excuses

The reason I didn't blog on Monday was mostly that we spent all evening at Addenbrooke's A&E. :S

Don't worry, I'm actually fine. I've had a cold since Friday and was feeling pretty grotty. By Monday night I had chest pains and was breathing fairly heavily. The last straw was coughing up mucus with blood in it (TMI? Sorry!) at which point I got a bit panicked, as it was all a bit too much like what happened back in August when I went into hospital and they found blood clots. So I decided it was probably wise to get checked over and Rob took me in.

The doctors I saw agreed I done the right thing, given my history, did some blood tests and gave me a chest X-ray. Fortunately, all was as it should be, no evidence of blood clots, nothing wrong except an upper respiratory viral infection (i.e. a cold). They sent me home again with instructions to rest, take paracetamol and see my GP if things got any worse. All of which took around 5 hours, from leaving home at 5.30 to getting back again about 10.30pm.

So, that was Monday evening gone. I'm grateful to Rob who took it all in his stride and didn't moan at me for wanting to go to hospital, yet again or panic. I don't feel too silly for getting things checked out as the staff did take me seriously. But I do hope that, apart from a couple of scheduled clinic appointments in the next few weeks, I won't be seeing too much of Addenbrooke's in the near future.

hospital drama

The last few days have been more dramatic than I expected.

I had some pain in my rib cage last week, which although pretty excruciating, I assumed was just a muscle strain. (I'd had similar pains a couple of weeks before that I'd put down to an awkward bike skid). However, on Thursday morning, I was coughing up blood and thought maybe we'd better get it checked out. Rob drove me to Addenbrooke's A&E and by lunchtime I'd been admitted with what was either a chest infection or a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in my lungs). An initial x-ray didn't show up any clots, but a CT scan later that night showed definite clots. Thursday night was pretty painful and I didn't get much sleep, in between the pain and the worry.

Friday morning I was put on a heart monitor, just in case. I wasn't allowed to walk anywhere and had to be wheeled to the bathroom, which made me feel pretty helpless. Although the first day's events had been pretty scary, things quickly improved. I was put on anti-clotting drugs as soon as the possibility of a clot was raised and continued to have injections over the weekend. I had plenty of pain killers to help me be more comfortable. The last couple of days have mostly been about starting me on Warfarin and getting the dose right. I've got to go back for more blood tests over the next few days and weeks, but these will get less frequent as things settle down.

I'm home again, as of this afternoon. I'm very tired and looking forward to getting some good sleep in my own bed. Rob's done a very good job of looking after me, keeping everyone informed and making sure I have everything I need in hospital. We've had lots of support from friends and particularly from Eden (our church) and feel very loved and looked after.

It all felt pretty scary for a bit, but it was very reassuring to know I was in the right place, being looked after by people who know what they're doing. I suspect it'll take me a while to get back to full strength, but I'm going to take it easy and not rush anything. I'm still achey, though it's not the terrible pain I had last week. I'm very thankful to God for all the support we've had from friends and for modern medicine and the easy access I have to it.

baby steps

I went to the library and it was OK. I haven't done any proper studying in ages. I've been meaning to ease myself back into it for ages but this was the first time I've actually managed it.

Today I set myself three goals:

To spend at least an hour in the library doing useful things (i.e. not facebook, email etc)

To read through the last pieces of work I did (dissertation proposal and a critical review essay), including my tutor's comments (I handed them last September and even when I got them back I didn't have the courage to look at anything beyond the numerical marks).

To find two articles or books to read which would be helpful.

I managed all three. My dissertation proposal actually made some sense to me, which was comforting, although it was different from the way I've been describing my dissertation to people for the last year or so. The project I've outlined looks do-able and is less focused on Dawkins and his ilk than I'd remembered. (This was one of the things I was dreading about getting back to it). My tutor had made some useful suggestions for things to read, so I came home with Bahktin's The Dialogic Imagination (which looks pretty dense, but I should have a go) and a Foucault Reader, including his essay What is an Author?, which is relatively short and I think I may have read it before.

It may not sound like much, but it was an achievement to get to the library at all, let alone read things. I felt a bit panicky before I went and I'm still a bit tense now, but I feel like I've made the first, very tiny, step towards completing my dissertation. I am setting myself the goal for the rest of May of doing an hour's work on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, either in the library or reading at home. This afternoon I'm going to make the wall planner I promised in my last post, so I can tick off the days and see how I'm progressing.

learning to read

I don't remember learning how to read. I just did. I remember reading Spot books to myself before I went to school and I remember coming home from school with my first reading book ("The big red lorry went up the hill..."). I've always been a book worm, always the one tucked away in a corner, lost in a book. I read voraciously, anything and everything, had the usual phase of finding a book I loved and then seeking out everything by the same author. I think when I went to secondary school, my first method of assessing the school library was to find out how many P G Wodehouse books they had that I hadn't already read.

I carried on reading. I didn't plan to take English Literature A-Level, but when I picked it up a month into sixth form, I discovered I'd read more over the summer than people who had planned to take it, which made me wonder why I hadn't thought of it in the first place. I loved English and the lessons kept me sane through my A-levels. They were discursive and thought-provoking in a way that Maths, Physics and Chemistry just weren't.

I read less during my Physics degree. There just wasn't time in term, but I did still read lots in the holidays. I wrote some poems then too, even got elected JCR Poet Laureate for a year.

Jump forward a few years, and I started studying with the Open University while working. At first, just for fun, but as I started to find my feet and get into the course, studying literature become something I loved doing and was good at, something I wanted to pursue more seriously.

But something changed as I studied. By my third year of OU, a sort of panic was beginning to set in whenever I had to read for study, especially text books. I'd look at a page and find myself speeding up, getting faster and faster and more panicky, wondering how much I much I was taking in. I rarely read anything that wasn't for my course, and when I did, I felt guilty about it. I dismissed the panic as pressure of time. After all, I was also working full time and studying had to get squeezed in between working and the rest of life. I'd work in short bursts, often relying on the pressure of an approaching deadline to get myself motivated to write.

When I left work to start my MA, I initially enjoyed the freedom to read. My course texts were varied and interesting, especially the 20th century ones. I tried reading Ulysses in one day (didn't make it, but got quite a good way through), read in the library, at home, in bed, at work while waiting for videos to process. It was fun. But the panic was still there, especially when I sat down to write an essay. I sailed closer and closer to the wind with my deadlines, producing things at the very last minute, and always conscious that they weren't as good as I wanted them to be.

By the time I got really ill, books just weren't working anymore. Although I did read (and love) Bleak House during a week in bed, that was probably the last time I managed to read something complex. A few weeks after that, I couldn't read, couldn't think coherently, couldn't do anything much. Somehow, over the summer, I managed to read and write enough to produce an essay on The Water Babies, a review and a dissertation proposal. I'm not entirely sure how. As my ability to concentrate came back, I read a bit - mostly detective stories, old favourites, the odd bit of fantasy fiction and not too taxing comic fiction. I'm not sure how I'd define it. Not quite chick lit. The sort of novels with tragi-comic families and adolescent heroines. Lots of Kate Atkinson. I didn't feel up to tackling anything big, say, Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy, which I've wanted to complete reading since I studied The Ghost Road in my OU course, or Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day, which has been sat on my to-read pile since I found it second-hand, or Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which I've been halfway through for over a year. There are lots of books I've started and failed to finish - Nights at the Circus, Lud-in-the-Mist, A Confederacy of Dunces, all of which sat by my bed for months, waiting for me to feel up to reading them again.

I still don't. There are signs of hope. I read Coraline in one go on a train journey at the beginning of January. I'm slowly working my way through Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, when I'm not feeling too sad to read it. But I haven't yet approached anything relevant to my MA, or even re-read my dissertation proposal, or properly read the marker's comments. I'm scared. Scared that I'll never re-capture my love of reading. Scared that some part of my identity is gone forever. Scared of pushing myself too hard and becoming ill again. I know I need to retrain my brain to concentrate and that I can't go straight back to tackling big serious books again, but I don't quite know where to start. I'm also not very motivated to get back to my dissertation. The topic is too close to my heart. There are too many aspects of it that are important to me, that I want to get right and say something worth saying and thought-provoking about, and yet I'm also sick of it because I've been living with those same issues for the past three years and I'd really rather do something else, that mattered less. I don't know whether to give it up; pick another dissertation topic (if I can) or just plough on through the difficulties. I feel like I could do with a reading coach. My supervisor, I suppose, might fulfill that role, but I'm scared of her. And I'm not good at asking for help.

I don't really know what to do. Pray, and live and try to do what I can. And ask God to help me conquer my fears.

bored = getting better?

Well. I got bored yesterday. I didn't know what to do with myself in the afternoon, after a morning at work. I ended up doing some tidying and watching stuff on iPlayer. Which was a short term solution, but perhaps I need to find some better solutions.

My work hours are going to be fairly regular for the next few months, so I should be able to get until a routine and do some useful things as well as work. Like getting some exercise and maybe even doing some reading. (I read a book in bed last night! 15 pages or so of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.) I'm trying to get myself back into the habit of reading. I'd like to start doing some dissertation relevant reading, though the idea scares me a bit at the moment. I don't quite know where to start. But there's no hurry and if I can do a little bit now and then, all the little bits will add up.

I feel a lot better than I was a few months ago, though I still seem to need lots of sleep. (Though I'm probably still catching up from the weekend). I need to be careful though and not try to do too much. It's easy to feel better for a few days, decide I'm fine, do lots of things and then find myself back to collapsing in a heap again.

I suspect January doesn't help. It's so cold! The biting wind doesn't make one inclined to get out of the house. Must wrap up warm and brave the weather. And look forward to spring.