I’m sure I’ve said it on here before, but sometimes the on-going frustrations of life with little lung start to get to you.
The last few days have seen a small pattern forming of good mornings and a gradual downward slide during the afternoon, which is just about possible to cope with when you know what to expect. It’s the limitations of the downward turns that are starting to get to me.
Take this afternoon, for instance – by no means a stand-alone example and definitely something that’s struck me over the weekend, too – when K was feeling pretty rubbish.
Home from a day at work and having bathed to wash the day away, like many of us she just needed a little bit of TLC. TLC for K meaning Tea, Love and Chocolate.
Wanting to do what I could (not being content with only being able to offer one of three) I headed to the kitchen to brew up a cuppa and the five-minute rinsing/boiling/brewing marathon left me breathless and exhausted.
It was standing over two cups of half-made tea, leaning on the counter trying to get my breath back that things threatened to boil over – and by that point the kettle had been turned off.
It goes beyond what you’d call “frustration” – it’s so much more than that. I was overwhelmingly angry as I stood there feeling utterly useless and debilitated. The trouble was, I don’t really know what I was angry at. I’m not even sure there is a something to be angry at.
I was just angry. And as if to rub hard-crusted rock salt into the gaping jaws of a shimmering, seeping wound I couldn’t even summon up enough air in my lungs to scream in frustration.
It strikes me as the ultimate sort of irony that the next time I have enough energy and breathe to scream at how sh*tty it all is, I’ll be passed it and won’t need to scream.
But I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to whatever the first thing to really rile me post-transplant is, because boy is something going to get it full-blast.
So a word to the wise – be nice to me after my op, you never know when I’m gonna blow.