1) Drug reaction to metoclopomide (an anti nausea drug they give to kidney failure patients when your urea levels get so high that you are, um... being poisoned by your own urine, fun times). This is the cheapest and most convenient drug to prescribe, but I was in an extreme minority of patients who get a neurological reaction where my head tries to turn around and my jaw locks and clamps down with no attention paid to crushing my teeth or breaking my jaw. I couldn't open my mouth for a week after that. I was told that it's very rare and only happens to patients once; a second attack was a one in a million shot when the drug is stopped straight away - I got it three times, and the third time I was in surgery having a dialysis access line put into the big vein next to your groin. Probably my least favourite moment ever in life was my panicked squeal when I feel my head start to turn again, my neck and back twisting with it as the surgeon was about an inch away from slicing into my crotch. Thankfully diazapam works fast in a cannula and I don't remember much else.
2) Gas. Gas is interesting - was given a whole cannister despite not asking for it when paramedics came to get me four days before my third scheduled transplant date, because something had gone wrong and I'd gotten peritonitus. Again. I'd had peritonitus about four times before that but hadn't had much pain, but this time I was on preparatory immunosuppressants for the transplant and it hit me hard and fast and I felt like I was being beaten to death by invisible chavs. The funny thing about gas (and the paramedics even told me this, in these words, before giving it to me) is you still feel the pain but you don't feel anything else. I literally mean, for those of you who haven't had the pleasure, you suddenly feel like Descartes inital assessment of existence - you no longer feel any part of your body, but you know you are a mind and you feel the pain. You feel psychadelically like if it were not for your eyes showing you you still exist, if your eyes were closed, you are nothing more than a consciousness floating in the nothingness of space, but unfortunately with a dislocated friendship with a ball of pain in the periphery of your mind. And the lack of a connected body somehow paralyses your mind to such an extent you can't get your mind to care about the ball of pain, despite how real it is. I guess that's why the paramedics felt no problems telling me I would still feel the pain but not much else - it's sounds offputting but somehow when your in there, you don't take so seriously that it's your ball of pain, anymore than you would care about an embarrassing child acting naughty in the street. Either way I strongly advise anyone in the future - if anyone offers you a cannister of gas for whatever reason, if you accept Close Your Eyes - I didn't but I'm certain it makes the experience far more richly surreal.
And then 3) let's move on - today I decided it would be the best time to move a lot of the crap out of the little room, the room with no purpose, and leave behind some things I had to paint. The first and most important one being the metal filing cabinet. It's a tragic brown and light brown/sage/misery colour, and Ant's never liked it, and I want it to fit with other colour schemes in the flat. So he suggested spray painting it, which hadn't occurred to me, and I set about researching the best way to do this and all the requirements n shit. We decided to spray paint it black, partly because we've got componibilis and one is a lovely black so they would match, and partly because black goes with everything anyway, and I figured I could accent it with a range of mental colours and then spray paint over them if they get boring like touches of orange or electric blue.
Only somehow I managed to get all the wrong advise and I fucked it, and myself, up royally. I would feel embarrassed but given the affect the paint had on me, I'm not sure I can be considered in sound mind for most of this. Spray paint didn't terrify me like my head trying to do a 180, but it didn't make me feel surreally zen like gas did, here I just couldn't tell when things were in front of me on the floor, got a massive headache and my eyes stung like a bastard.
So the process: I left only big items in the room, I covered most of the floor, primarily dead centre, with an old and massive duvet cover we don't use and aren't likely to find a duvet that fits for again. I opened all the windows, masked up, locked the cat out of the room and set to work.
And then discovered spray painting consistency is hard to get right with a minute's worth of practice. I have drips on the back n side. And it takes a whole can to do less than half of a filing cabinet. And there's a fucking shiteload of overspray with these things. And that's just the overspray you see coming back into your face. And goggles should be listed as essential. And having windows open does shit. And even five minutes of spraying makes you feel very weird.
So moved on to my second project, hand painting a coat stand in Habitat style purple, which was easy cos it's left over from painting the living room purple. Not for keeping, there's enough purple in the house. For selling; I want to see if the faux trendy Habitat fetishists will pay more than it's worth for it.
This went absolutely fine despite not priming the wood, so on that front I was given too cautious advise re: painting. Satisfied with my first coat I went to do some other stuff, popped in the bathroom to wash my hands and discovered under my mask that my entire nose was full of spray paint.
BOLLOX BOLLOX BOLLOX! I hadn't noticed the effect cos I already had a cold so feeling bunged up didn't seem strange. Thus ensued much tiresome protocol of checking with the hospital, danger of death signs blah blah blah blah blah blah. All very annoying, but most likely safe. Mostly consisting of me not going near it, staying out in the open in completely ventilated spaces (this ended up being the pub; we figured near the door counts), drinking a lot of water, breathing through mouth, paying attention to whether I start feeling like I can't breathe, or get pain, or my skins starts to feel wierd.
So I tried to stop feeling odd, had a long shower, got dressed, and then Ant noticed something I had not seen at all.
Everything in the room was COVERED IN A LAYER OF SPRAY PAINT!! INCLUDING THE PERIPHERY CARPET NOT COVERED OVER!!
It's grey now, with a almost perfect square of cream in the centre of the room! I are idiot.
To be fair, Ant says he probably would have done exactly the same thing as me, but to be fair again, he's probably just saying that because I felt sick and embarrassed and annoyed. Although to be fair to me, when I sprayed the natural light was very changable and it was hard to see the proper colour of anything when one minute glaring sunlight is blinding you through one window and the next it's overcast. Honest to god though, out of the 12 articles I read online and two assistants I spoke to in the paint shop no one said that the invisible levels of overspray are so extreme that if you spray in the house you better cover every inch of the floor or you can kiss it's natural colour goodbye :( Surely someone should have known!
Either way, I'm not going near that again, I'm sticking with normal painting >: [ Ant says he'll drag it to the back garden and finish it himself in the next few days, which is very kind of him really, given that he should be harbouring some serious resentment about the carpet and he's fucking busy. He says he doesn't care about the carpet but it's still nice. Either way it doesn't look good that the first day in weeks that I try to get back to the productivity, sticking to schedule thing, instead the living room is so full of stuff from the other room it looks like an explosion in a stationary factory, the little room can't be used and is kept shut, and I've been sloping around acting like I've not just been sniffing glue but eating it, bathing in it and moisturising with it. Spray paint might feel a little groovy (other than the massive headache) but it doesn't help productivity. Good thing tomorrow Ant has his heart set on going to the Odeon for free icecream and stupid movies, means I can stay out of the house.
(pics added by Ant)
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