Last Sunday I read this article in the Observer and my heart stopped for a moment here:

When your tools for interpreting the world stop working, you cease to feel like the same person. You are not the same person. Not really. And you know that things may well get an awful lot worse before they start to get better - if they're to get any better at all  - and who's to know what "better" might mean, because no one's telling you anything anyway. "Better" might just mean "no worse". And that's when words like "disabled" start to incur on your thinking.

You then stop thinking.

And here:

What do you learn from such experiences? From losing faculties? You don't learn anything  - you just do the losing and then carry on. For sure, you discover that words like "better" and "worse" have infinitely more calibrations than you ever thought possible before, and you become almost infinitely patient in your study of what those calibrations reveal. But there isn't anything to be learned; only endured.

Yes, I have been there. I am there.

Today, the immunologist sends me her latest conclusions on my state of health. Precise wording, a neat list of the various shortcomings and irretrievable changes, history of medication and trials, suggested proceedings etc. etc.

While I am standing there in my kitchen with the letter in my hand, watching the snow falling from a grey sky, my house of cards comes tumbling down. For a while. With a heavy dose of self pity.