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Make that sixteen. SIXTEEN hours without food or water (apart from the glucose drink I had at 9:50). Three hour-long chunks of sitting on an uncomfortable padded bench in an airless waiting room, with 98FM playing at a volume just too loud to read through and too soft to make out without concentrating, punctuated by bloodlettings. I did get a lot of cardigan knitted, mind you, so it wasn't all bad.
On my release I shambled up the road, stopping first in Cafe Sol for a smoothie to keep me going, and then at Dunne and Crescenzi, where I sank into a chair and husked "mounds of food, please" at the waiter, and after about six very floaty and nauseous weeks found myself in a position to tuck very carefully into bruschetta al pomodoro and salsiccia e fagioli alla Toscana and salumi misti. And now I feel almost human again. Almost. (I've to phone tomorrow for test results. This seems entirely secondary, somehow!)
I do go on about it, I know, but foodlessness is really not my bag, baby. I'm still half-amused, half-gobsmacked at a conversation Niall and I had a while ago, where I finally realised that he'd been assuming all along that my experience of hunger was more or less like his - i.e. a mild distraction, perhaps shading to discomfort in extreme cases - and therefore that my behaviour and reactions when I hadn't eaten were totally over the top (which, if you accepted his premise, was a reasonable attitude to take). He was surprised to hear about the pain and the dizziness and the loss of coordination and the weepiness and the panic.
It's a genuine physical reaction, but I'm uncomfortably aware how psychological it is, too: last night, although I had a substantial Condemned Man's snack at 20:45 (fast began at 21:00), hunger pains and panic had set in by midnight. I know they wouldn't have been there if I'd been looking forward to my customary vat of porridge at 8:30.
I wonder if I'll ever get over this? It's bloody inconvenient.
On my release I shambled up the road, stopping first in Cafe Sol for a smoothie to keep me going, and then at Dunne and Crescenzi, where I sank into a chair and husked "mounds of food, please" at the waiter, and after about six very floaty and nauseous weeks found myself in a position to tuck very carefully into bruschetta al pomodoro and salsiccia e fagioli alla Toscana and salumi misti. And now I feel almost human again. Almost. (I've to phone tomorrow for test results. This seems entirely secondary, somehow!)
I do go on about it, I know, but foodlessness is really not my bag, baby. I'm still half-amused, half-gobsmacked at a conversation Niall and I had a while ago, where I finally realised that he'd been assuming all along that my experience of hunger was more or less like his - i.e. a mild distraction, perhaps shading to discomfort in extreme cases - and therefore that my behaviour and reactions when I hadn't eaten were totally over the top (which, if you accepted his premise, was a reasonable attitude to take). He was surprised to hear about the pain and the dizziness and the loss of coordination and the weepiness and the panic.
It's a genuine physical reaction, but I'm uncomfortably aware how psychological it is, too: last night, although I had a substantial Condemned Man's snack at 20:45 (fast began at 21:00), hunger pains and panic had set in by midnight. I know they wouldn't have been there if I'd been looking forward to my customary vat of porridge at 8:30.
I wonder if I'll ever get over this? It's bloody inconvenient.
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