Maniac

MonsieurB calls me a maniac but really the joke is on him because I'm his girlfriend and he has to deal with me. On a daily basis. 

It has been an epically long time since August. I'm ready to hibernate. I'm keeping my eyes on the prize til Friday when I have a week off. In the interim, I have a shed load of socialising to do as well as Christmas shopping. Highlight of the Christmas season has been Friends' Christmas (not a re-run of David Schwimmer et al) and receiving a teacup based fascinator. Some people in the pub cussed it. MonsieurB was going to knock them out. I was knocked out on gin so didn't really give a shit about the haters. Who were wearing Jack Wills. I rest my case. 

Basically I don't think you understand how much I want this. It's totally impractical. Shorts with long sleeves and a high neck. It's a nonsense! But I am determined to get my legs out whilst I can because soon I'll be old and no one wants to see wrinkly thighs. 

DISCLAIMER: I will not be buying this because it is £150 and even that is a step too far for me. I will stalk ebay looking for it. After I have been to the shop to try it on to make sure I get the right size. 

[As a total aside I made a friend in a make up shop today. She was lovely. And made me look human having been told by a work colleague that I still look sick and I should go home at lunch, or immediately, whichever I preferred. We bonded over a love of Smashbox Primer, Sali Hughes and trying to run our mascaras out to buy the new YSL mascara. I like shop girls who pretend to be your friend. But not too much of a friend. Just enough.]

The last week has been hellish. H.E.L.L.I.S.H.

Feeling a bit peaky on Tuesday I went to work commenting on my way through the door first thing how I felt a bit wrong. Fast forward 5 hours later and I was at Conference excusing myself in front of clients to run to the bathroom and barf like a model backstage at Chanel. 

Crawling home on the train I thought a good sleep would do me a good. It didn't. Cue 4 days of being unable to keep anything in me at all. ANYTHING. I basically crawled out of bed to the bathroom, emptied my stomach of everything within and then crawled back to bed to sleep. The only time I wasn't asleep was when my stomach cramped so much the pain woke me up and I knew I had to crawl to the bathroom again. For four days. FOUR DAYS. It got so bad my lips were chapped to ras and I couldn't drink enough to keep myself going. You know you're in trouble when you lie down and you feel like you've got a pain in kidneys that's akin to Ryan Gosling kicking you like you've just tried to kill him a lift in Drive. 

So the obvious thing to do when you've not kept water in for over 48 hours and you're not even thinking about food is to go to the doctor.

Me: Can I have an emergency appointment please?

Receptionist: Why?

WHY? WHY? Because I fancied coming to your place of disease to pick up disease for giggles. I heart disease.

Me: I've not been able to keep anything down for over 48 hours

Receptionist: Have you tried starving yourself?

Me: *silent* *withering silence* *ongoing silence* *still going*

Receptionist: Er....starving? Yourself? Starving?

Me: *more silence* - Yes. *pause* I've tried starving myself

Receptionist: Oh. You had better come in then

Oh had I? Do you think? Do you fucking think you stupid fucking bitch?

To make this clear. This is the same surgery that wrote me a shitty letter about going for a smear test and the dangers of lady garden cancer and the like. I went along like I should have. Then never got a result. Ringing up I was assured no result was good news. Whilst I appreciate the 'no news is good news' mantra when it comes to, I don't know, the delivery of a parcel by Royal Mail my lady garden is a bit of a different story so I asked for written confirmation anyway. Then the receptionist IN THE SAME CALL actually READ the screen and found out that they had sent me a letter for a test by accident and I'm not due til May next year. I commented that that's fine, surely it'll just start to run from my last one and what's my result. Guess what. Because I wasn't due and only went because of their FUCK UP they didn't bother testing my swab. 

For the ones with vaginas here let me say this again:

They. Didn't. Test. My. Swab. 

After. Writing. Me. A. Shitty. Letter.

And. I. Went. For. A. Pointless. Test. 

I know, I know ladies. Unclench your vaginas now. I felt your sympathy clench. I did. And thanks. It's much appreciated. 

Turns out though the doctors aren't much better. Literally crying in the doctor's room because the merest sip of water was exiting me more quickly than it had entered and I had never been this ill before I was calmly told that I would have to be like this for ten days (that's 10. TEN. The number after nine, 9) before they'd worry. Now I'm no doctor. Or a nurse. But on those survival programmes and I don't know, ANY HOSPITAL PROGRAMME ON THE TELEVISION they say that five days without water causes your main organs to start to shut down. So I hazarded a guess and decided that after ten days I'd be dead. My mum, who is an ITU nurse, confirmed this. Whilst standing on helplessly whilst her eldest child cried and writhed in agony in a bed that was beginning to take on a MademoiselleB shaped hole where I'd lay for so long. 

Obviously I'm not dead. Slowly, I started to keep things down. I'm still not 100% but at least I'm not so tired I can't even contemplate going downstairs to get a drink. And I can literally eat like a sparrow, little and often and really bland food. But at least I'm not dead. No thanks to my fricking GP.