If words could kill. Well, those were the words that killed me.
Unfortunately, yes. I am still here. Not better, not worse. Still amid the magma somewhere beneath rock bottom. The unsuspecting head of hope has had the occasional peek, before being unceremoniously stomped back into the ground. I am writing today after another long day at hospital, with dry eyes being the only thing that it could be said to have been helped. I had been preparing for the worst, as the worst is what I have become used to. Yet I still let it destroy me. Again.
I have just taken several pills which I’m hoping will knock me out of this world for a good day or so. I thought I would write something before I greet the syrupy walls of unconsciousness. I wanted to say something sacrilegious. Heretical. Blasphemous.
Fuck the NHS.
An unconscionably complex personal experience summarised in the perfect three-word polemic. Fuck the NHS. You have let me down. You have abandoned me. You left me in the pocket-fondling claws of the private health sector. You couldn’t solve the problem of me, and so you gave up. I am your failed experiment, except one you aren’t prepared to learn from. Instead you tell me that there is nothing that can be done and to come back in three months.
I know that I am a doctor’s nightmare. I have come to learn that there is nothing a doctor fears more than a patient that they cannot help. Does that make them good people? Personally, I think it makes them selfish people. Some people cannot be helped. I am one of them. I shouldn’t have needed 62 surgeries and however many thousand hospital visits to teach me that. You can’t say I didn’t try.
I really did try. Every time I did, I inevitably hoped. And all hope did for me was to leave me devastated. If you want to psychologically torture someone, try giving them hope and then ripping it away. Make the hope more alluring each time. Make the contusions deeper. Let the cicatrix form just enough and then rip into it again with another slashing of hope. I’ve hoped enough. I’ve hurt enough.
To today. Today, my consultant answered almost all of my questions with “I don’t know”. It is still the flashing, on top of a pile of so many other things, that remains the most mentally punishing ailment amid my arsenal of ailments. What makes it so unliveable is how it has to be lived with alone. None of the doctors have ever had, or even heard of, any patient that has reported the symptoms that I have. There is no specialist that even the deepest darkest corners of Harley Street can offer. There is no one. There is nothing. I cannot be helped, because I am inalienable to receiving help.
I am special. Amid the ruination of my life and any future, at least I can claim this. I am unique. Hooray. I’d much rather be a sheep. A stupid sheep. I can’t even remember what it’s like to live normally. I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like. I wonder how I managed to once upon a time care about a career, exams, socialising. What happened to that boy who used to look in the mirror every time he left the house to check how his fucking hair looked. I don’t believe that it could have once of been me.
This is where I am. The thing in life that brings me the greatest pleasure in life is taking Valium. The only thing that numbs the flashing. I spend most of my life in the dark. I am in physical pain in so many parts of my body. I have nightly fits of shivers and sweats, anxiety attacks and nightmares. I have continued to seek medical help. I have now spent all of my money on private health treatment, including third, forth and fifth second opinions. I have been on the newest, most experimental forms of treatment not available on the NHS, including infusions of lidocaine and ketamine. I have tried everything.
And fuck you. Fuck you for not accepting what is best for me. Fuck you all who kicked me under the carpet. Fuck all of you who tell me that there are still things to live for. Fuck you all who make me feel guilty through your silence. Well, here’s some vulgarity for you. I am going to be having something which sounds awfully like youth in Asia. I know what you’re thinking. I know what you would say. You all say the same thing. Why? Because that is what everyone else says. Just like saying ‘cheers!’ and clinking glasses, the one and only reason you are doing it is because everyone else does it. Look at yourself. Listen to yourself. Don’t you look stupid?
I always thought I was the selfish one, but actually, you are the selfish one. Because you are too scared to say the words to me. Too scared to even acknowledge their existence. I have two words for you, and they rhyme with duck poo.
And fuck me. Fuck me for wasting all this time and spending all this suffering on myself. There must be people like me. The people for who there is no hope. There isn’t always hope. Sometimes a gracious and dignified death is the kindest thing this, cruelest of worlds, has to offer people like me. Life is not the only way. I am on my way. After one last conflict with the NHS for access of my medical records. I have hope now. Hope to die. In death is the greatest gesture of human kindness.