I’m in a very weird situation with my body at the moment.
On the one hand, it’s reeling from the effects of the infection and is suffering the usual IV hangover that comes with the first few days of pumping extremely high doses of pretty hard and powerful drugs into your system. On the other hand it’s simultaneously feeling a huge surge of energy and general boost that comes from having large doses of steroids crammed in on top of everything.
It can’t decide whether to be super-tired or super-energised and it’s seemed to settle on some sort of manically-driven half-way house, where I feel like I can take on the world if only I could have a 10 minute cat nap first…
Still, the main thing is that whatever’s happening, it’s definitely doing the right thing. Without a doubt I feel hugely better than I did earlier in the week, tiredness aside, and I know that if my appetite is returning (or back with a vengeance) – even if it is steroid-related – then I’m definitely on the mend.
I’ve never been particularly good at recognising (or acknowledging is a better term, I suppose) the signs of an on-coming infection, so I’m quite pleased not only that I picked up on it properly this time, but reacted in the right way by getting myself to Oxford as soon as I could and not just waiting around for my next appointment, by which time it could have taken much greater hold and really started to kick my butt.
I was back at Oxford yesterday for a physio session, which is also a cunning ruse on the part of the team to give me a quick, unofficial once-over to see if there has been any improvement. They think we don’t know these things, but we really do. Still, cunning or not, it was reassuring to know that the team all felt I was looking better. Being multi- rather than mono-syllabic must have helped.
Strangely, this period of minor health-hiccup has coincided with a bright spark of inspiration and I’ve finally broken the back of the script I’ve been working on for the last few months. I’m now 70 pages in, about 20 pages from the end – at a guess – and it’s all coming together beautifully. I actually can’t wait to sit in front of the computer and bash out the next six pages each day and often feel like I could do more, had I the alertness to keep focused for long enough.
Still, I’m hoping to have finished my first draft by the end of the weekend and to have redrafted within the week. The stages between my first and second drafts are very quick – it’s pretty much a read through and polish with a couple of additional scenes, at which point I’ll then sit and work through it much more slowly and may seek out a couple of opinions from people who will give me good, honest notes.
Funnily enough, a great friend of mine for whom I am nominally writing the script, happened to text me on Wednesday to see how I was doing (health-wise, not script-wise) and it was the same day that the whole things became clear and concise in my head, so maybe there’s a spooky little connection thing going on in my head there, somewhere. Whatever it is, I’m really enjoying it.