A Week of Withdrawal

Thanks for your well wishes last night.

This week has been the only time that I have parked myself in my bedroom in an effort to get back on an even keel during the whole duration of my illness.

It hasn't been a great week and today hasn't been any better.  I have been nauseas on the new drug but have taken the stance that I have to give it the chance to "bed in".  At the same time I have been trying to get a least a few calories down.  I have been resting as much as possible in an attempt to store as many of those calories as possible.  In a sense I am trying to swing the pendulum of this week slowly into my favour until I am in a better place.

I have hardly seen the kids, conversations with Kitten have been brief and I have even refused calls from dignitaries such as my mother as I expend my energy trying to stay comfortable.  Although untimely, I have also been doing a bare minimum of work to help pass over my responsibilities and ensure a successful start and finish to certain projects.

The new drug has acted to quell the acidic gastric problems that I was having.  It was clearly a mistake to be using the oral morphine to quell the pain rather than wondering what was causing it, but I thought that the pain  was just the stent settling down.  It is often difficult to pinpoint the issues when there is more than one thing going on.

My skirmish with Notoplip last night was typical of our humour and reminds me of when we shared a house in our twenties.   It was somewhat ironic that we rented it as a bachelor pad and we both settled into relationships within a few months of being there.  Our first night there was about as "lads" as it gets.  It was a Thursday, so we went out clubbing and got hammered coming home at three a.m.  Before we went out we started on booze that we had ready for Friday evening, which included a crate of Becks, home made vodka jellies and a bottle of brandy and we continued after we got home

Some time later Notoplip decided it would be a good idea to tell me that I couldn't hurt him if I tried and invited me to fight him.  He wanted me to throw punches at him whilst his weapon of choice was to disarm me and then squash me by throwing me on the floor, laying on top of me and saying "you can't move little man can you?" (that's the link to last night's humour).

In those days I weighed about 11st and him about 14st, both fit and both healthy despite our social activities as I was a regular gym goer and him a footballer.

The evening ended with him holding me up against the wall saying "you can't hurt me little man - throw your best punch", so he put me down and I did.  You have to realise that this was friends being drunk and probably a bit of our animal sides coming out in territory marking.

I threw the punch and knocked one of his teeth out.  It was some kind of denture.  The ones that sit on a peg.  We spent some time finding it before deciding that it was time to retire to the privacy of our own rooms with him congratulating me on the punch.

The next morning my hand was swelled up like a balloon and I paid a visit to Barts Accident and Emergency in central London.  In the evening a group of us went clubbing, me with my arm in a sling whilst the group of us spent a lot of time on our hands and knees looking for Notoplip's tooth which kept on falling out.

I guess that story will resonate with the chaps more than the lasses who will be shaking their heads.  It was twenty years ago though.