Elder Care Day

I did some stuff today: cleaned the crisper drawer and underneath, made some spiders very unwelcome by washing windows, made tuna sandwiches and cups of tea for several people. 
It's remarkable because it was for someone else. 
Now I’m home, nobody saw me do all that, and you my online people are the only ones I have to tell about it.
Yesterday I painted this, not finished but feels right.

The Last Bloody Day

Today was my last visit to the liver clinic. After nineteen years in the system, finally eight weeks of sobriety plus medication, I am cured.
When I was first diagnosed in 2001, I was at work where we sat in open rows and all used one outside phone. When my doctor called to say the hepatitis C diagnosis everyone could hear my shock.
The liver specialist, Dr Fienman’s office was filled with pamphlets and swag from different pharmaceutical companies. Three times over the years he insisted I receive lengthy, invasive interferon treatment. Friends who had Hepatitis C were ashamed, confessing to each other guilty sexual choices and drug dependence. We speculated about invisible scarring and how it was to spend fourteen months with flu like symptoms because of chemo treatment. As a single parent with a little child, I wouldn’t be able to handle such side effects. I declined. Then an innovation: pegalated interferon, a timed release version, with reduced side effects, only seven or eight months with slightly mitigated flulike symptoms. I declined again. Meanwhile I put my life at risk sporadicly binge drinking and social smoking.
Eventually I changed medical centres and the specialist retired.
Years later after a particularly acute medical crisis, not related to the liver, my health team suggested I go back to the liver clinic.
My new liver doctor warned me to lay off the booze. He lifted his red cardboard cup of coffee and said, ‘the good news is you can drink plenty of this!’
In August 2015, an article in the Globe and Mail told about a new medical invention with sensational statistics. My new specialist rubbed his hands together, thrilled with the unbelievable outcomes reported and with no side effects.
He put in the order.
When thirty days of hermoni was delivered by special courier, a single dose was the most expensive thing in the whole house! I’ve been cured since February 2016.
Today Dr. Juan’s waiting room was almost empty, his HepC business is slowing as more practionars learn the ropes.
He looked at my blood work, asked a couple of questions, then drew a line across the chart page, leaned back and said, ‘it’s like breaking up isn’t it?’
One effect of being cured, my fear of contaminating people or my family with my blood has subsided. It feels like I’m growing down: I feel younger and strong.