What is it to be then? A bit of writing? Or would you prefer brain surgery?

My writing career has had a bit of a rocky start over the last couple of years. Notice the juxtaposition? "Start" and "Years"?

I decided to leave off molecular genetics research to start writing fiction full time in early 2009. But first I needed a bit of recuperation from what I had deduced to be accumulated stress and a dropped shoulder from labwork-induced shoulder strain (all that micro-pipetting!). The shoulder, neck and back pain and stiffness, by now near constant headache and about 3 hours sleep per night over the last couple of years were getting to me. Not to mention the occasional dizzy attacks.

So off I went for some physiotherapy. When the physio gave up in puzzlement after several months of little improvement, off I went to a Body Stress Release practitioner. A few months of a very little more improvement and I gave up BSR as well. In retrospect, the BSR practitioner DID locate the area where the problem originated, but it just made no sense at the time given the presenting aches and pains. And of course there was no way the technique could have helped with the root cause anyway.

The months dripped by. Sitting and typing at a computer for longer than 20 minutes was impossible. I decided to use a dictation programme (Dah Daaah! - Dragon Naturally Speaking - nice programme to use) - but began going deaf in one ear which rather messed things up because the tinnitus and hearing loss in the one ear interfered with my ability to hear clearly with the other and made using headphones uncomfortable. And I still couldn't sit for long enough at the computer to do anything worthwhile! (Even driving for more than a few minutes brought on deep aches in the head, neck, shoulder, arm and back)

In 2010, things went from bad to worse.

The intermittent ear pain I had suffered for many years (variously and imaginatively misdiagnosed over the years by several GPs and Ear, Nose & Throat specialists, given that there was no visible evidence of infection) now became near constant and excruciating.

"Referred pain from the neck and shoulder." said one ENT specialist knowledgeably, "You'll just have to live with it."

"You probably have a narrow eustachian tube." said another ENT, "Hold your nose and blow into your ears to equalise the pressure." (Sounded like a surefire recipe for introducing bacteria).

"Stress-induced temporomandibular (lower jaw) joint wear." decided a third ENT in 2010 even as I walked into his consulting room, "Not much you can do - TMJ wear is a degenerative condition, but you need to sleep with a mouth guard." (Sleep? That would be nice!). I got the mouth guard and all was well - for a week or two. Then I had more excruciating pain than ever and a precipitate loss of most of the rest of the hearing in the one ear. (I still own the mouth guard. It lies in a drawer somewhere).

The hearing loss was also not a problem for the TMJ ENT. "Your hearing range is normal" pronounced He Of The Mouth Guard complacently, after conducting the briefest of hearing tests as a diagnostic formality, during which time he politely ignored the look of pained concentration on my face and the wearying length of time it took for me to decide whether I should perhaps press the hand held buzzer after all to show that I might have heard something tinny and far far away when the near-deaf ear was tested. And of course there was no need for an MRI scan, he said.

In 2010, the headaches of many years had become so bad that I often slept propped up or else woke up in tears during the night. Three hours sleep was a good night! My sense of taste went all awry (alas! Even chocolate tasted absolutely wierd!). I had bouts of extreme exhaustion (recurrent flu, I said to myself) and nausea (recurrent tummy bug, I said to myself) and in between times I had no appetite signals coming in (I often had to be reminded to eat or else I would go all day without food or hunger pangs. Only the actual sight of a meal would remind me that I was starving). Needless to say, I became very thin! (Some people get thinner as they get older, I said to myself). One side of my face and head went "fuzzy" and was sometimes nearly insensate.

Most scientists would have worked out by now that something was severely amiss. (Dear me! Could the fact that everything always went wrong on the right side have been a clue???) - but there always seemed to be a rationale given for the various symptoms - hypochondria, low pain threshold, peri-menopause, stress, neurosis..... I even wondered whether the various physical therapies might not themselves have caused further damage. I wavered between thinking that I must be a real weakling compared to other people and wondering seriously how I could manage to survive the rest of my life in such dire and constant pain!

It was only when half of my tongue went numb and partly paralysed for a week of two in late October 2010 that I realised that something was seriously wrong.

In mid-November, we met the life-saving Professor of ENT at Tygerberg Hospital, Rory Attwood (on whom be heaped much praise!) After a lengthy and meticulously thorough examination, he went the extra mile to arrange a confirmatory MRI scan, an appointment with a neurologist and an appointment with two of the best skull-base specialist neurovascular surgeons in the world, let alone in South Africa. Thus, in the space of less than a week I discovered that I was no longer a whimpering neurotic hypochondriac, but the cultivator (over an estimated period of about 29 years or so) of a respectable golf ball sized tumour in the skull base - the cerebellopontine angle to be precise. Not that I had long to dwell on the diagnosis. In only 10 days I would be having skull-base brain surgery.

What is going on?

Blogger is not working. I can see nothing either when I try to view my blog or when I am trying to see my posts on my dashboard. Rats!