I found myself wandering through endless mist until the pain became too much. Three full days of a pounding headachealmost mythic in its persistence, defying every little white pill that dared challenge it. Sleep would not come, no matter how many times I pleaded with the dream-fog at midnight.
Of all the questionable ideas, crawling into the tangle-web of the internet to decipher what might be wrong with me was the worst. Google sang its wild ballads: Is it a migraine or a brain tumour? it mused, scrolling past dire headlines as if they were clouds in a darkening sky. My mind began sorting through symptoms like shuffling a deck of ominous tarot cardsby dawn, the only logical trip was straight past the GP to the undertaker.
I remembered, as if from a story told behind frosted windows, how poor Mr. Jerome in Jerome K. Jeromes tale once leafed through a medical encyclopedia and diagnosed himself with every condition under the English suncholera, anaemia, Saint Vitus’ dance, even foot and mouth, which tidily ended the book (under F). He grew almost indignant at being denied puerperal fever and had to settle for just a mild case of typhoid.
And so there I was: after hours of doomsaying articles, Id gathered every deadly malady into my head like stormclouds, until the only sane thing left was to promise, Enough! Tomorrow, I will crawl to the doctor!
While queuing in the corridor, the air humming like the Underground at rush hour, a woman beside me struck up a conversation as if we’d known each other since the Blitz.
Been tippling? she asked, eyeing me sagely.
Sorrytippling what?
Drinking, yesterday? Her brow was knitted over wire-rimmed specs.
No, I bristled, not a drop!
Youve eyes like a hungover fox in January
Typical. I sometimes wonder whether I see my therapist just to learn to deal politely with people who, frankly, need her services far more than I. Thank you, I replied, keeping it as polite as a frosted windowpane.
The doctors room was a surreal little island, and I marched in with all the bravado of a compère at a West End audition, solemnly rattling off my symptoms. The red eyes made a fine flourishtwo maraschino cherries on a lopsided cake.
Feels as though Id been on the gin, but I havent, I added, part accusation, part confession.
She inspected me, shrugged. Your eyes are perfectly normalits all in your imagination, dear.
Sometimes, I mused, the wrong people are sitting on therapists sofas.
She poked and prodded, took my blood pressure, measured my pulse, clipped an oximeter to my finger, and asked an array of questions. In the kaleidoscope patterns of my answers, it was clearno, not just a migraine, something more sinister.
Perhaps I should get a brain scan? I offered eagerly. An MRI? Im absolutely prepared to pay. Everything Id read online pointed in this direction. By 3am, thanks to the web, I had acquired honorary degrees in General Practice, Neurology, and Vascular Medicine.
Lets not leap to panic, she said serenely. Well start with treating the vessels, do some bloods, and if things get worse, well consider scans.
That night, despair had gnawed at me like a fox at the bins. I mourned the sparseness of my achievementsonly two children and ten half-finished manuscripts in forty years. Was that enough? The children were unfinished stories; the books, all typos and coffee rings. On page sixteen of the latest: an appalling typo! Both the children and editors still required much raising.
After the appointment, I collected the children, retrieved the prescribed tablets from a very English chemist and staggered home. At last, I collapsed onto my bed as if my bones had melted into feathers.
The children padded up, all awkward elbows and expectant faces.
Mum, is there anything to eat? they chorused.
There is, I murmured, but it must be cooked.
My head was a dulled bell, too hollow to ache but utterly empty after three days siege. Danmy eldestbusied himself, frying eggs and reheating pasta.
Ive fed Alice, he announced proudly, shall I bring you supper in bed?
A flood of joy warmed me. My sonscruffy-haired and grown enough to mind his little sisterhed not come to harm in the world.
No need to fuss, love, I smiled, Ill eat laterwell done.
He nodded, vanished, and shortly returned with a plate of meticulously sliced fruit. Mum, theres kiwi heretwice as much vitamin C as an orange. Apples toofor the iron. The clementine? It looked pretty but it was going off.
Honestly, what a darlingmine, all mine! My strength glimmered back by the ounce.
Then Dan rummaged for a shopping bag.
Where are you off to? I asked.
Cat foods finished, he said; then Alice shouted from her room, And get us some ice cream as wellthe foods gone here too!
Minutes later, Alice swept into my room with all the pomp of a hospital matron, sporting giant glasses and a floral dressing gown, toting a case full of plastic doctors instruments. Time for treatment, she declared, open wide for a jab?
Call me Mum, wont you, not patient, I protested.
Youll be Mum again once youre wellopen wide.
Obediently, I parted my lips. Waityouve had kiwi? And didnt share?
Help yourself, sweetheart, I offered, passing the plate.
Im full, I had eggs. Now I need only ice cream. Let me listen to your chest Pink stethoscope jammed dramatically around her neck.
Every evening I chase you with a book to get you to listen, but you wont.
Oooh, alls not well, Alice intoned. You talk too much. You chase after children all day. My prescription: one jab, and ice creamif Dan brings enough for everyone. If he doesnt, you shouldve asked.
No ice cream remedy for your poor, ailing mother?
She simply stabbed my leg with a plastic syringe. Ow! I laughed.
Its supposed to sting. Thats healing.
Between Alices bedside manner and Dans fruit platter, I truly began to feel revived. And when Dan returned, ice cream for all, my headache faded into the mistI was awake again, eyes blue, not bloodshot.
Still, I played at being unwell for a little longer, and, that night, it was Dan who read Alice her story. She chose the Cyclopaediawhich Dan playfully called an encyclopaedia about Cyclopses. They journeyed from Saturn to dinosaurs, hotly debating whether young dinosaurs had milk teeth or not.
I lay, drifting half in and half out of the dreama tide of happiness, love, and the secret purpose of a life stitched together by these two unfinished stories.
Later, I changed the sheetsthanks to all the kiwi mashed into the fabric by bickering childrenand finally, the three of us curled up together, tumbling into sleep as one.
At the doctors the next morning, she asked, So, did the tablets help?
I nodded, though truthfully, the only medicine I needed had been the children: always there, all hours, filling the aches with laughter, the gaps with joy, the cold anger with a snuggle.
Hug your little ones, even if theyre taller than you now. Theres no better remedyexcept perhaps a good, ripe kiwi, brimming with vitamin C.
