Greetings and thanks for reading. The big one-zero today. Feeling replenished by yesterday’s 2 units of the red stuff. Had very little sleep last night due to a lot of coughing in the night (leading to medieval-bedlam style mouth froth) and I still have difficulty swallowing. Other than that, no big complaints – things just aren’t so bad.(Perhaps I’d be singing a different tune sans morphine) I’m chilling out, and getting all the food, water, anti-sickness medication and morphine I need, automatically pumped into my body. And look, my hands are free to type this. Okay, I keep falling asleep between every sentence and the late-night snooker is mixing up a strange cocktail of its own, interweaving into morphine-induced reveries (the last of which, by some freudian connection, featuring the Cheeky Girls on an InterCity train and me hovering from cabin to cabin announcing – among gasps of disbelief – my imminent departure from the train.- interpretations on a postcard please) So please understand if this reads a little dreamily.
The doctors are happy with my progress and say that I am in a very good condition for this stage of the treatment. Good-o, have settled in here – and the less impatient I get. so the days are tunbling by a tad bit quicker.
As I sit here typing in the wee hours of the morning, I marvel at the ability of the human body to adapt to such treatment & abuse. The body just wants to live, and happily adopts artificial orifices and probosci to achieve that end. A plastic tubing running from my stomach up my throat and out of my right nostril in order to absorb ‘pre-chewed’ omni-food, now feels perfectly normal. The same may be said of my Hickman line that now feels like part of my body: a 3-pronged, easily-accessile exo-vein ( or exo-artery) with standard connectors. Technology has provided the human body with an evolutionary lineage of its own-transforming us into organic/technological hybrids. Telephones have thrown our voices over thousand of miles, spectacles remedy nature’s imperfect optical system, we steer our cars with as little conscious control as when we walk, good typists think words onto a page, we virtually ‘chat’ to others all over the world and we can replace entire organs – even a complete immunity system. It can be difficult to tell where we end and the technology begins and indeed, where it all may end. (homo sapiens technicus?)
With this rapid expansion of technology comes a great responsibility. Perhaps the most important technological development will be the much-needed Intra-Cerebral-Common-Sense-Filter.
Good night.
Milton
