I’ve developed a grudging respect for my disease, it’s merely fighting to survive same as me; both of us were unwitting guinea pigs of doctors who misdiagnosed us, then prescribed inappropriate treatment, courtesy of the deplorable Sackler family. It was an osteopath in the end who felt the adhesions under my skin, with more skill in her fingertips and common sense than the scores of medics who had assessed me before. What precisely are they trained for if they can’t spot a disease as common as diabetes that only occurs in women?
When the rogue cells inside me tipped the balance in their favour, my body became a living monument to what I once was and what might have been. A ruined body carrying muscle memory of my old life and my old path. The new path is surgery, which rhymes with butchery but I try not to think about that. I try to stay optimistic.
My achievements to date are meagre, unless you count keeping oneself alive, which isn’t much of a milestone compared to other people and their retirement funds, anniversary holidays and overpriced plastic lawns; other people or vectors as I like to think of them, who have magnitude and direction, I’m neither, more a rubbed out dot on a page. Still, better to be the ruin than the ruiner.
