A tiresome cold has struck me down, with a fluctuating temperature that has required me to down paracetamol on top of all my usual medicaments. It is cold and wet and windy, Arsenal only managed a draw against Middlesboro', and I am feeling like rubbish. And I can't even have a cup of tea until I get my temperature under control.
It has been a funny week all round. An interview for the Guardian that took over two and a half hours, filming for a DVD that the Spinal Injuries Association are putting together a DVD for newly injured people and their families, to help to paint a picture of life after spinal cord injury, something that can be very difficult to imagine, when all of your hopes and dreams seem to be lying in a shredded pile beside your hospital bed. Or in your locker, if someone's been tidying the ward.
The week turned decidedly more strange on Friday when I attended the 'IV Challenge' (now there's a reality show idea just waiting to happen) at the pain management clinic. This involves being shot full of different drugs to see if they have any effect on my levels of neuropathic pain. About a month ago, I was given intravenous lidocaine for an hour, the only effect being the triggering of a really bad pain episode that night. It could have been coincidence, but I won't be rushing back to try that one again.
This week, it was Ketamine. So, armed with the new Goldfrapp on my ipod, I took to the bed with enthusiasm. It was pretty spacey (both the Goldfrapp album and the drug-fuelled experience). During the infusion, I can say with certainty that I could not feel any pain. I could also not feel any inclination or understanding of how to do anything but lie with a stupid grin plastered between my ears. When asked to mark on a line indicating a scale from no pain to acute pain, I first put the mark half way along my arm which was holding the clipboard from the no pain side, before being told to have another go, although it seemed a bit like a surreal version of pin the tail on the donkey. This whole experiment proved only one thing. Intravenous ketamine is not a cure for the common cold.
Possibly coincidentally again, I had really bad neuropathic pain again on Friday night, but it tends to be worse when I'm ill or when it is damp, so there were a few possible factors to accompany the old 'randomsonofabitch' element in all of this.
Still, onwards and upwards, and other nonsensical platitudes. One more box of tissues and I'll have this cold cracked. By which time R will have it again, and we can start over. Winter, don'tcha just love it?
In which case I recommend you spend the next winter here!!