire, although the ground they lay on showed several burn marks and a metal bar that had been lying nearby appeared to have bent slightly as if from great heat. The fire service had called out an ambulance, and they had brought the men here. Apparently the older one hadn’t had anything on him at all, no ID, no phone, no keys, nothing, while the younger man had only a Zippo lighter with an eye design on it similar to the one tattooed all over him and a old passport that identified him as Gerard Keay. I never got a look at the passport, but from the way the EMTs were talking about it I gathered the man was well travelled.

It was at this point that the EMTs had to head out on another call, and Dr Grice and I got down to treating the two men, the weirdness temporarily forgotten. Medically speaking, there was nothing abnormal about the burns, and it didn’t take as long as I had feared to get them properly cleaned and bandaged. Throughout it all, the two of them didn’t stir, and I wondered if they were comatose, but that sort of diagnosis would require a lot more testing, which probably wasn’t going to happen that night. So having finished giving them what treatment we could, the men were moved to one of the few wards with bed space and I returned to working A&E. And, for an hour or so, I forgot about the odd strangers that lay unconscious just a few doors away.

I only noticed them again when I had to pass through that ward heading towards the nearby stockroom for some more gauze. As I walked through, I became aware of a sound coming from the bed of the older burn victim. I never did find out his name. I walked towards him slowly, straining my ears to hear what he was saying. It was so quiet as to be almost inaudible, but was definitely words, the same words over and over; the more I heard, the more it sounded like most of them weren’t in English. The first sounded like “Asak” or “Asag”, then “Veepalach” and finally in English “The lightless flame”. The last part was very clear, and I assumed he was talking about whatever burned him, but he said it with such intensity that the words made me feel quite uncomfortable. His eyes were still closed and his lips were barely moving. I started to feel warm, like there was a fever quickly creeping out towards my skin. It wasn’t the first time I’d had a reaction like this, though, so I took a moment to centre myself and the feeling receded.

The burned man was still whispering; I might even have called it chanting, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to do, so I checked his bandages to make sure they didn’t need changing and left to go and continue my shift. If I saw Doctor Grice, which was more than likely, then I could tell her that our mystery burn victim had started talking. Mostly I just wanted to get out of that room for as long as possible. 

It was as I returned to the main Accident and Emergency reception that things started to get really strange. And by really strange, I mean that the reception was completely empty. I don’t care how late it gets, and at this point it was nearly three in the morning, the waiting room for A&E is always full, especially on a night like this. I mean, I’d been in there not five minutes before and there were upwards of thirty people but now it was utterly deserted. Even the staff at the admissions desk were gone. I was freaked out, quite frankly, and started checking through all the examination rooms, the wards next door and the individual patient rooms. All empty, except for those patients physically too sick to move or hooked up to IVs. They lay there sleeping, and part of me wanted to wake them, just to hear the sound of another human being, to not be alone, but like I say it was three in the morning and, weird as this all was, I couldn’t justify waking up patients just to put my own mind at ease. I went as far as to make as much noise as possible directly outside their rooms, but they just slept on.

It was as I returned to the waiting room for the third time in as many minutes that I heard it. It sounded like the growl of an animal, a rolling, angry sound, and I realised that the floor was shaking, ever so slightly. I looked around for the source of the noise, I was getting more and more frantic by the second, and then I saw it. Lined up against the wall of the waiting room were two vending machines. I rarely paid them any attention, as there were better options in the staffroom and one or both of them were usually out of order. But I now saw that the one on the left, a clear-fronted machine that stocked bottled soft drinks was shaking violently. As I got nearer I saw why: in every bottle, in every row of the machine, the drinks appeared to be violently boiling. Cokes and lemonades and fruit juices shook and bubbled, before one by one the bottles exploded, coating the inside of the clear plastic front with liquid that still kept steaming and hissing. It couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds for all of them to pop, and then the waiting room was silent once again.

At this point I was just about ready to abandon my shift and leave the hospital. Whatever was going on there, I wanted no part of it. I ran towards the door leading from the A&E to the chill of the December night, not something I would ever have thought I’d look forward to. As I approached, though, I noticed that the plastic at each end of the metal handles was ever so slightly warped. I tentatively touched the back of my hand to them and withdrew it almost immediately – I didn’t even have to touch it to feel the intense heat radiating from the door. I almost wept. If I was getting out of there, it wasn’t going to be through that door. 

I started to make my way back through the wards, heading towards another exit, but as I passed through I could hear the burned man still mumbling to himself, louder now, so that his weird chant was audible even outside of his room. It was starting to get to me. I went in; I don’t know what I was planning to do, I just needed to make him shut up somehow. His eyes were open now, bloodshot behind the bandages and staring blankly towards the ceiling. At that moment, I decided that I was going to shut him up, even if I had to physically hold his mouth closed. I approached him slowly and reached towards his face. The second before I could touch him, a hand shot out and grabbed me by the wrist. I turned to see the other burn victim, whose passport had identified him as Gerard Keay, on his feet and shaking his head. His grip on my wrist was far stronger than I would ever have expected from someone that injured, and I could feel a heat through his bandaged hand, like his skin was still burning somehow.

I screamed. Why not? I’d already established no-one was around to hear me. He immediately released my hand and apologised, said he’d only been trying to protect me. I asked him from what and he gestured to the burned man, still lying motionless in his bed, chanting his nonsense phrases. Sparing a glance at his own wrapped form, he said that touching the man would have been a “bad idea”. He seemed to be in tremendous pain as he spoke, but did his best to hide it. 

I didn’t say anything then. I wanted to ask what was happening and it seemed like he was waiting for me to do just that, but something stopped me. Something told me that if there was a coherent explanation for everything that had happened since the ambulance arrived, then I would be no better off for knowing it. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Gerard spoke. He asked me if the paramedics had brought any items in with them. Specifically, he was after a small book bound in red leather and a brass pendant he had been wearing. He didn’t say what design had been on the pendant but I guessed it had been an eye. I told him that neither of those things had been brought in with him, and he was quiet for a long time.

After the last ten minutes spent desperately wishing for another human being to talk to, I should have been relieved with Gerard’s company. But watching him, standing and walking despite the burns covering eighty percent of his body, despite the sheer quantity of painkillers we had given him, he just made me very afraid. Finally he nodded, as though dismissing me, and limped past into the corridor, towards the supply cupboard. I followed him, asked what he was doing. I got no answer, but he seemed to know the code to the door immediately and strode right in, scanning the shelves for something. He saw what he was after and picked up a small object wrapped in paper and plastic. I recognised it immediately as a sterile scalpel. He was going to kill the chanting man; I could feel it in the way he stared past me as I stood in the doorway. 

He started walking towards me. The storage room was not big and it took him barely a second before he was in front of me, but it was the longest second I have ever experienced as I tried to decide whether to risk my own life for that of the burned stranger blankly chanting his unsettling prayer. Behind Gerard I saw bottles of saline solution start to bubble and boil. I stepped aside. He nodded in appreciation and said something that I remember very clearly, even though it still makes no sense. He said, “Yes. For you, better beholding than the lightless flame”. 

I didn’t try to stop him as he walked back into the ward. I just stood there and watched as he took out the scalpel, muttered some words I couldn’t make out, and plunged the blade into the centre of the chanting man’s throat. At that moment there was the sound of sizzling and a smell like rotten meat on a grill. I watched as the flesh around that wound began to blacken and crack, the bandages curled and disintegrated, and the scorched skin spread over his body like water. There was no fire and I felt no heat, but over the course of twenty seconds I watched this man’s body cremate itself to ash. Even the scalpel was gone.

Gerard Keay walked over to the bed and, picking up the empty bedpan beneath it, gently swept the ashes into the metal basin and handed it to me, asking me to dispose of it. I took it and numbly walked out, heading towards a medical waste bin. As I walked the corridor, I noticed a figure at the other end. It was Doctor Grice. I’m not ashamed to admit that I wept in relief as I ran to the waiting room and saw it once again full of people complaining and moaning to themselves. By the time I was finished and got back to the room, Gerard was lying in his own bed, apparently sleeping. I considered asking him now what had happened, but at that moment another ambulance arrived with three members of a Christmas party that had gotten dangerously out of hand, and just like that, the rest of my shift was gone.

Gerard Keay was treated for a further four days in the hospital before being discharged into the care of his mother. I tried to talk to him about what happened, but he was on a lot of painkillers and never seemed to really register I was there. It may have been feigned, I suppose, but in the end the result was the same. Since then I’ve just tried not to think about it. I’ve managed to get almost thirty years of nursing under my belt before something like this happened, so with any luck I’ll be long retired by the time anything like it happens again.

I worry sometimes, though. Over the last few months, when I’m alone on the wards, I get the feeling I’m being watched. Not threatened or judged, just watched. I avoid that storeroom, particularly.

Archivist Notes: 

There’s obviously a lot to unpack here, so let’s start with what is provable. Sasha managed to get access to the hospital records for this period and they do list the admission of Gerard Keay and an unknown male for burn injuries similar to what Ms. Saraki described. Furthermore, there are only discharge papers for Gerard Keay and a short police report on the disappearance of the second burn victim. No evidence of foul play was found and no official missing persons case was ever opened.

As far as the mystery man’s chanting goes, if it was indeed “Asag” that he was saying, then that’s quite interesting. Asag is the name of a demon in Sumerian mythology associated with disease and corruption, which doesn’t really seem to have much relevance to this statement except that it was also fabled that Asag was able to boil fish alive in their rivers. Admittedly in Sumerian myth this was because he was monstrously ugly but a curious coincidence nonetheless. “Veepalach” might also be a mishearing of the Polish word “wypalać”, according to Martin, which means to cauterize or brand. Admittedly, if Martin speaks Polish in the same way he “speaks Latin” then he might be talking nonsense again, but I’ve looked it up and it appears to check out. I can’t find anything conclusive on the phrase “the lightless flame” however; it crops up in a lot of different contexts throughout various esoteric literatures.

It has not escaped my notice that this is the second time Gerard Keay has turned up in this Archive. I’d be very keen to get his statement, but unfortunately it looks like he passed away from a brain tumour late last year. We’re doing further research into him, though, and if we’re lucky maybe we already have a statement from him tucked away somewhere in these damn files.

We contacted Ms. Saraki to see if she wanted to make a follow-up statement but she declined. Apparently she still gets the watched feeling occasionally, but aside from that there haven’t been any other abnormal occurrences in her professional or personal life.

One final note, Sasha has finally been able to access the hospital’s CCTV footage for the night of 23rd December 2011, and it shows something quite startling. I had assumed that there was a significant hallucinatory element to Ms. Saraki’s story, and indeed the ward where Gerard Keay was admitted didn’t have a camera, but the Accident and Emergency waiting room did. At 03:11:22 it shows everybody in that room, which I personally counted at 28 people, standing up and calmly filing out of the doors. After this, Ms. Saraki can be seen entering and leaving three times, once taking a minute to stare at something beneath the camera, which I assume to be the vending machine. The rest of the staff and patients do not return until 03:27:12, over 15 minutes after they left, when they walk back in through the same doors. The footage does not contain any sound, and no alarm of any sort was recorded, so I cannot offer any guess as to why they left or what they were doing in the intervening time.

There is one other thing that Sasha highlighted, however. At 03:22:52, the feed cuts out for less than a second and is replaced for a single frame by a close-up of a human eye, staring back through the video feed.

Source: Official Transcript and Podcast (MAG 12 First Aid)

[cripthevoteuk-blog]

Disabled in Theresa May’s Britain #36: Catherine [CW: suicide]

From Cornwall   Over 12 years ago i was diagnosed with a chronic blood condition, it affected my daily life in many ways, but not enough to consider it a disability. Fast forward 9 years when i started getting pains in the joints of my hands. At first i was able to manage, but slowly (especially after cold winters, as cold really affected my hands) they became worse and i was relying on my daughter more and more. Knowing that she was going to university, and being the first person in our immediate family to do this (lets not forget the major debt she will leave uni with....) i applied for help, this being PIP as i am working, the only job i can do, because of not being able to use my hands, and if i do anything, i use them while they hurt, which is dog walking. At this point i will add that i really rely on my car as i physically cant walk to dog walking areas as i cant hold the leads safely. As i cannot write more than a few lines at a time, i had to sit with a good friend and go through the PIP form with her filing it in for me, of course, this involves telling someone about all the things going on that are painful and depressing. 

I received my PIP assessment date for a few days after my daughter left for university - again, here, you go through all the bad things happening in your life, this time with a stranger. She seemed a lovely lady and at the end told me that she thought i should go to see my doctor as she was worried that i was becoming depressed, and that she could see that i needed aids to help me in my day to day life. I remember telling my friend that i was confident that i was going to get some help and that i would see my doctor, as i could see that she did have a point about all that was going on in my life, affecting my mental well being. 2 days after this, i had to ask my son to leave the house as he had been stealing from me, so i was now on my own. 

I went to my doctor and again after explaining all that was going on in my life, was prescribed an anti depressant. Unfortunately, i did suffer from a rarer side effect where i started having panic attacks and having suicidal feelings. Even now, if it wasnt for my own dogs (yes, they are filling my empty nest as well as getting me out of the house, something i wouldnt do if i didnt have to!) i am positive that i woud have jumped off the bridge, my feelings were that dark. After this, the doctor upped my dose, however this then made my blood condition worse, so they had to put me down to the original dose. I must add at this point, that the blood condition i have, means a lot of pain killers that would normally be prescribed/recommended for my type of joint pain, i am not allowed to take, also Tramadol was prescribed at one point but gave me the worst headache i have ever had, so i am stuck with joint pain and very limited treatments for it. 

So, with my mental health gradually getting worse, i finally had the dreaded brown envelope with the surprising news that i was given 6 points for care and no points for mobility. I rang for the MR, and they also offered me a call back, to explain why i had this decision, as i had mentioned i didnt understand why i only got 6 points when the assessor had indicated differently. Yet again, i had to go through all the problems in my life over the phone to a stranger, who told me i should have been given more care points, and what i should write in my reconsideration, and that as i can walk, i am considered mobile, and work and personal circumstances were not considered. Great, the fact i can not carry anything, hold anything, only type or write for a limited time (its now 12.15pm and ive been typing this for the last 3 hours as i have to keep stopping due to the pain, and will probably be a lot later this afternoon before i can submit it) and that i have had to give up over £70 of work recently because of the pains while working and driving - how much longer i will be able to drive, i dont know, but i physically cant walk up the road with my dogs, or carrying anything and without my car i am housebound. 

While waiting for my decision, i started suffering from panic attacks, one so bad that a friend phoned the police as she couldnt find me and was worried i was about to do something, and she then took me to see my GP and then reported me to social services as not only was my mind a mess, but so was my house, as i was not coping on my own, physically or mentally. 

Of course, the MR came back with 6 points again, so i then had the ordeal of going for an appeal. As our local branch of the CAB is seriously underfunded, they were unable to attend with me, so my daughter came home to attend with me, but as we had no idea what to expect, we left the tribunal, having not told them the majority of things we needed to say. We didnt even get an answer until the following week (when told we would get an answer the same day) and as they only considered evidence up to October, we still got 6 points, which i still dont understand, but then, after all ive been through, i do think i probably wasnt able to express my problems properly. 

I have spent the last 8 months with my chronic health problems worsening, and my mental health going from being strong and independent , to being anxious, paranoid and desperate. I now have to decide if i can actually cope with re applying for PIP again - financially i need to, mobility wise i need to but mentally i dont know if i can take another 8 months of what the DWP have put me through.

I must add that my doctors, local hospital and social services have been wonderful. It is very concerning, that before Christmas i was put on the urgent social services list but it was the 16th February before i was seen. If it wasnt for the excellence of the NHS (and my dogs), given how the DWP/agencies have acted against me, i have no hesitation in thinking that i would not be here now. 

[gaiatheorist]

Blind faith.

(I’m smirking at that play on words, but my left eye is already ‘going’, it remains to be seen, or not-seen whether I’ll be able to see anything at all on the left side soon enough. It’s annoying, but I can work around it by turning my head, and not moving around any more than I need to, having one eye ‘gone’ buggers your depth/spatial perception.)

The NHS is celebrating its 70th ‘birthday’. Inception date, I suppose, and I genuinely doubt there’s much celebrating happening. Someone has posted a link from a BBC Radio programme asking ‘Is the NHS a new religion?’ I was going to say I hadn’t read it, but it’s radio, I haven’t listened to it. My immediate thought? “Is it bollocks!”, I then tangent-bounced through various “Religion is bullshit!” opinions, before remembering that I do have a religion of sorts. THEN I remembered all of the people I wanted to punch after my brain haemorrhage, for telling me I was ‘lucky’ and ‘a miracle’, and ‘must have a guardian angel.’

Semantics, but words are my thing. I wasn’t ‘lucky’, I was a statistical anomaly, the type/grade of haemorrhage I’d had has a statistical mortality rate of between 80 and 90%. The 10-20% of us that ‘wake up’ don’t all immediately shout ‘Hallelujah!’, and claim that we have ‘seen the light’, because a lot of us can’t speak, or see. The dancing in the church aisles has to wait, too. I can mostly walk and talk now. Sometimes I walk into things, sometimes I fall over, and sometimes I assess the risk of walking, and decide to stay sitting down, to avoid significant injury to myself. I can talk in relatively short bursts, until my concentration starts to fog, and I start word-slipping, or babbling absolute jumble. I repeat myself A LOT, and I quite often think I’ve told people things when I’d actually just THOUGHT ‘remember to tell...’ I am in varying degrees of pain at all times, and have only just started accessing prescription analgesics, after three years of gritting my teeth and ‘getting on with it’ through the pain haze. Lucky? I’m alive.

I’m not ‘a miracle’, I’m a stubborn bastard. That obstinate streak could have killed me. When the aneurysm ruptured, when I felt the irregularity in one of the arteries in my brain burst, and was struck down by the most blinding, indescribable pain I have ever experienced, I played it down. I told the friend who was with me that I thought it was a migraine, and then tried not to vomit in my office bin, because I didn’t want to put a dampener on his weekend. I told the ex I needed to sleep, and, when I woke up, and vomited in my son’s bedroom, it wasn’t a ‘miracle’ that he woke the ex, it was his judgement that there was something seriously wrong with me. There was, the rupture was pumping blood into my skull, which is a closed unit as far as circulation goes, my brain was being crushed. It might have been a minor miracle that the ex got out of bed, but that’s just me being bitchy. It wasn’t ‘a miracle’ that the ambulance was eventually sent, or that the ambulance crew eventually agreed to take me to hospital, that was a clinical decision based on my presentation, they didn’t have scanner-eyes, they couldn’t see what was happening. My ‘Glasgow Coma Scale’ rating was around 7 on admission to hospital, I had very basic muscle-response, virtually no eye-response, and was non-verbal, and unresponsive to verbal commands. At that point, I was probably ‘dying’, there wasn’t much of me ‘in there.’ 

Another not-miracle was the clinical decision to send me to another hospital, rather than write-off the drooling, cross-eyed lump that I was at that point in time. The surgeries that saved me weren’t miraculous, they were examples of skill and judgement by the medical staff. (On a Saturday morning, I’ll add, for the type of politician who likes to infer that the NHS is a Monday-Friday 9-5 institution.) I don’t have a time-line for the surgeries, the first one was similar to something from a horror film, the second more of a futuristic science fiction thing. Intubated and anaesthetised, the surgeons shaved a chunk of my hair away, used a bone-saw to make a groove-incision in my skull, and a drill to make a small hole. That’s not the goriest bit. Then, they very carefully punctured the membrane that stops your brain chaffing against your skull ‘subarachnoid membrane’, I think, and it probably made a right old mess, with the blood, and cerebrospinal fluid that was causing the hydrocephalus. Membrane punctured, they laid some sort of plastic tubing from the large incision at the front of my skull to the small drill-hole at the back. (I’m sorry, I should have asked if you wanted a sick-bag.) Plastic tubing, along the surface of my brain, poking out of the hole in the back, and draining the STINKING accumulated fluids out of the water-bomb that had been my brain-sac, into a plastic bag on one of those IV-stand doofers. High-end trepanning, isn’t it? It wasn’t ‘a miracle’ that they didn’t slip with the drill, or the bone-saw, it was technological advances in imaging, that meant they knew how deep to go. It wasn’t ‘a miracle’ that the bit of tubing IN MY SKULL didn’t track bacteria or infections into my brain, it was scrupulous attention to cleanliness and infection control. ‘Drain infection’ is a real thing, I’m glad I didn’t Google that phrase until afterwards.  That was the horror film bit.

What they did next was amazing, a marvel of technology and medical expertise combined, but it STILL wasn’t a miracle, it was ‘hard’ technological science, combined with knowledge, and centuries of medical developments. Also very steady hands. Having drained off the fluids that were physically crushing my brain, it was assessed that the bleeding was coming from a ruptured aneurysm on my Anterior Communicating Artery. Imaging also noted two other aneurysms in there, but science is logical-rational, they weren’t urgent or life threatening, the ruptured one was. Linear-logical-analytical, although my ex and son had been taken into one of the quiet side rooms, and told I might not ‘pull through’, and I wouldn’t be ‘the same’ if I did, the risks of the surgery were minimal, compared to the battering my brain had already given itself, they weren’t going to make me any worse. I can’t even find the scar from that surgery. An incision was made in my groin, over the femoral artery, and a surgeon guided wires and cameras and all manner of improbable machinery into my brain. Science knows that the human body builds scar tissue around foreign bodies it can’t eject, so, that’s what the surgeon did, he fired multiple tiny platinum coils into the burst aneurysm, to encourage scarring. (Don’t weigh my head in at Cash Converters, I assure you it’s worth more to me, and I bite.)  A ‘miracle’? No, science and technology.

‘You must have a guardian angel!’ No, just no. My survival, and subsequent ‘recovery’, although impossible without the NHS intervention at point of need, were all down to me. There’s no delusion of grandeur about that, it was a life-altering medical emergency, with a statistical mortality rate averaging 85%. Most people don’t survive at all, and the majority who do don’t go back to work six weeks later. The NHS is strained beyond breaking point, I wasn’t ‘discharged’ from hospital, because there wasn’t a doctor on the ward, so nobody told me what I was, or wasn’t ‘allowed’ to do. Two weeks after my brain leaked, and my head was hacked into, I just sort of wandered out of the hospital, because the ex was whining about being bored of waiting. Everything after that first two weeks was me, because when I eventually had my rehab clinic appointment, I was an absolute horror, and told the poor woman that I WAS going back to work, that I WASN’T going to ‘be looked after’, or ‘make colour-coded charts for household chores.’ Yeah, I misjudged how ‘better’ I was going to get. My bad. 

Despite having ‘a religion’, I’m not a big fan of the organised mainstream religions. I was raised Catholic during my formative years, and I never quite managed to step out of the ‘Shit, I’m going to get caught!’ guilt-trip, into the ‘if I do get caught, I’ll just atone, and it will be fine.’  I didn’t ‘put my faith in God’ after the haemorrhage, I trusted the medical staff to do the best they could, and hoped my body would eventually repair itself. 

My religion. A couple of hundred years ago, I would have been burned for it, you get the drift. I’m a throw-back, a glitch in the system, because I understand most of how the human body works, based on science, but I can also pinch a bit of a plant between my fingers, and tell you, from the smell, what medicinal value it would have. It works, my son has been prescribed pharmaceutical drugs twice in his entire life, and I’ve successfully treated animals with herbs and aromatherapy oils, you can’t argue placebo-effect on that. I’m that weird old woman, living mostly alone, except I’m not in a tumble-down shack in the woods, I’m in a detached house in a cul-de-sac just off the main road, couldn’t tell you if my right-hand neighbours have two children or three, and today was the first time I ever spoke to the lady-neighbour on that side.    

Here’s the old cross-over between medicine and religion, that old woman in the woods would have been feared and revered, but, with the emergence of science and medicine, that link was lost. I genuinely don’t believe that the ‘pray for...’ Facebook posters have given any thought to the immense unlikelihood of a collective consciousness having any impact on a dog with ham on its face, or whatever they’re babbling about now. I think it’s just a ‘thing’ that’s stuck. We don’t believe that our soul is going to fly out of our nostrils when we sneeze, that’s just snot, but we still say “Bless you.” The ‘thoughts and prayers’ phenomenon drives me insane, I think it’s just as much of a reflex-nothing as ‘bless you.’ 

I don’t think that the people mouth-barbling, or typing that nurses are ‘angels’ are drawing any real correlation between over-worked, under-paid humans doing phenomenally difficult work, and cherubim and seraphim, they’re just weightless words. There has been a shift, with the advent of the internet, and the increasingly litigious nature of society. The ‘man in the white coat’ is no longer as respected or revered, because we all have Dr Google now, and can look up our symptoms, disregard the first result that says we’re clinically dead, and stomp into our GP’s surgery to tell them what’s wrong with us, and what we want doing about it. (If we haven’t actually died during the 4 week wait for the next convenient appointment.) 

My ex father-in-law had prostate cancer. He’s all clear now because he ‘went on the computer’, and looked up emergent techniques available locally. This is a man approaching 80 years of age now, who always followed his doctors instructions to the letter. To the extent that, when I queried whether he should STILL be ‘on tablets’ for his ‘bad toe’, he shushed me, as the doctor hadn’t discontinued his prescription. I can’t remember what the medication was, but it wasn’t intended for long-term use, and accumulated in his liver and kidneys, causing significant damage requiring surgery. From a man who wouldn’t question his doctor, he became a man who would. (Still paid no attention to me, I was just ‘a girl’, not a doctor or nurse...) 

It’s not all good, because the NHS has limited funding, and, if we all demand everything we’ve seen on the internet, and the poor over-stretched GPs are concerned about legal action, we will screw it into the ground. Free at point of use is what we’re used to, but that Gods-like obedience to whatever our doctor says is slipping away. (I know, I’ll only see one of the three doctors at my surgery, because the other two are fond of ‘everybody gets that’, and ‘you survived, what more do you want?’ The third one listens and responds, he doesn’t just dismiss, and THAT is the relationship I need.)  

Doctors are not Gods, we do not worship them. We respect them, but we do not revere them as our spirit-guides, and we know they can’t hex us. The NHS is ‘a Godsend’, in the loosest sense, thousands, if not millions of us would be dead without it, but to ask if it is ‘a religion’ is the silliest of wordplay. People who say ‘Thank God!’ generally aren’t, and people who do ‘Thank Gods’ generally don’t bandy the phrase about, lest it lose weight, a Djinn only gives a fixed number of wishes, after all, and there’s a price to pay. 

I’ve been tapping away at this, in fits and starts all day. I am thankful for the functionality that the NHS managed to save, and I’m wary of the way that the government is asset-stripping and disassembling it. For 70 years, the UK has had free medical care at point of need, and, this week, almost 20 ‘non-urgent’ surgical procedures were removed from the available catalogue of things we’ve always had access to. This anniversary will see many of us reflect on life-saving, and life-preserving procedures, care and compassion. It will also see many people reflecting on why they had to leave the NHS as an employer, lack of funding and cohesive support mechanisms mean that the system can no longer function as it was intended. Is it a religion? I don’t believe so. Is it fundamentally a compassionate and humane service, intended to preserve and prolong life? Almost certainly, for now. Our ‘Christian’ Prime Minister would do well to acknowledge that. 

[chrisrunsthemarathon]

How I (hopefully) ran the Marathon. Part iii

Right, the third instalment…

I know The Empire Strikes back gets widely lauded as the best, but Return of the Jedi has always been my favourite so let’s hope this is the same.

Well,  f#*k me, what a nightmare. I’ve never been a big believer in fate, or luck (you make your own right) and I’ve never been superstitious but I’m beginning to think this whole thing is jinxed…

The whole superstition/fate thing is a load of bollocks in my book, how can three lines that Mystic Meg writes in the paper fit for a 12th of the population or to put it into numbers, about 5 million people within the UK. Although I have to admit it is ironic that my Gran was a Cancer given the way she died, she was mauled to death by a giant crab. As I’ve said above though, I can’t help but think this whole thing is doomed to fail.

So, an update on how the running has been going since the last entry…… I haven’t done any. Nadda. None. Nil. Nope. Not a single run at all. Not the ideal preparation and not quite the stage that I wanted to be at. I guess I should explain why.

I finished work for Christmas and was looking forward to some family time, not to harp on about it but it’s not been the easiest few months as anyone who’s read the other entries will know and we thought, “yep, that’ll be good, let’s do some fun stuff”. I managed the Panto on the Friday afternoon which was ace but started to feel a bit rough on Christmas Eve so went off to bed with a couple of Paracetamol thinking I’d be fine when I woke up in the morning. What actually happened was that I woke at 3am so cold my teeth were chattering but I was dripping with sweat at the same time, a full on fever. All of Christmas Day I felt awful, like proper awful. I managed to get downstairs for the kids to open their presents but it was game over after that. I did make it to my sister’s house where I slept on the sofa for an hour and a half before heading home to bed, 24 Pigs in Blankets especially bought in for me untouched. I believe they’re still there..

I laid in bed for the next three days pretty much unable to move just assuming I had flu. Blokes are supposed to get it really bad right? So I figured this must be what they talk about when they say ‘man flu’. I’m really not one to cry wolf with illness or make a fuss so I just sucked it up. Tash moved my lamp into the spare room for me and I lay there for a few days. After a consultation with a student with a ring binder on the 111 service on the fourth day who told me they thought I was fine and just to rest I gave up and went to the doctor. The doc spent two minutes having a look and sent me to the hospital having diagnosed Pneumonia saying I needed IV antibiotics and fluids. This contrasted quite significantly with the diagnosis from my dad when he was driving me to the aforementioned appointment who told me I needed to “get up and about” and “show some mental resolve”. Then as I stumbled/limped/fell into the waiting room, literally feeling on the verge of death he commented “see, you look better already for the fresh air” You can take the man out of Yorkshire….

So without going into too many details, I spent 5 days in the hospital on various drips for fluids and antibiotics and oxygen masks etc trying to recover from the Pneumonia. I don’t know if anyone reading this has had it but I can see how it finishes off the elderly as its bloody horrible and I felt awful. Truly awful. I got sent home on New Years Day (oh yes, my New Years Eve was a belter, particularly when the dickhead in the next bed started making calls to people very audibly at 1am to say hello and the bloke opposite decided to pull out his own catheter and then started screaming “my willy’s bleeding”. He was a lovely old bloke opposite though, very caring, he even got up and tried to help the bloke next to him have a drink. Of course the poor bloke next to couldn’t sit up and would have drowned if the nurses hadn’t stopped him but it was a lovely gesture. You could write a great sitcom about life in an NHS hospital. In fact I should have done to stave off the boredom. Loads of the patients I saw are such ar*eholes. The bloke next to me on my first visit was shouting “lady, lady” all the time at the nurses and all he wanted was for them to plug in his mobile phone. Who needs to plug in a phone at 3am?! Then of course the nurses get distracted as they have 700 things to do and people calling them and go off. After the second time he stopped me getting pain relief by distracting the nurse to get his phone plugged in I had to politely point out that if he interrupted for something so menial again he’d never have to worry about charging his phone again after I’d shoved it where…… I know I know, I’m punchy but it’s been a tough 5 weeks….

To put it into context for those who think I’ve been soft, you get an infection marker in your blood (CRP it’s called, look at me, I’ve got all the medical terms now) and it should be between 0-5 usually. When I was admitted to hospital mine was 450 something.  After 6 days at home where I felt a bit better, but not good I went back to the doctor who said I should be better by now given the drugs and time and so he did another blood test and my CRP was still 170 odd so he sent me back to the hospital where I spent another 4 days. Fortunately not on the acute medical ward this time (well, I was for the first 24 hours and then I got moved) so to be honest the second stint on an different ward felt like I’d been moved to The Hilton. I had a chair, a bedside table and a window…! It turns out the fluid on my lung from the pneumonia hadn’t drained away and had become infected and caused my lung to partially collapse. Oh yes, I’ve been having all the fun….

I was told I’d need either a chest drain to get rid of the fluid or be moved to Southampton hospital for surgery, fortunately for me I only needed the former and after that, coming home and another couple of weeks R&R I’m starting to feel human again………..but I haven’t been for a run yet.

You also start filling the days with meaningless and pointless things in hospital as well. Like going to the toilet far more frequently than you need to because you get to walk there and it’s something to do. Then you spend a good 5 minutes determining if your stools are a type 3 or 4 according to the chart on the back of the door and should you be worried or not (surely they should just stick a newspaper in there). It really is/was that bad. Not to be cliché either but the food really is almost inedible. I know they cater for large numbers, and on a budget, but still, how people ever get better eating that is a mystery. Its worth publicly commenting Berni Hampton that the Spaghetti Bolognese you made me on my second stint in hospital saved my life. It was easily the best Spag Bol I’ve ever had and sitting there chatting to Grant while I polished it off was the best I’d been in 3 weeks, a real turning point.

Tash should get a shout out here as well. I’ve cited in previous entries about her ability to cope and get on with it but bugger me she really is awesome. As well as everything she has going on, and spending Christmas solo with the kids (family obviously but in terms of looking after the little one’s) she managed to do a month’s worth of early wake ups, breakfast shift, get them dressed, bath time routines, bedtime routines all on her own and still cope with work, general life and fit in coming to see me every day, bring me Smarties, deal with my moods about the whole thing and cheer me up/tell me to man up where appropriate. I’ve promised I’ll make it up to her. I won’t put my trainers on until I get out of the house now.

So far this has all been pretty depressing hasn’t it, it’s like an entry in Adrian Mole’s diary “today I measured my pecker, still fuc*ing small”…

So the marathon………and running and where I’m up to with that. Well,…… I’m still convinced I can do it. Various members of my family, friends and most importantly my wife have told me that there’s no chance and I’m an idiot for even considering it. I’ve spoken to Rebecca at Anthony Nolan and they’ve been brilliant and told me I can defer and do it next year for them if I want to and just continue my current fundraising but with no pressure to do two lots (ie. For two years entries). I guess I won’t be the first person to ever pull out should I have to. I should note at this stage that I definitely will do it, even if I have to defer and do it in 2018. People have been amazing with their kindness and generosity for the charity and that’s not been missed and this isn’t a ‘get out of jail card’ for me, I will do it and I will make sure I put myself through it for those donations. Every penny is vital and I want to make sure I’ve earned it. Especially when you look at some of the incredible donations like that anonymous one for £1,000. Ha ha, anonymous, yeah right, we ALL know who that was (love you mate, can’t wait to get back in our favourite restaurant). That one also specified I had to do it in 3 and a half hours or pay it back and that target time might be beyond me this year now I’m 6 weeks behind schedule and my lungs are still like that scene in the The Matrix when Neo is reborn and comes out gasping for air.

So I’ve decided I’m going to let the professionals make the decision. I have a follow up with a respiratory consultant on Monday and they’re going to X-ray my lungs and see how I’m doing. I’ll ask them outright if I can run and if they say no, it’ll be put back to 2018. Definitely not the outcome I want, possibly for the best but I’ll be desperately disappointed if that’s what they say. Having been so ill however, I don’t want to go through that again and if they tell me my body can’t cope in three months time then I won’t risk it. Hopefully they’ll tell me I’m good to go and I can pick up the training. Otherwise I’ve got a hotel room going spare on the 22nd. There’s no point using it on Marathon Day otherwise, it’s packed and you can’t get anywhere…

In a bit of good news, all of those emails and looking for contact details finally paid off. The bloody nice people at the Manchester United Foundation sent me a signed football that turned up in the post the other day. All I have to do is send them details of what I do with it/how much I raise and they’ll forward me on a certificate of authenticity with it as well. What a nice bunch and a terrific gesture from the League Cup Runners Up 2017. Looking at it, I think if I auction it I’ll raise less than if I raffle if as I’m reliant on one person paying lots at an auction so I’m going to advertise it as far and wide as I can at £1 a raffle ticket. I’m film it all and make it all visible so if you’re interested in a ticket, two or more let me know and I’ll work out the best way to collect the money etc. It goes without saying that 100% of the money taken will go to the charity. There’s no fees, costs anywhere, they gave me the ball for nothing so it’s all going to Anthony Nolan.

Running wise I’m going to give it a go at the weekend with a slow/short run just to test the water. I gave 9 holes a whirl this week and that felt OK (other than the fact my putting was dreadful but that’s to be expected after 5 weeks). I had a little bit of pain in my back where the drain was the next day but it’s cleared up pretty quickly. I guess we’ll just have to see if I make it back from my run on Saturday morning. Hopefully I’ll feel fine, trample mud all through the house and we’ll be back to normal.

And that’s where I’m up to. I’m sorry it wasn’t very funny, or cheery, or positive but it’s reflective of the past 5 weeks for me. I’ll keep you posted with a short entry early next week on the verdict (if anyone is even reading this..) In the meantime, if you want to sympathy sponsor me the link is still in the first entry on this blog page. I try to keep a positive outlook if I can and I always like to look for a silver lining, I lost loads of weight over Christmas (almost two stone in that first week of illness), I didn’t spend any money and if you notice, I haven’t moaned once about the pain in my legs………

Love,

Chris x