Take It As Red

It's been pretty vile weekend here in the world of end-stage renal failure. I've had yet another nasty kidney infection and have spent the weekend alternately shivering and throwing up - Lord, I so don't need this. The worst of it is is that there is no end in sight - or rather there is but the question is when and where. There are times when an end to it seems very attractive, particularly when in excruciating renal colic that no painkiller can touch.

I'm now on the the last type of antibiotic that will actually work, so I have to avoid taking them for as long as possible for fear of lurking bacteria developing resistance. Once that happens there's nothing that will kill the infection, unless someone comes up with a new miracle drug, and my kidneys will fail for good. I've been told by my UK specialist that I am unlikely to be considered a good risk either for perineal or regular kidney dialysis, or a transplant, even should there be a kidney available. Because of a previous bout with cancer and lots of major abdominal surgery my insides are a mass of scar tissue and adhesions, and any transplant surgery would be unlikely to succeed; ditto dialysis.

So that's that then.

Knowing one is going to die and how, but not exactly when, is a bit of a burden. My mother and father both died fairly young, of cancer (my father in his early '50's, my mother at 62) and I am beginning to see their faces in mine when I look in the mirror. The same drawn, gaunt expression, the same inexorable weight loss, the same look of ineffable fatigue.

But still, nil desperandum eh? as my Dad would 've said.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.