Stumbling in Flats

Seven weeks post-third course of Campath (Alemtuzumab) and things were looking up.

If you discounted the cold sores, the bonkers fatigue and the two-week long head cold I just couldn’t shift, things were absolutely fine.

I’m back in work (although naturally The Boss would disagree), and I’m back in Uni for my second year of the Master’s.

Mind you, I’m still wrestling with the experimental writing module – my mind whirls off into weird and wonderful stories ( … this is a dot. A lovely dot. A dot that wanted to be a comma, blah blah) rather than concentrating on Virginia Woolf and her pals.

Then disaster struck.

First, The Boss was fiddling with his ladders on the roof of his van last week, slipped on some rain and fell over, breaking his right arm pretty spectacularly. Cue a plaster cast, a very, very sad face and the realisation that, as a building company, we had to come up with a plan and fast.

Second, just as I was holding a drainage pipe in place, I was whacked over the head by the most overwhelming MS super-charged cricket bat that I felt physically sick. I staggered to a pile of insulation sheets and collapsed in a heap.

I panicked. It couldn’t be a relapse but my speech was wonky, my balance was shot and my head was floating somewhere around in the stratosphere.

I left work early, holding back the vertigo and nausea and somehow got home, wondering how best to prepare for the Uni lecture that evening. Answer: not much. Just getting there would be an achievement.

The minute I got out the shower and had wrapped my dressing gown around myself, The Teenager pounced, holding out his laptop;

‘Mum, mum, mum, mum. Have you heard of The Ramones? Have you? Like, listen to this.’

‘Oh, very nice. Lovely dear.’

‘Yeah, great, innit? And this, there’s a weird guy dancing, look.’

‘Oh right. Yes, that is a bit, um, odd.’

‘Hang on, listen to this song, really funny and can I have some money for the cinema and can you drop me off a bit later? I drank all the milk, sorry.’

I have no idea what’s going on.

But I do know one thing – The Teenager wants a ‘Ramones’ t-shirt for Christmas.