Dire
I was awakened by agonised howling at about 6 am. Staggered downstairs to let them out and then–don’t ask me how, but I’m sure the 6 am comes into it–I managed to tread in some of it in the process of picking up what I could and hosing down the rest. Didn’t discover this till I came indoors again . . . so it was kind of a while before I could go back to bed. (Hellhounds of course came in, heaved a happy sigh of relief, and crashed out again immediately.)
And I feel like death on soggy toast. I feel a whole hell of a lot worse, indeed, than a couple of missed hours of sleep can explain. Siiiiiiiiigh. And I was remembering How It All Began: I’m a classic ME case. I had the regularly recurring glandular fever (mononucleosis) for two years, which I refused to take seriously, and every time I had it and got over it I thought ‘okay, finally, it’s gone now’ and of course it wasn’t. And after two years of this the ME said ‘we did warn you’ and nailed me. To the sofa for eighteen months.
Even the glandular fever was classic: I had flu, but it came with a sore throat that was like knives, which is not how I get flu, and I remember having a furious argument with Peter about something which I had to WRITE my side of because I couldn’t speak. I remember slashing through the paper . . . and laughing (silently) because it’s very difficult to keep up being furious when you’re ripping it out in illegible shorthand, so Peter would pick it up and say, ‘”and your mother wears”- what? I can’t read that bit’. But the flu kept coming back. I had it for a week or two or three and it seemed to clear up, and then a week or two or three later it would come back. And with it came this weird exhaustion. Being ill does make you tired–it’s your body’s way of saying shut up and lie down–but this had all kinds of strange resonances. Which have since become only too familiar but they were novel and alarming at the time.
After about two months of this I took my saggy self off to the doctor.* And while there isn’t an incontrovertible test for ME there’s a perfectly good blood test for glandular fever. I’d indeed had my suspicions, because I’d had glandular fever–which is to say mono, because I’d been in the States then–twenty years before, and while I didn’t remember the quality of the tiredness I remembered there was a weird exhaustion involved. And, lo and behold, the test came back positive. And I, poor fool, was relieved. Glandular fever is a big stupid nuisance but it’s not fatal, it’s quite real enough to rescue you from any accusations of either madness or malingering, and eventually it does get bored and go away. Last time, you know, it did go away–it didn’t thump and bludgeon on the rest of the way into ME/CFS.
Peter, who didn’t know any better either, was amused at my relief, as he brought me champagne and whippets on the sofa, and he wrote me a poem. I’ve had it on one of my office bulletin boards ever since, including through the eighteen months of sofa time after the ME’s dramatic arrival and a traumatic house move, and I still read it and it still, absurdly, cheers me up. Some time this last month while the ME has been such a menace I pulled it off its bulletin board and started carrying it around with me, because I was going to post it for you. Today’s the day.**
Ode to an Ailment
For weeks I have felt like an under-achiever.
I have lacked all the bounce of a golden retriever
And moped round the house, a mere groaner and griever.
Though in orthodox medicine I’m no believer,
I went to the doctor. Was she a reliever!
She said, “Dearie me, you have glandular fever.”
I have a disease! Not a husband-bereaver,
But a dear little, mild little glandular fever.
It is real. So I am not a sympathy-thiever,
Not a weakling or a wimp, not a self-centred diva***
Nor a hypochondriacal fantasy-weaver.
No more at my desk I will toil like a beaver,
But lie on the sofa and watch Ralph the Riever†
And really enjoy having glandular fever.
(All right, yes I know it is called Ralph the Rover
You can tell me all that sort of thing when it’s over.)
And now I’m going to go lie on the sofa with hellhounds for a while. And Peter can bring me chocolate and champagne. And then I’m going to go to bed. Really early.
* * *
* This was the doctor I would stop going to see, and pretty well swear off all doctors as a result of the last-straw comment of, two years later when she said ‘Oh, I don’t believe in ME. Some viruses just take longer to get over than others.’
** You won’t find this one in Peter’s poetry collection The Weir either.
*** This rhyme works perfectly well in British English.
† Well. Buffy and Deep Space Nine. But they don’t rhyme.