I haven’t been able to write this post for a long time. I’ve wanted to but it’s so utterly upsetting that I couldn’t deal with it.
I missed my degree show.
Not missed as in someone called me and asked me where I was, they all knew where I was. I was lying in bed on lots and lots of painkillers.
The Monday before our set up I did a workshop with the lovely Dear Lido people and thought a bug had bitten me on the bum. By Thursday (indicentally, set-up day) I had to go to the doctors because it had became painful to sit. I was diagnosied with pilonidal abscess (feel free to google it) given antibiotics and told to go on my merry way.
So I continued to install my work and help people with vinyl, I even managed a succesful interview for a job in Throwing Stones restaraunt. I wasn’t taking it too seriously really.
Then on the Sunday Daniel decided we needed to go to hospital, I had a temperature that meant it was difficult for him to be in the same room with me. And what had been a bug bite a week ago looked like the beginnings of a tail. I was admitted and had surgery the next day.
They drained the abscess and left me with a five centimeter hole at the base of my spine. I wasn’t in a lot of pain but likewise, I couldn’t really walk anywhere. Before I was admitted the wound had to be packed, something that had to happen every day. It left me a quivering wreck for the first month but it’s odd what the body gets used to.
I was still hopeful I might make it to the opening, I had a week to get better! There were jobs to do! I had some tramadol, surely I could stand up for a few hours and talk about my work. If not, what had been the bloody point?
Well Friday came, and I had another fever and wouldn’t have been able to be transported to NGC so sent Daniel off to make sure everythign went okay. After he left I started rushing around to try and get there, I must have been in some sort of state, and I didn’t go.
I’m told it went well, but how much does that really mean? I managed to go to New Designers a couple of weeks later, mostly because I couldn’t loose all the money I’d put into it. But I spent the whole week lying down in our basement flat hating Londoners for being able walk around their lovely city.
I’ve been getting better for two months now, and I can start to feel a bit more creative again. I might be capable of making something soon. The worst thing about the whole experience is that this is now what I will remember about university. That in the last weeks of being a student I managed to get so sick that I missed the thing I’d been working towards for three years.
In my sainer moments I’m able to be happy for my time at university, but I can’t deny the whole thing has been tinged by my first ever illness.
Perhaps I’ll do a serious of pieces about it, suffering improves art, right?
