Edward Allen

 Dear All,

I’m exhausted, emotionally exhausted, but I am making progress and am getting better. It is slow progress and sometimes things are very tough indeed. This season of being so unwell has felt like a bit of a nightmare that sometime I’ll wake up from and feel normal and well again. I’m reminded that at the end of the storm is when we feel least able to cope with more battering, but it doesn’t make the battering any easier.

The really good news is that my joints are lots better, my pain is much less, and the medication I’m on is working exactly as my doctor expected it would. My back is less bad and a little more flexible too.

I went back to hospital on Saturday, it was my 11th hospital visit since the end of September; I worked out I’ve been to hospital more in the past 10 weeks than I’d been to in the previous 10 years. It is no longer scary, the drill is very calm and the nurses seem to like me. First they take my blood pressure which is too high (like I look like someone with low blood pressure?) and then they weigh me and I’m putting on weight (goodbye Mr Christmas chocolate) and then they throw me to the vampires, I mean they take me to have my blood taken. Normally before they take my blood I pray sincerely that they’ll be good at taking at but this time I was late with that prayer. There is always plenty of waiting around too, sometimes hours, but I’m so used to it by now it scarcely bothers me.

The results of this latest blood test weren’t great, I’m quite concerned as there seems to be some issue with my white blood cells. I’ll have another test done on Friday, and then I fly back to the UK for a desperately needed break on the 22nd December. The problem with this disease is that it has an amazing ability to hit hard when I’m feeling at my weakest. And it does hit hard.

I’m sick of being sick, weary of battling on. I’m still positive, well positive enough, but this feels like a boxing match that is going 10 rounds too long. And I am so so frustrated that it is taking such a toll emotionally. The physical pain I’m well used to handling, spiritually I’m doing wonderfully well, but emotionally I feel so vulnerable and so wish it wasn’t affecting my emotions but it clearly is and not in a good way and that isn’t always so easy on people around me. I feel bad about how I’ve been to some people.

I’ve never once doubted in all of this that Laos is the right place for me, where I meant to be, and I dearly love this nation more with every passing day. I love it here dearly and I’m very happy here too. It is nothing more than a bad storm, and a chance to take stock and think hard about what I’m doing and how I’m doing it here. Things are in better perspective now too.

But it will be so nice when it is over, so nice, and I can get back to fully and properly doing what I love, which is working with the rural poor.

lots of love,

Ned