Lunch with my sister, which is a rare occurrence. She eats fisherman's pie with dedicated focus, and regales me with a list of the medication she is currently taking. A total of eighteen pills every day. I can't remember everything she lists. Anti-psychotic drugs. Beta-blockers. Diazepam. Statins. HRT - thanks to a side-effect of the anti-psychs, she went into premature menopause at thirty. Stuff to stop her drooling. Which is another side-effect of the anti-psychotics. She's more overweight than I've ever seen her. She says this is partly to do with the drugs, and partly to do with the fact that she finds food comforting (especially trifles and Victoria sponge cake). Who can blame her for wanting to find some comfort amongst all this shit? But now it looks like she has diabetes. And her current consultant very much wants her to have a stomach bypass, because he doesn't think she has the ability to lose weight on her own. Brilliant. Why even bother trying a nutcracker if you happen to have a sledgehammer to hand?
We're sitting in a pub, not two hundred yards away from the shop where, aged nine (her) and six (me), we would buy ice-pops to suck on the bus going home from St Margaret's. She was always different and difficult, but I'd never have guessed what the future had in store for her.
Drive home to St Albans with a lump of sadness pressing down on my solar plexus. And a sense of guilt for the times I have whinged and moaned about stuff in my life that's not worth whinging and moaning about. Who knows how close I came to an unlucky roll of the genetic dice? Could have been me. But it was her.
I realise how lucky I am. But right now, it doesn't feel good.
No comments:
Post a Comment