The Next Step

I think it's time for an update. My health is deteriorating much quicker than I first expected and so I was admitted into on thursday evening. To be honest, going by the way I was feeling then, I'm not convinced I'm going to make it into 2014. My gut feeling is that it will just take one more infection to finish me off. I have had a bag of platelets and two units of blood, and feel better for it. This, of course, skews my perception of my prognosis and how long I have left.

I am back in hospital on ward 94, and I will remain their until I die. My main symptoms are fatigue, shortness of breath; but thankfully pain is under control at the moment. It is getting to the point where I need more medical intervention to keep me comfortable, which is one of the reasons I have decided to come back in. Plus, dispensing my medication and juggling care in the community was getting very difficult and causing an unnecessary amount of stress. My sleep pattern is still quite poor but, hopefully it will improve when I start to get more of a routine in place. Sleep deprivation is a killer, please pray for refreshing sleep. Being in hospital, also means I can use the little energy I have to do things I like to do, rather than spend it on travelling time to the hospital. I am allowed to go out of the hospital so I am planning to use this as a base and have the odd outing now and again.

A Christmas interlude. It has just occurred to me that, God willing, I will be spending Christmas day in hospital. At first it was quite a shock, but I actually think I like the idea mainly because I have never done it before and its somthing different. I have always struggled with the commercialised Christmas; it really grates on me because it seems so superficial. I've always liked the idea of maybe spending one Christmas day helping out in a soup kitchen or something like that because Christmas is what Christ did for us. I think there is something beautiful about being together on Christmas day, with other people who know that life shouldn't be like this, but standing firm together regardless. After all, it is the sick who need a doctor, not the well, and that's what Christ  came to do. He came to make the sick well.

I had my photo shoot yesterday; thank you to everyone who came along, it really meant a lot to me to capture those memories. I must apologise to those who came after the shoot had ended - I was under the impression that we had more time, but the photographer had only been booked for an hour, I'm very sorry about that, but thank you for making the effort. I don't know how I had so much energy yesterday, I can only thank God for His favour. I don't normally look that energetic. It's a tiny bit frustrating because, on the outside, I actually look well, but I feel far from it. Sometimes, I wonder if it would be easier for myself and other people to process if I just looked how I felt. But, at least this way I should get some nice pictures. It was a very enjoyable experience and I was truly happy, at peace and content. Thank you for making that possible for me.

When I think about it, the idea of having a photo shoot is very bizarre. I am not one for posing in photos, in fact I find it quite embarrassing. I was quite surprised at myself for actually wanting to have a photo shoot done. But as I reflect on it, I think I know why that is. I think I just wanted to do something completely random, out of character and different. I'm not going to take that photo album with me, but at least I can say I've had the experience. Another interesting observation that I made half way through the shoot, was that there was a paradoxical egotistical quality to having a photo shoot in the church. Church is about God and not about the individual; however, it is also about community and people coming together. In a happy accident way, I think that ethos may have been captured. I guess, the whole experience was also very reminiscent of what would happen at a wedding. Even though I was not getting married, the shoot was a microcosm and a taster of what it will be like when Christ comes back to collect His bride, the church.