Maybe I knew.
It had all started with a deep chesty cough. I'd fall asleep and thirty minutes later I was bolt upright in bed, hacking through my semi-shattered windpipe, unable to get back to sleep, difficulty even breathing, pacing the flat in a continual coughing fit. Walking 20 metres meant I had to stop and rest, no real pain but an absolute lack of energy. Weight dropped off me – 6 kilos in a week – I wasn't eating, appetite gone by the by. Zero sex drive. With concern, people began to comment how thin I was becoming, face gaunt, eyes as black as a panda's, looking and feeling worse than I ever imagined. How does Keith Richards do it?
Forlornly I booked into a nearby spa on a seven day 'detox' course, in the insane belief it would cure me, help me. Help me. It didn't even come close but what it did do one early morning after a sleepless night was to ask for a doctor. I could barely stand, even brushing my teeth was a serious effort. They put me in a wheelchair – a surefire way to make you feel decrepit – and wheeled me into the doctor's office. My blood pressure was insanely high, my chest an endless spasm of coughing, gasping for air. He told me to go to the hospital and charged me $200 for this advice.
The state hospital immediately put me in an Intensive Care unit, alongside two other old and sick men, nurses true angels. I was hooked up to a drip, had all sorts of tests done with machines and without. "You are very ill, many problems," the doctor said. I lay on my back staring at the 19th century ceiling, rain smashing down outside, wondering if this was it; my turn to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Somewhat miraculously they have kept me going via innumerable tablets, minerals, blood tests, even an endoscope pushed down my throat into my stomach to check for internal bleeding. Thank god there was none but there were plenty of other problems: gall bladder disfunction, ditto for the liver and kidneys, lungs emaciated by 30 years of cigarette smoke in smoke-filled airless rooms of pubs, bars and boozers dotted around the world, anaemia meaning a low red blood cell count explaining a lack of oxygen getting pumped round the body and my tiredness and lethargy. I'd even had a mild heart attack, just going to show that you don't even know.
I am fucked ... well and truly fucked at 50 years old.
There has been plenty of hospital time to reflect on the boozing, smoking, drugging, lack of exercise, terrible diet, alcohol replacing food, chronic insomnia, ad infinitum, envelopped in the ridiculously naiive mentality that it would all be ok. It would all be OK ...
Smoking, smoking, smoking, the worst drug of all, mouth like a 30 year old ashtray, teeth caked in nicotine, don't do it kids. Unable to sleep, unable to settle, to rest, to commit, body knackered, brain incapable of switching off, sensing everything, smelling the roses. That oh-so beautiful scent of roses, a bath feeling like I'm wallowing in paradise.
Now I sit in a huge ex-communist carbuncle hotel room watching the planes fly in, trams rattling up Europska Street, a chick in the next room getting screwed, her raucous orgasm making me laugh, feeling like death warmed up while awaiting my own flight back to the UK. If they are going to tell me I'm about to die, I want to hear it in English on home territory.
I'll keep you posted ... or maybe not.
It had all started with a deep chesty cough. I'd fall asleep and thirty minutes later I was bolt upright in bed, hacking through my semi-shattered windpipe, unable to get back to sleep, difficulty even breathing, pacing the flat in a continual coughing fit. Walking 20 metres meant I had to stop and rest, no real pain but an absolute lack of energy. Weight dropped off me – 6 kilos in a week – I wasn't eating, appetite gone by the by. Zero sex drive. With concern, people began to comment how thin I was becoming, face gaunt, eyes as black as a panda's, looking and feeling worse than I ever imagined. How does Keith Richards do it?
Forlornly I booked into a nearby spa on a seven day 'detox' course, in the insane belief it would cure me, help me. Help me. It didn't even come close but what it did do one early morning after a sleepless night was to ask for a doctor. I could barely stand, even brushing my teeth was a serious effort. They put me in a wheelchair – a surefire way to make you feel decrepit – and wheeled me into the doctor's office. My blood pressure was insanely high, my chest an endless spasm of coughing, gasping for air. He told me to go to the hospital and charged me $200 for this advice.
The state hospital immediately put me in an Intensive Care unit, alongside two other old and sick men, nurses true angels. I was hooked up to a drip, had all sorts of tests done with machines and without. "You are very ill, many problems," the doctor said. I lay on my back staring at the 19th century ceiling, rain smashing down outside, wondering if this was it; my turn to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Somewhat miraculously they have kept me going via innumerable tablets, minerals, blood tests, even an endoscope pushed down my throat into my stomach to check for internal bleeding. Thank god there was none but there were plenty of other problems: gall bladder disfunction, ditto for the liver and kidneys, lungs emaciated by 30 years of cigarette smoke in smoke-filled airless rooms of pubs, bars and boozers dotted around the world, anaemia meaning a low red blood cell count explaining a lack of oxygen getting pumped round the body and my tiredness and lethargy. I'd even had a mild heart attack, just going to show that you don't even know.
I am fucked ... well and truly fucked at 50 years old.
There has been plenty of hospital time to reflect on the boozing, smoking, drugging, lack of exercise, terrible diet, alcohol replacing food, chronic insomnia, ad infinitum, envelopped in the ridiculously naiive mentality that it would all be ok. It would all be OK ...
Smoking, smoking, smoking, the worst drug of all, mouth like a 30 year old ashtray, teeth caked in nicotine, don't do it kids. Unable to sleep, unable to settle, to rest, to commit, body knackered, brain incapable of switching off, sensing everything, smelling the roses. That oh-so beautiful scent of roses, a bath feeling like I'm wallowing in paradise.
Now I sit in a huge ex-communist carbuncle hotel room watching the planes fly in, trams rattling up Europska Street, a chick in the next room getting screwed, her raucous orgasm making me laugh, feeling like death warmed up while awaiting my own flight back to the UK. If they are going to tell me I'm about to die, I want to hear it in English on home territory.
I'll keep you posted ... or maybe not.