Deals Brokered In The Early Morning

The mood of the last few days has almost passed, but unfortunately my groove for life has not yet completely returned. The fact is it's been a hard week here. One of the hardest in recent memory, actually. And we have had some particularly challenging ones over the last year or so.

Life, you big arsehole. I've had enough of your games.

I won't dwell on the whole situation too much. I think it just serves to say that if you took a lot of my life over the last year (anything Lucinda-related discounted) and threw it in a pile, I'd be there with kerosene, matches and marshmallows before you could even get the wine open.

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One night, late last year, when I was sitting after dinner, my stomach suddenly seized up. The pain came on quickly and the only way to describe it is someone reaching into my stomach, grabbing my intestines and wringing them out like a dishcloth.

Agony.

Within minutes I was rocking back and forward on the carpet groaning. Minutes after that, Dan had called an ambulance. Before it arrived, I vomited on the carpet and the pain subsided. Dan called Triple 0 again and cancelled.

The next day, I went to the GP, who decided I probably had a bad case of indigestion. Even though I knew that wasn't it, I wasn't sure what else to do or say to her. I let it be.

A month or so passed before it happened again, only the next time it was far worse. Luckily, this time, my mother was staying. When the pain still hadn't passed after an hour, Dan and I left Lu at home with Mum and drove into the hospital.

They admitted me to a bed, dosed me up with painkillers. It was 3am, I was exhausted, in agony and desperately fearful of what was happening to me.

Somehow, it seemed to make a sick sense. I have a tiny, new child and everything is wonderful in my life. Now, the universe has come to take something back.

That reasoning went around and around in my head as I lay there, rocking and waiting for a doctor.

As time wore on, I did what many who suddenly fear for their safety do - I begged.

I'd like to say now that I made a pledge with the universe to travel to Africa to treat the blind if it granted me my health, but my pledges seemed to become increasingly humble as the hours wore on.

Let me go home and I'll never ask more of you.

Let me go home to my baby now and I won't make a fuss ever again.

I don't want much. I won't rock the boat. Just let me be. All I want is my baby.

I'm not sure if the universe listened. When the diagnosis arrived, it was gallstones. Devastatingly painful, but not overly serious. The doctors sent me home with a restricted diet to follow until I could have surgery.

Sadly, it didn't work. Within months my condition had escalated and I had developed acute pancreatitis. A few months ago, I was admitted to hospital for five days to have my gallbladder removed as a matter of urgency.

I didn't eat for four days. I didn't see my baby for three of them. My milk almost entirely dried up and I stopped breastfeeding shortly after.

But it was worth it. I got to come home at the end of it and know I was well again. I got to go home to my husband and baby. I got more than a lot of sick people in hospital get.

There's a guilt now. All those deals brokered in the small hours of the morning. Who did I make my deals with? What would they say about my daydreams of a different life?

What will happen now I've dropped my end of the bargain and made a fuss?