Hurry Up and Wait

Everything feels a bit ‘hurry up and wait’ just now.

I’ve found someone to swap flats with, but he wants to postpone, I’ve got a new neurologist, but I have to wait for some treatment, and the one I’m trying just now may or may not be helpful, and I’m still waiting to hear about a date for my tribunal for PIP and in the meantime I’ve had to reapply for ESA, so if they take that off me I will have ZERO MONEY. But it hasn’t happened. None of it has.

It’s all just hurry up and wait.

After years of paying for treatment at the National Migraine Centre because it was so hard to get the one preventative treatment that helps at all, Botox, on the NHS, I got a heads up from a Facebook friend who said she’d been offered Botox at Kings, so I asked my GP for a referral there. It took a long time, and they lost the referral, so I had to be re-referred and wait again, but I finally saw them a couple of weeks ago, and it was a thorough and exhaustive examination. I asked a friend to come with me, and it was a good thing I did, because it was a five hour round trip, between travel, waiting, one appointment, another wait, and then at the end the direct train would have meant a 20 minute wait on a freezing platform, so we opted to go the route involving changing at Victoria, something I really wouldn’t have managed in that state on my own. I was practically the walking dead by the time we got home and went straight to bed.

The Botox is on the table, but they wouldn’t have been able to do it immediately (more waiting lists) and since it was due I’d have not only fallen off a cliff til the treatment, but also if I *do* fall off a cliff I then don’t benefit from the Botox for a few weeks after treatment, so it was a good time to try another option which is a weird electric box called a TMS that delivers magnetic interference to the back of your brain. It’s supposed to be portable, and it is, as long as you think something the size and weight of two bricks counts as portable. It’s arrived in the post and I’m having a go at it. It’s too early to say if it is going to work for me, but they won’t let you have the Botox and the TMS at the same time so this is the good time to try it. I’m also on a list, which will be a much longer wait, for hospitalisation to go on a drip to deal with the medication overuse headache from the triptans. You can go cold turkey and risk wanting to throw yourself under a truck, but you can’t do the usual thing you do coming off drugs of cutting down slowly, so this in-patient treatment is the best option. Meanwhile, if the TMS doesn’t work I can get back on the Botox but this is all happening over the time I’m moving house.

(Yay! and Eek!)

Thing is, though, of course, if I’m risking being extra ill in the run up to or over the move, then it’s good I’ve got extra time. I am pacing the packing super slowly. Averaging one box a day just now, some days two, some none. Here’s a picture of the first one.

No one is paying me to say this, but I really do like Ikea boxes for house moving. They are very strong, big enough to put a good amount into, and have handles cut in to the sides. Having moved twice in the past few years I have it down pat, and what I do is mix in books and textiles so that they all weigh the same. I don’t bother labelling these boxes since they will be opened last.

I’m happy to basically camp out for a few weeks, it’s better than risking having tons of stuff to pack and being in the worst world of pain and maybe having to ask and trust someone else to do all that for me. Front loading and pacing is the way forward for this project.

It’s boring, though, having to wait. And it is a boredom that is alloyed with an admixture of anxiety and excitement. I am anxious because so much is up in the air right now, I can’t really strategise for all that can go wrong, and of course, I won’t be sure I’ve got the new place until I am actually in there, but the flat is ground floor and has a garden so it is super forwardable for me and for Poppet. Dare I say, it could be our forever home?

Now, so you can see why I am so sick with excitement, here is a picture from Google Maps of the street I am moving to. ALL GODS, GODDESSES, AND THE LIKE WILLING…

See? 

That blue/green square at the end of the street? That’s the sea!