Writing it down

Health, death, mental health.... probably everyone is sick of me writing about these now, but here I go again anyway.

I was thinking of my father a lot when I was lying around in hospital and resisting the urge to count the ceiling tiles, or the number of reflectors in the light fitting, or any number of other things to pass the time. In particular, I wondered how he managed to keep his cool, for he had a temper, when told he had to stay in hospital for a couple of weeks at a time. I was not a good patient by Day Three and the notion of staying any longer just wasn't winning any favours from me at all. Lucky then they managed to get the results and reports they wanted in time to send me packing that very day. They didn't have to: I was already packed!

To make up for getting out of hospital, I dreamed about it every night for the first week home. I would dream I was lying on my hospital bed and that I was staring at those hospital roof tiles and I would half awaken and see my own old ceiling and my own curtains and wonder what the hell had gone wrong and why were my familiar things in the Unit and why was Herself beside me? And finally I'd wake a little more and shake it off and try to sleep a deeper sleep.

When I did, I'd drift off into dreams of snow, or great hills of newly ploughed earth. There were buses to catch that drove along the Tymon North Road near my father's house. Generally they took me places I didn't wish to go and I'd spend the rest of my dream returning on foot, not lost, but out of place, inconvenienced rather than panicked.

In one dream, my father and I were walking together somewhere on the Northside in a baked summer housing estate, on our way home through unfamiliar territory. We stopped to join a house party after a funeral and soon were separated inside a house that became a pub, whose garden became a car park in the strange way of dreams.

In another, I crossed Tymon Park alone in winter, a wet winter with exaggerated hills and hummocks. Machines were working in the rain to construct banks by the lakes and people were coming and going in little knots on unknown errands.

I remember back in the real world, away from dreams, how my father had been told he had a tumour in his bowel and how he'd undergone surgery to remove that tumour, how he'd asked that I be informed of the outcome so I could explain it to him slowly and in terms he could understand. I told him all that has been told to me: how the surgeons had opened him up, taken out the tumour, been satisfied that they had caught it in time before it spread to his lymph nodes, and how they had taken some nodes away to test to ensure he hadn't any other problems.

He listened carefully and asked me to repeat everything to him so he could let the realisation sink in that he was going to survive. He was discharged from hospital, attended to by the district nurse for a number of weeks, then reported dutifully to the oncology unit of St James Hospital each appointment for chemotherapy.

One day he said to me: "Did I have cancer?"

I was taken aback. It transpired that no-one, myself included, had mentioned the word at all until he had seen the Professor and the Professor mentioned it in passing. Cancer, to my father's generation, meant a one-way ticket and he was aghast that the word had come up.

I was shaving the other morning and recalled him asking: "Did I have cancer?" I remembered my own doctor, a couple of weeks ago, looking at me and saying: "You were a very sick man."

I can sit and write the details of my infected salivary gland and how it swelled up and ultimately started pressing my tongue into my airway. I can relate how in another hour or two I reckoned I would have choked to death without medical attention. But somehow I'm still like my father, hooked up to his chemotherapy drips week after week (or fortnight after fortnight, I now no longer recall accurately the intervals involved in his case) wondering, after all that he'd gone through, if he had had cancer. It must be some kind of mechanism we humans have to get through a tough time, to see the creature leaping towards our jugular and still find a way to duck, roll, run away and at the end think: "Was that what I think it was?"

How strange.

Early this morning I dreamed my father was in a similar ward to the one I'd been in and as I was passing I called into him. I realised his only trouble was that his diabetes medication was acting up and that a little sugar would help him avoid a crisis. I wandered corridors looking for a sugar bowl and when I found it I was again on the Tymon North Road on my way to him. He was waiting near the bus stop, 100 yards away. As I walked towards him I awoke, an old feeling of worry about him heavy on me. I decided to get up and start my day rather than return to the dream.

Tonight I'm trying to stay up longer to maybe tire myself into a deeper sleep. But I think by morning I'll be visiting with him again, worrying for him.

It's strange -- I never dream of him dead, lying on the cold floor of his kitchen. You'd think I would but I don't.

Ah, sure...

Thank you, the folk behind the statistics

I don't thank my visitors enough. I'll try to make amends.

"Thank you", the 1,307 visitors who have looked at my profile. "Thank you, too", the 14,426 (including me) who have visited the blog. You have looked at pages here 22,120 times, which is great.

I'd like to thank all the people who lost their instructions for erecting a gazebo. On quiet weeks, at certain times of the year, you form the majority of visitors and you tend to spend up to 15 minutes here. I suspect you're running in and out from the computer sticking lots of little metal tubes together. Fair play. I was doing the same only this afternoon.

Special appreciation goes to those who find the blog by Googling the phrase (sometimes in ALL CAPS, sometimes not): "I PEED MY PANTS." I hope you're feeling a bit drier now.

For everyone who is looking for a solution to a puzzle, "Hello!" and "Thanks for dropping by!" I've no puzzle pieces except the individual blog posts you briefly examine.

"Hi!" to the Laurel & Hardy fans who find the blog by clicking on the toothache photo. And to the occasional person interested in the George Best five pound note, I'm glad you stopped by.

"Cheers!" to those who use a saved version of an old email to come here, or have bookmarked my profile, or who otherwise use an old visit to make repeat jaunts. Your calling cards are dutifully noted by the hit counter and gratefully received.

And to anyone using the various blog aggregators to which this site is connected, I hope you're not disappointed in your visit here.

I'm not forgetting those using links from other blogs: I hope your use of those links so kindly provided by the thoughful authors of their own sites proved worth the effort.

Lastly, those who find the site by random or misdirected hyperlink: "Thank you" and I hope you, like all of us, find what you're seeking soon.

There are many people who think that blogging is an idle, futile, even embarrassing pursuit. They wouldn't do it themselves and they certainly don't understand anyone who does.

If you're one of these uncomprehending people, then please just move along. I've no great words for you, except that one of us, either you or me, has missed the point entirely. We should get out more. Probably.

Or something. Definitely something.

10,000 hits

Congratulations to the airspeed.ie customer who became the 10,000th visitor to Writing it Down fills in Pieces of the Puzzle on December 27th 2007 at 11.40am.

I am sorry I don't have a WIDFIPOTP tee-shirt in your size to present to you, or a jaunty bumper sticker with an appropriate slogan. You will have to make do with my heartfelt thanks for your visit, which appears to have lasted..... 0 seconds.

Ah.

Let's move on then, shall we?