Thought I’d write a quick post explaining the last poem I put up. I tweeted a couple of things but it turns out 140 characters isn’t quite long enough for what I wanted to say.

So in October I had an abscess in a rather unhappy place, which seemed to go away with antibiotics, but in early December it came back. I had another course of antibiotics and it went away again. Then this Friday just gone I thought I could feel it again when I went to the toilet. And I started thinking about how I might have to have the thing cut off. And I started Googling, which is never a great idea. Writing it down now, I don’t know how I got from ‘oh my abscess has come back’ to some kind of panic and fear and crying and wondering yet again why my body hates me and why these things keep happening. Though I read about someone who said her doctors thought the infection from her abscess might have gotten into her blood stream. And someone with a j pouch said their abscess had led to a fistula and their doctor said if they had to operate she could lose her pouch. So I guess Googling is part of what caused it, but sometimes Googling can make me feel better depending what I find, so I guess it’s a bit of a gamble every time.

But now it’s 48 hours later, the abscess, or what I thought was the abscess returning, hasn’t gotten any bigger, and I thought it would by now. But I’ve been poking around down there and I don’t know if I’ve felt another abscess kinda thing further back, or if it’s something that’s always been there and is just nothing at all, I just haven’t noticed because I don’t usually go looking for stuff. Oh and there were spots of blood when I wiped but that sometimes happens, like when my skin is irritated. But I don’t know if it is now, and I’ve just been overthinking all of it. It doesn’t help that I have my annual gastroscopy coming up at the end of the month, and combined with that, it’s all felt like too much.

And that’s why I hope when I go to work tomorrow, nobody asks how I am or how my weekend was, because I don’t want to have to lie. It’s exhausting. I don’t want to say “yeah I’m alright,” or “yeah, it was okay”, because although it wasn’t a bad weekend, this totally overshadowed it. It’s basically what Professor Green says in Read All About It – “’Cos pretending everything is alright when it ain’t really isn’t working.” I don’t want to go into the details as those are too private to say out loud at work, in our small office. But I hate having to lie to save face, or to avoid being a burden or a downer with other people.

I feel like if this thing is nothing then I’m a ridiculous, anxious, paranoid hypochondriac. But if it does turn out to be the abscess coming back, I’ll have to have stronger antibiotics or a longer course, or have it removed, and that’s just another thing to worry about. I guess I’ve just got to wait and see if it gets bigger or changes, or like so many things, I stop noticing it and eventually forget about it. I’ve just got to hope for that. And calm the fuck down.