last Friday, in the change room at the hospital, I was thinking about why I'm going back to work. I said to myself "it's about self-respect, isn't it?" then laughed out loud. I was half-naked, wearing a thin hospital wrap, and about to go out and lie on a steel plate to be scribbed all over on my flat, scarred chest by the young male nurses who operate the radiotherapy machines. what self-respect?
I cannot read/watch: stories about cancer, whatever the outcome
stories about children dying
stories (and they are very common) about a child with a dead parent. I just can't.
The Freemason's Hospital in East Melbourne, where I am now being treated, is not somewhere I would want to die. It's from the 1950s, mostly lacking in natural light, and, at least in the bits where I go, full of very old people in wheelchairs being treated for cancer. I know it's a tragedy for them, too, but like those young disabled people who are put into old folks' homes, I don't feel it's the right place for me. frankly, it's a depressing dive, fine though the medical treatment may be.
my country place, on the other hand, is 150 years old, with raw stone walls and rough timber floors. it's open to its surrounds through bubbly glass windows. Over the bed I have a mosquito net/drape that I like to think gives the room a romantic look. there, I could die. not that I want to. but it would be better.
