~ a bodiless revenant

There is a long cycle that rises from relative calm to acute crisis and back again. Currently, thankfully, I’m enjoying one of those more peaceful times.

As usually happens, when I have time to reflect, I begin to worry about my health. I’m too mentally disorganised [and sick] to become a genuine hypochondriac, but I give it a decent shove.

[The origins of the word hypochondriac are described in the book on Mesmerism I’m reading. Mesmer placed the body’s ‘equator’ and ‘common sensorium’ at the hypochondria on the sides of the upper abdomen. Hypochondriacs were people with unbalanced humours who ‘elicited sympathy, not the scorn reserved for malades imaginaires’.]


First, I attempt to reign in my Nicorette habit. I gave up smoking aeons ago, replacing cigarettes with chewing gum. But I’ve been unable to shrug the actual nicotine addiction. If I don’t watch it, I’ll grind up a forty dollar packet of 4 mg gum in less than a week, and that’s not good for the health or the budget. It results in palpitations and bad head. My answer is to snip the tabs into four pieces and ration these out, with the vague intention of one day giving them up entirely …

Then I begin to worry about my fitness and my heart. I have a membership at the Monash Uni pool, which I maintain whether I go or not. Lately, I’ve been badly remiss in that area. My stomach is sagging. I have little endurance. But at last I’ve returned to the water, where I feel the most alive. I’ve been swimming all week and am just beginning to feel less like a bodiless revenant.

Then I will dwell upon my liver, my Achilles heel. Over time, I’ve endured three long and nightmarish interferon treatments in an attempt to rid my system of the HCV virus, but only the last – a combination therapy with ribavirin - came close to doing any permanent good. Tantalisingly close, actually. I’m sure that the next improvement in treatment will see a cure - so with that in mind I’m returning to the liver clinic, to once more bite the bullet.


My appointment is in a few months and in that time I’ll work to prepare myself. Though these days I’m generally an abstemious drinker, even smaller amounts can worry the liver. I’m determined to teetotal. And I’m going to enforce a dietary regime which I’ve tried and failed to maintain for decades. Minimal animal fats. Water by the bucket load. Ersatz coffee …

All these ersatz substances. Ersatz cigarettes. Ersatz heroin. Ersatz cheese. Ersatz peace of mind … I can deal with it, if it helps me feel human… I love the word ersatz by the way. I learnt it from Philip K Dick, who had a fascination with the German language. Literally, it means replacement or substitute, but it came into English use during the World Wars, when the desperate Germans, deprived of raw materials, used what they had to develop substitutes: ersatz rubber, ersatz heating-oil, ersatz tea, ersatz coffee …

People describe one of the symptoms of Hep C as ‘brain fog’. Well I’ve got that in spades and it erodes my ‘basal hedonic tone’ [this describes whether you feel happy or sad]. I’m sure it interferes with my work, and I’m sure that my daily dose of Spasmo-Nemigron [aka suboxone] is also partly to blame. And that’s another thing I have to address.

It was around this time last year that I decided I’d had enough of the sleepy emotionless cotton-wool world of buprenorphine and tried to come off. Obviously, I failed, but the urge is uprearing again and I’m hot to make another attempt. If things can stay commonsensical and calm in my life, then I might have a chance.