Winter in Spring

Yesterday was a bad day. The weather conspired to make everything worse. It was raining. It was cold. I should have put on the heating, but it was too much effort, so I just put on layers of jumpers. Not that it helped much with what was going on inside my body, which was heavy like lead and vibrating like an off balance gyroscope. I do believe every cell in my body was fighting to get out of the way of the toxic chemo molecules.

What to do? Call the clinic! Easier said than done. At the sound of a kind human voice, the torrent of tears preclude intelligent discourse. "Come in and we'll take a look at you," the man cooed down the line. What a good idea.

Thanks to Paul R. and his trusted car, I got to the hospital in one piece and plopped on the bed, expecting to expire. Bp normal, temperature normal. The resident doctor is kind, compassionate, apologetic, perplexed. "It will pass soon and get better in a day or two." Paul returns and I feel strangely stupid at wasting everyone's time as I walk out under my own steam with strangely renewed strength.

Outside, a gust of cold, southwesterly arctic wind hits my face. Aha! Everything is suddenly clear. I had an 'episode' on top of the chemo. "No wonder," I think to myself and feel utterly relieved as comprehension dawns.

A quick explanation. For the past 20 years I've suffered from some kind of condition that has no name, but whose symptoms can range from mild foggyness of mind to devastatingly scary symptoms resembling a stroke or a heart attack. "You'll have a diesease named after you when you die," my US doctor told me, after assuring me that it's not in my mind, but some deficiency in my adrenals.

I believed him and, like an old shoe, the syndrome has become a distinguishing part of me. With the passing of the years, as more and more of my internal organs have been removed, the symptoms have eased, and nowadays I am only affected when there is a sudden atmospheric change and the southwesterly cold winds rush in. I am now the best weatherwane in the Southern Hemisphere!

My mother always told me that as you grow older, your chronic aches and pains become like old friends, and you get concerned only when something unusual turns up. Well, I guess in this case the Chemo is the new kid on the block and, like in the good old days, when I was still known as the "Hungarian Fire Cracker", when the Ban and Herczeg sides of my family's temper combined into righteous indignation, my body bristled under the combined onslaught of an 'episode' and the 'chemo fog'. Can't say I blame it.