"To be asked to describe what your sister is like is a bit like describing what a blueberry is like to someone who's never tasted it before".
There was a line similar to the above in a monologue play called 'Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister' which we saw at the Finborough Theatre on Sunday night. I'm doing the line a disservice as it was a lot better than the butchering I have just presented above but I really related to it and the whole piece.
It was performed by Rebecca Peyton about her journalist sister Kate who was murdered in Somalia. Obviously not the cheeriest of subjects but worth seeing all the same for her bleakly funny yet hugely brave and moving tribute.
Going back to the blueberry line, how do you describe what a blueberry is like to someone who has never tasted it before? Do you start with the colour? The taste? The shape? The smell?
I only ask this because I often wonder how someone would describe me to someone who had never met me before. We all die and it's only natural that once we are gone, people ask what someone was like out of curiosity. They ask when you are alive so it's a given they will ask when you are dead!
Everyone's thought about their eulogy right?! Okay, just me then. We are all a little vain and want to be thought of in the best way but I'm always curious about who decides on content. I'm thinking a full on Scorsese number with dramatic production, great dialogue and maybe a plot twist? Again, just me then?
I'm in a lot of pain right now and probably why I am having these thoughts. I spent all of yesterday in two hospitals to first have a bone marrow biopsy and then a full skeletal MRI scan. Just in case you weren't paying any attention, it's been just over a year since my stem cell transplant and so I need to be re-staged.
This makes me sound a bit like a production of Les Mis but it is where the doctors want to see if it's yay, she's still in complete remission or hmmm, get the cavalry in again, we have A SITUATION. Like all good dramas, there is a wait for the results although I have already been given a CD of imagery from the MRI scan. Don't really know what I am looking at, so I am leaving it to the expert(s) to go through it with me next Friday. Oh the wait...
I said on my Twitter feed yesterday that the bone marrow aspiration was 'the best so far'. Today not so. I had the hospital's very own version of Louis Spence administering it and yes it hurt, but at the time, it didn't hurt like before. It turns out that I probably had double the anaesthesia given compared to last time and the flamboyance distracted me. He literally numbed the pain.
Consequently, I was away with the fairies a little in the afternoon because even though there was a bit of a performance regarding my MRI scan (mislaid forms, requests not received, an interminable wait), I took it all without a fuss. Believe it or not, I'm usually a bit gobby about such matters but I just wanted to get it over and done with so just sat there patiently.
Now that the anaesthetic has worn off, I am feeling sorry for myself. I think the dear old doctor was mining for gold in my hip as it really hurts now and I am hobbling about like Dr House. I've even got a cane just like him! Sadly mine doesn't have flames on it or a skull's head but it helps me move about.
I wondered earlier today if I still have the fight for this. When you can't even walk up the stairs properly and having to use a cane at my age, it can be mightily depressing. I am allowed to wallow in it every now and again just because it is SO hard to carry on as normal when I'm not really normal am I?
Blogging has now resumed for 2012 - you didn't really expect me to shut up for long did you?! A belated happy new year and an early happy easter.
As you were. I'm off to eat some blueberries.
picture courtesy of sk-lifefitness
