Little White Saviours

Precious little white saviours.

Carry them like raindrops, like a newborn baby, so gently and carefully to the sink.

Ritual. Carry with care. Never drop one. Don't put them down. Never lose them. Don't get distracted.

All I have. All I ever have between me and despair.

First the warm tingle in my fingers.

Soon I realise I've stopped crying. No more keyboard-puddles or tear-blurred-screens.

Then it starts to relax. That embattled chunk of fibrous tightness lets go, just for a while.

Slowly, slowly the warmth spreads, up my arms, into my rigid shoulders, tense with holding back pain that is not their own.

Desperation melts away. Fear eases.

I don't know if it still hurts, don't know if the pain is truly "killed" at all. I rather suspect I just don't care any more.

Perception duly altered, I believe I can cope, manage one more day....then maybe another.....then another.

But the white saviours and I know. This is no way to live a life.

We are old friends with "process" and "protocol" and "patience", wearily, we understand the system, it's achingly slow, grinding wheels.

We endure.

We endure

We endure

Patient patients.

A month. Two months. Not long at all in swirling, family-chaos, "human" years, but in pain years, an eternity.

Carrying around my borked-bowel-timebomb, as ever, I endure.