As people who know me – all 8 of them – will attest, I am shambling berk. Prone to forgetfulness, thoughtlessness, generally disorganised, unmotivated and in a semi-permanent state of disarray, I shamble from one near-disaster to another.
No surprise then, that I failed to notice my brain drugs running out during October.
Friends, dear friends, there is no dignity in waking up on the bedroom floor, naked and shivering, blood oozing from your mouth where you bit your tongue. But such it was that I again found myself in that state, with paramedics again in attendance.
A trip to hospital followed, which now seems routine. But then, during that same day, I suddenly awoke in an even less dignified state. My pants around my ankles, sat on the toilet, blood dripping down the bathroom tiles, head jitterbugging against the wall, dressing gown open, my Auntie Barbara helping me to my feet.
My Auntie Barbara, bless her. Called by my wife in the midst of her panic, desperate to find anyone to help her deal with me as I sat on the toilet, seizuring like a lunatic.
So once more, I remind and implore anyone who has had a brain operation: STAY ON THE DRUGS.
The worst of it is the effect on my wife. Now, she is stuck with the near-constant fear that at any moment I will suddenly keel over and tremble and piss myself and all the other stuff that comes with the territory. Every loud or sudden sound brings her out in a reflexive jerk of fear. Each night, if I wake for a drink, her hand snakes out to touch me to see if I’m OK.
It is damnably hard on her to live with me with this fear gnawing at her mind. And I can offer no assurance that it won’t happen again. The drugs only limit the likelihood of seizure – and cannot prevent them never happening again. And so until at some unknown remove I given the all clear, we have to live under this shadow.
Still, by the standards of the shadows we could be living under, it is a relatively minor one. I just wish it was easier for my long suffering wife.