Sugar, honey, honey

Wednesday was unpleasant. Which isn’t to say that it was totally abysmal; though it was unpleasant, it was unpleasant while in good company—perhaps, in that case, it was one or two shades lighter than abysmal. I could have done without it, nonetheless.

I was woken, rudely, by the radio at 730am. I moved at around eight, and was up and gone by nine, and at the pathologist by 930. After the preliminary greetings and medicare card checks, I was shown to a room with a bed, a chair, a cupboard (housing all manner of unspeakable torture instruments), and a little trolley (housing needles, syringes, vials and other items designed only to inflict pain on poor sick people). Simply being in the room made me uneasy; I lay down on the bed.

The main reason for my visit to this hellish corner of Broadway was to undergo the terror of a glucose tolerance test. If anyone out there is considering one for shits and giggles, I advise against it. If only for the crap you have to drink before you begin. I was given a small bottle that held perhaps 300ml of green liquid. Upon tasting it I found the liquid to taste exactly like cheap lime fizzy, only flat and warm and much sweeter than usual. I found out later that it contained 75g of glucose. This, The Optimist and I worked out several days later, is the same amount as one and a half regular sized blocks of chocolate (or one family sized block, no doubt). The whole point is to make a diagnosis of hypoglycaemia; hence the sugar-free diet, and the sudden presence of coke zero in my fridge (which I detest, despite, loathe, hate and revile with every fibre of my being).

After drinking the strange lime liquid, six vials of blood were drawn. I will spare you the gruelling details—partly in case any of you are as queasy about these things as I am, partly because I shut my eyes, clicked my heals and said “there’s no place like home” three times in an effort not to think about the blood as it left my body. Though I wasn’t expecting to be transported through space to my bed or, even better, to the double bed at my parents place, I was a little disappointed when I opened my eyes and found myself to be in the pathology clinic that I had been in when I closed my eyes.

Then, at intervals of thirty minutes, I had more blood drawn. For four hours. When I left, at about two in the afternoon, I had nine needle marks in my arms. The first half hour was fine, the sugar high wasn’t too bad, I sat in the waiting room and read my novel, and I even thought to myself “see, this isn’t too bad, you can do this no problems”. Perhaps that was my fatal move. After the next needle I had to lie down, like now, so I lay there for the next hour, listening to music and lolling around like a drunkard. At some point the sugar high bottomed out and I had no energy to do anything. I was asked, at about this point, if I could sit up in the waiting room as the bed was needed for an ECG test. Rather than telling them to fuck themselves with a splintery rake, I got up and shuffled out the waiting room… and shuffled back as soon as the coast was clear.

I felt so devoid of energy. It was quite scary, in fact, because it was a glimpse back to a past in which I lay in bed all day, every day, because I couldn’t do much else.

Two o’clock came and Janek came to pick me up. I floated through the shopping centre, leaning heavily on my stick (and silently praising its many, many virtues) until we reached the car. He drove me home, put me to bed, and lay with me until I felt a little more human. I don’t remember specifics of Wednesday afternoon, only fever-dream like snippets, but from what I remember he sat with me and watched TV while I recuperated. The wiped feeling has persisted, but I’m starting to feel a little better.

This fucken test better have some breakthrough results or I am going to beat Dr NT with my bottle of coke zero.