An idiopathic shadow

I have been silent on my blog for a while now. Part of that was starting a new job, in a new town, as a trainee teacher. Another part, is my deteriorating health that makes every day a struggle without reprieve. I have been suffering idiopathic allergic reactions and anaphylaxis since I moved to start my new role, which on a number of occasions has left me on death’s door, which has been, frankly, traumatising. I still work. I try to pretend that I am coping, but every time I get an itch, the anxiety sets in. Yesterday, I found out that after five months of waiting, and four anaphylactic episodes, my allergy clinic appointment was cancelled and the referral pulled from under me, with no communication from the clinic or my GP, and at this point, I don’t know how to continue as I am. I am lucky that I have a partner, friends, and family who look out for me. But with austerity in the UK as it is, and NHS services being deliberately underfunded, myself and millions more people living with disabilities and life threatening conditions are living with this fear and anxiety and any support they had is pulled out from under them.

An itch is just an itch

or so it should be,

though sometimes persistent

you scratch

you forget.

But an itch is not just an itch

and I live in the shadow of it.

It is fear

it is the heat of molten metal

scalding inside and out

and it is the buzzing in the ears

before the vision flickers, dies.

I wake, throat sore with a scream

that I couldn’t quite vocalise,

an alien in my own skin

unrecognisable hands,

choking on nothing

on everything

lost track

of how many needles pierced my skin

forced my heart to keep beating

two voices competing

I don’t want to die

how can I live?

An itch

is sleepless hours in a chair

in a crowded hospital corridor

my veins flushed with salt water that my body rejects

nausea

hunched over in that chair, in the corridor, and

no one stops to look you in the eye in that place

not even when they finally come, too late, to take more bloods.

An itch, is the exhaustion that doesn’t end

the bitter taste of predisnone,

the return to work like nothing happened

the constant flickering glances down at my arms

was that the fabric catching my skin, or is it about to begin

again?

It is the wait for the life saving adrenaline

when you can’t get hold of an epipen

the world is fading and the scream

caught somewhere beneath my throat, and welling there.

It is the months without word,

and the rejected referral

because of an admin error,

and each attack is getting worse

its been two months

when will the next one come? (It will be soon),

and sleepless nights

spent scratching at hostile skin.