“heralds”

This was going to start off like so many recent posts – been tired, took a long time to work on this, bla bla. But it was worse, a new insomnia and a new level of stress. Waking up at 5am and not being able to get back to sleep. Waking up at 4am, waking up at 3. Going to bed early and falling asleep in a blink, but dreaming about work, waking up in a panic about deadlines with a pounding heart.

Looking for an analogy that’s not trite. Like a card game, with a sequence of trumps. Throw in a yearly cystoscopy. Top that with abnormal tissue to be burnt out and sent for biopsy. Call the universe’s bluff with a negative result, no cancer just “inflamed” tissue. An even hand, block your urinary tract infection with a course of antibiotics and referrals for tests.

The analogy runs out when you try to describe the feeling of shock at the urinal at work, pissing out blood and clots, bright red against the white porcelain, fear of embarrassment overpowering it, waiting impatiently for the automatic flush to wash away the stain.

There’s some mostly irrelevant and gruesome details that lead to walking into the emergency section of the hospital at 8.30 the next morning. Ironically, I’d slept quite well.

I’m ok with most medical procedures, but I don’t like catheters. The only thing worse than a catheter, is having them tell you a little later that the treatment isn’t working and they have to upgrade to a bigger model.

Their best guess is that it was the scar in my bladder starting to bleed, and 16 hours of flushing it out with saline did the trick.

I half-heartedly toyed with some ideas for a picture, a skeletal chicken, some cock substitute with impalement, but they were even weaker metaphors than a card game. Better to look away, back to this drawing in progress. Insomnia? Work stress? Pfft. I can trump that.