Like a fool I still believe it will get easier with time. Is this a survival instinct?
Anyway, it didn't and it wasn't, my seventh encounter with monoclonal antibody therapy. A grand word for spending a day in a state of drowsy nausea while attempting to act unfazed and not at all scared. In the early hours, I even converse with other humans until the world fades into grey.
You'll be here again in six months, the nurse tells me. I am not sure whether this is meant as a comfort or a dare.  Am I alive because of or despite this therapy? I have lost the plot a long time ago.

Instead, I get a treat and after the predictable 24 hour battle with extremely low blood pressure, I am packed into the car and chauffeured to the sea, dramatic clouds and open horizons, the flat landscape of southern Holland, sipping mint tea while watching the tide going out.

"When somebody does me a kindness, it enlarges me, adds to my life . . . And not only mine, it adds to all life."

Tim Winton   (from: The Shepherd's Hut, best book I've read all year.)

Music for a massive gum inflamation, I wonder what keeps my teeth in place. There is nothing nice about the taste of your own blood. I have tried. Believe me.