Time for another post on here.

I'm pretty ill as I write this. I first woke up with a sore throat two days ago and thought I would be able to shake it off, but it continued all day yesterday and when I woke up today I felt literally like death warmed up (I'm never really able to understand that term when I'm well, but I certainly understand it now).

Nose was totally blocked, head throbbing and the tops of my eyes were aching like hell. As soon as I woke up I was in a bad mood, my body was aching and it was impossible to lie down in a comfortable position. I blew my nose and I honestly couldn't believe that that much gunk could come out. Awful.

I, obviously, have the flu, and I hate being ill.

I don't get ill that much, or if I do I generally try to shake it off and take no notice of it. Unfortunately this sickness is pretty virulent and I am not immortal - sometimes we all get ill and I'm trying to accept that (trying, but not necessarily being successful at it, hence being at the computer and making myself be active).

The worst thing for me about being ill is that it feels like such a waste of time. You can't focus when you're unwell and lying in bed feels like such a waste of precious time where I could be up and about actually doing something. (OK, I am no saint and not everything I do is valuable, but I hate being bored too!) But it is also true that illness makes you value wellness more (see some of my previous posts about that) and the more unwell you are, the more you value the subsequent wellness that will follow.

[Of course, as a slight aside, in the case of my mother she is never totally well. As such it's possibly more about valuing when she is less ill. Mental illness, of course, is not a simple concept to understand and there is a debate to be had about whether my mother is actually 'ill', or even if she is just disabled by society's view of her different behaviour. I tend to accept the latter view, but I also recognise the all-powerful restrictions that society places on each and every one of us, and hence me and my family's efforts to deal with my mum's perceived illness. There is, of course, a massive potential for me to get very angry at society for putting me (and, more importantly, my mother) in that position, though I also recognise that anger is not necessarily the most productive of emotions with which to work. It has always, and will always be, a tension that I will live with.]

But anyway, enough of all my moping for now. I might start to annoy myself!

I do, at this point, need to say thank you for reading this. My last post, which has been read by quite a few people, has lead to me getting quite a few responses commenting that the post was touching. If I am totally honest, it makes me feel valued when people write to me to tell me they find my blog interesting. Of course I am writing this blog so it can be read so thank you for reading it. But I also need to dispel a myth that I am a wonderful human being (and if my writing seems to say that then it is totally misleading!) I honestly believe that most peoples' lives are just as interesting, it's just that most people do not write about them. There is a true beauty to be found in the everyday occurrences in peoples' lives, it just needs to be seen.

I am also, of course, a total social slut!

I did promise, in my last blog, to tell you a bit about my oesophagogastroduodenoscopy which I had on December 24th last year. For those of you that read my previous post you will know that last Christmas wasn't exactly easy in my family. My mother got very unwell (partly) because my father got very unwell. Unfortunately I did not escape unwell and decided to get unwell too. Here's the story:

Just before Christmas day (December 21st it must've been), me and my brother Graham hopped across to Calais for one night to get away after all of the stress we'd been having. (Calais, by the way, is absolutely desolate and I strongly would advise against people going there for a break!) We had a nice time, but when we got back, that night I began to feel very unwell.

Not being able to sleep, I got up very early in the morning (3am?) and my stomach was very upset. Of course it eventually happened and I was very very sick all over the place. Not only was I sick but then came the final heave and up came at least 3 of 4 teaspoons of blood. Now I can be pretty blasé about my own health but when I start to see blood I know there could potentially be a bigger problem.

I went straight to my GP the next morning, just to be on the safe side. Annoyingly he decided to refer me to the local hospital "just in case". It was December 23rd and I really didn't want be ill over Christmas and thought he was just being over-cautious, but I did as he said and took myself up to the hospital.

I'm pretty familiar with hospitals, but I have never been admitted to one myself. It's also true to say that I am more familiar with mental hospitals that the more 'normal' side of the hospital, so it felt quite strange being made into a patient. I sat for hours until eventually a nurse came in a stuck a bolt in my arm in order to take some blood. I didn't have a problem with that, but then she left it in (and the amount of tape she used to stick it to my arm I knew that it was gonna hurt like hell when the time came to pull it off).

Eventually a doctor came along to tell me to go to a ward. I was very surprised because I expected to be out very quickly. I started to get very worried about being in hospital on Christmas day, but I did as said and got in the wheelchair and went to the ward.

The funny thing about this was that I felt well, felt like an idiot being pushed in a wheelchair, and ended up being put on the same ward that my father had been admitted to just a few weeks ago. All very strange.

That night I was left on a drip, with about three or four bags being attached overnight. Hospitals are such bloody noisy places with machines bleeping, people moaning in distress, the "whizz-click" of the drip machine monitoring how quickly the liquid flows into your arm, the noisy nebulizers being attached to patients with respiratory problems and clunky machines and beds being moved about constantly. And I wasn't allowed to eat because of my stomach problem.

In the morning they told me that I was to have an 'endoscopy'. This is literally a camera down your throat where they have a look to see what the problem is and decide what to do next. I can't say I was particularly enthused by the idea.

Eventually my time came and another wheelchair was ordered to take be up to the imaging department. I had a doctor ask me if I would like the full anaesthetic during the procedure, or if I would just like the mouth spray which numbs your throat. I did ask the doctor what he suggested but he said it was totally up to me.

Stupidly I accepted the throat spray.

When he sprayed it in my mouth he sort of missed the back of my throat. I could feel its effects pretty quickly but I felt a bit stupid telling him that he missed so I just let it go and told myself I'd be able to handle it. I then had to lie on my side, got surrounded by one doctor and four nurses and prepared myself.

I should say now that endoscopies are not pleasant procedures and you lose all your pride when you're lying on your side going through one. Stop reading now if you are squeamish.

The doctor took hold of a long black pipe thing (there were a few of varying sizes on the wall, some up to 5 feet in length and probably an inch and a half in diameter). How the hell that was going to go down my throat I had absolutely no bloody idea.

He pushed my head back, told me to swallow and then immediately pushed the endoscope down my throat. Immediately I started to gag as my body rejected it. I started to cough and the liquid in my stomach immediately started to flow up my throat out of my mouth and onto the tissue which had been placed under my face.

It was absolutely disgusting, horrible. I kept gagging and he told me to try to breathe. He started to pump more liquid directly into my stomach (it's a very strange feeling to have liquid just appear in your stomach when it hasn't gone via your throat).

I could feel the endoscope poking about, going further and further in, with every push I gagged and more liquid flowed up out of my mouth. I just tried to focus on the end but it wasn't easy. I kept trying to breathe but every time he moved the endoscope I couldn't help but gag. "Try not to gag" he said to me. "You try to bloody have a pole down your throat and feel it moving in your stomach" I thought.

Eventually I could feel that he had moved down into my bowel. "Is he ever going to bloody take it out?" I thought. Then - heaven! - he started, slowly to pull the endoscope out. "Thank Christ" I thought. It had gone back up past my stomach and was now back in my oesophagus. Then, with a slight thrust I could feel him push it back into my stomach again.

"You bastard," I thought. I actually thought it was coming out but he totally dashed my hopes and pushed it back in again, making me gag all over again. "Bastard," I thought again.

Then it appeared he had found what he was looking for. He'd found a rupture and it was still bleeding. In fact he started to sound slightly worried and I started to worry then too. "Shit, this could be worse than I thought."

"I can't find where it's coming from," he said.

"Fuck," I thought.

All of a sudden he found it and asked me to try to stop gagging. "I must breathe," I thought, "must let him do what he's got to do. Please don't let me die."

It was then that he told me he was going to make an injection into my stomach to stem the bleeding. the only problem was that I must try to stop gagging so that he could get an accurate injection. He threaded a very thin tube into the top of the endoscope and told me I wouldn't feel a thing.

When I had got my gagging slightly more under control, he injected me once, missed, twice, missed again, and third time he was lucky. "Got it," he said. "Thank God," I thought.

Then he started to gently pull the endoscope out again me still gagging as it was coming up. Then all of a sudden it was out, it was over; I felt like I had given birth to my very own endoscope.

The doctor gave me a chance to sort myself out and then came over a few minutes later and showed me a picture of the tear inside my stomach. It turned out that I had had a 'Mallory-Weiss tear' which is where you get a tiny rupture just where your stomach attaches to your oesophagus. That wasn't actually a surprise because my GP thought it might be that right at the beginning (how on Earth he had a clue I didn't know).

I needed the wheelchair back to the ward.

It was the 24th December and I really didn't want stay overnight. When a doctor eventually came to see me she said that they would normally keep me overnight but that I seemed generally healthy and that I could go home in a few hours as long as I didn't have any adverse reactions in the next couple of hours.

Graham and Katie came to pick me up.

For the next few days I was terrified of eating in case I tore myself again, but luckily nothing like that happened again.

The moral of this story is to take the anaesthetic if you are given the option!

And so I shall sign off. Steven