Some job stuff and some health stuff
25.06.06, 12:16 pm

I was going to finish writing this and post it last night, but then Becky rang me and we ended up talking for an hour and a half about lots of important things, and it was then too late once I got off the phone. Consequently, the entry is all in context to it having been written last night. Also, I�d like to retract everything I said about the Healing Weekend, as I now understand it properly and was completely out of order. And finally, like usual a load of stuff has happened and I�ve left it too long to write, and so apologise for the insane length of this entry.

Nottingham, you have my heart. As much as Sheffield has my body, soul and love, you will always have my heart. I went down to Notts last night to see my gran and sister (currently back from Paris for a week) and belatedly celebrate the 2. 1, and going back there always truly feels like going home, and the safest that I could ever be. Chronological order be damned; I�m very tired from my KFC eating and Dr Who watching (sadly I�m being serious here - the MI takes no prisoners) and want to write about trivial things before dealing with the earlier serious stuff like the hospital appointment and the interview.

Seeing my gran was nice, as indeed it always is, and both her and my sister commented on how I�d lost yet more weight. I�m guessing that�s the MI, seeing as exercise doesn�t really happen anymore as it makes me want to collapse and die. My gran made me and my sister sleep in her double bed whilst she slept on the sofa, claiming that she�d been doing it for days now, but I remain unconvinced. Al decided to pick lying-down-and-closing-eyes time as the absolutely perfect time to yammer on about her latest love-life crisis, and demanded my opinion on every aspect. She then spent the night talking in her sleep JUST LIKE ALWAYS � some total bollocks about asking someone about �it� when they got back, and to just go over there for a while � and stole all the covers. This morning I did some gardening for my gran and promised to come back soon and do some more, and felt horrifically guilty for not visiting her more often. I feel too guilty too often about too many things. Got the train back in the afternoon and randomly bumped into Gaggin, who�s a friend of Paddy�s, and sat with him and talked about random crap for an hour and resisted making any puns involving his name.

I�m playing The Prodigy really loudly and drinking Diet Coke in attempt to battle this insane tiredness, but it�s not working and consequently I�m decidedly unwitty today. Sorry about that. Not that I�m claiming to be even slightly witty normally, but I think this entry is decidedly monotonous. Although to be honest, I�m quite impressed that I�m managing to write in proper sentences, especially as I initially spelt that �quite� as �quiet�. On a completely unrelated note, today definitely seems to be Perv Day. If one more sleazy guy looks me up and down on the street and winks, says hello or goes �Mmm mmm!� I�m kneeing them in the balls, and any claims of GBH can go fuck themselves.

Okay fine, time to write about serious stuff that I don�t have the energy to describe in any great detail. I�ll deal with the interview first. In a nutshell, the job has to be advertised publicly in order to make it legal, and he�s already got one really good candidate for the job, and the actual job is a huge fuck-off 9 year job that would require me travelling to Manchester, Bristol and London. So the interview started off very badly, but then as it carried on he tested what I�d do to fix various stressful situations, and I passed that with flying colours, and he said that I seemed a very energetic person and that he liked that and wanted someone like that, and by the end really seemed to like me and said he was very impressed. I have to formally apply for the job and may very well get short-listed, but there�s bound to be more qualified people than me applying for it and I doubt I�ll get it. To be honest, I�m not even sure if I want the job anymore; it seems quite a massive, big-responsibility basically-taking-over-things-whilst-he�s-not-here kind of deal, and I�m not sure if I want my first job to be that intense.

The other major event is the neurologist appointment. After a lovely nurse took my blood pressure (bit high, as it always is because I HATE having it taken) and took down my height and weight, I went and saw Neuro, who was a 50-something Eastern European guy with truly awful social skills. After taking lots of boring personal details, he made me recount all my symptoms (getting so sick of doing that, and always feel like a total nesh loser saying that I�m �tired all the time�) and wrote down random scribbles that I couldn�t work out. He then made me walk up and down and basically performed all of the neurological tests that both Dr Blood Test and the doctor at A&E did, to check that I don�t have Motor Neurone Disease or Muscular Dystrophy or Multiple Sclerosis or something else equally nasty. He also showed no mercy in testing my reflexes, and really, if one more person hits my knee with a rubber hammer or strokes the sole of my foot with a pen I�m seriously going to lose it. And then he washed his hands, which is obviously good hygiene and to be expected but made me feel like a total hobo.

Basically it�s the same old drill: all my neurological signs appear fine, and he doesn�t know what�s wrong with me either. He ordered some blood tests (Me: Yeah, I�ve already had a load of blood tests and they�ve all come back fine Him: I shall order some other blood tests, i.e. I don�t care), and after going home and showing the papers to Em, she told me that he�s basically done what all medics are told not to do, which is order blood tests for absolutely everything. Anyway, I went to the hospital yesterday afternoon and had my blood taken by some total nurse robot. Seriously, I�m so glad I don�t have a needle phobia or anything, as she didn�t care about anything except shoving that needle in and changing the vials round, and had no qualms in tightening my tourniquet until it hurt. I didn�t dare ask for her to loosen it a bit, in case she commenced a verbal smackdown. And she replied to my, �Thanks very much� (I�m too polite for my own good) with a very creepy, �My pleasure�. That woman has issues.

Sorry, I�m completely wandering off the point. Neuro said that he�ll see me in a few weeks (go wonderful efficient NHS, my bestest friend of all my friends!) to look at the results and see how I�m doing, and if they�re all clear then they�ll think about doing some scans and stuff. I�m guessing that�s to check for things like cancer or brain atrophy or whatever. The whole thing�s got me quite pissed off, because I�m getting a bit sick of endless people taking my blood and finding nothing wrong with it. And if I�m going to be honest, and I may as well be, I�m starting to worry now. Worry that no one�s ever going to find out what�s wrong, and that I�m going to have to have this mystery illness forever, and how am I meant to get a job when walking to the shop and back makes me tired? Or worry that it�s going to be something horrible that normal tests just don�t pick up, like cancer or some nasty infection thing. The whole thing�s shit.

Sorry, I'm just really frustrated at the moment about a million different things, and I would write about them all but this entry is just too long already.

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