TW/CW: The following post contains discussion of medical procedure, medical anxiety, and chronic illness.
I just finished Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas and it is easily an A+ book. The book took me by the hand and led me through some of the scariest days in my recent life. For the moments that I was reading that book, my external world, hell, even my internal world, was reshaped and replaced by a book so all-consuming that it demanded every part of me. There were no parts of me left to worry about my present or future.
I did try and focus only on the story when I sat down to write this piece. I dutifully copied and pasted the blurb in this word document and attempted to explain how and why the book transported me so. But I do not have Sherry Thomas’ writing abilities. I could not separate myself out from the last intense few days, nor her characters from my emotions. The latter were simply too loud. Too demanding of my space and time. They had been in abeyance while I was reading, but now they demanded their moment. So, dear bitches, my emotions have the reins.
It’s 21:54, I have a carefully meted out tranquiliser on board and a swamp inside me. In 2021, I wrote about my disease, idiopathic subglottal stenosis, shortly after a couple weeks in a psychiatric clinic trying to get to grips with the changes happening in my life. Then it was Regency romance that I turned to and I tried to understand why.
I see now with the return of my symptoms that I’ve made that switch once again. I read a contemporary every few books, but it is historical romance that is holding me together right now.
I thought the return of my disease after years of remission would hit me like a thunderbolt all at once. Instead it has been a jagged slide into uncertainty, into that swamp. There were the moments I noticed a change in my breathing and chose to ignore it. The moment where other people started noticing and still I chose to ignore it. I pushed and shoved and WILLED the question of ‘active disease’ so far down in my psyche that it was suffocated.
It was my mother noticing my breathing and seeing the plain worry on her face that prompted me to finally book a check up. The check up, a triggering event in itself, revealed nothing. The scope couldn’t see either way. I had Schrodinger’s trachea. So a CT scan was scheduled. That happened today.
Here my slide into uncertainty accelerated. There was the painful familiarity of getting admitted to yet another hospital. It had been so long and yet it felt that no time had passed. I handed over my ID and medical aid card and felt sick to my stomach. There were the bloods to be drawn and drips to be set up. There was the scan to be done which required some very vigorous visualisation on my part, remembering spa days with my best friend and how carefree I had felt then. I desperately clung to the hope that I could feel that carefree again as I glimpsed the innards of the large circular machine through its slim glass panel as it spun around me until it blurred and my eyes couldn’t see details. Then, the wait for the results.
You know who was with me for the wait? Gigi and Camden, the leads of Private Arrangements. While I hungered for the reassurance of friends and family, I turned away from it all and hid instead, in a book. The intensity of their love struck them senseless, unable to function normally, unable to make sense of this new world that had appeared to them – similar to how I felt in the CT tube being scanned.
Then the results. Would this be the bolt of lightning that struck me? No. The report wasn’t ready but I was discharged because there were big discussions to be had about my treatment first. The doctor didn’t have the report but she did have images from the scan. There I saw it, in unrelenting black and white, through a fingerprint smudged cellphone screen. My trachea has narrowed. A lot.
Still it did not hit me. I had to get home and take care of my daughter. She needed her supper, her bath, her bedtime routine as she fell asleep in my arms. I didn’t tell my parents what I saw, only that the report wasn’t ready yet. I whispered to my partner, while the bath was running, that the scan showed something. Something potentially very bad. But we just don’t know for certain.
Still no thunderbolt. I hid some more. Now Gigi and Camden were turning towards each other like the most faithful sunflowers towards Mr Golden Sun (Ms Rachel’s name for the celestial body). Could this be? Could they, after endless tribulations, find their way together. They could and they did and I cannot tell you how much I needed that escape and that happiness.
And then quietly, not a thunderbolt of adrenaline at all, but a steadily rising tide pushing up through me and crowding out my thoughts, a pulsating swamp swallowing me whole. I felt the realisation that from this point on, my life is going to take a different turn to the one I hoped. The surgeries the doctor spoke of as possibilities are major, life-altering things and I’m terrified. Camden and Gigi had done all they could. Their story was told and so mine pushed brusquely to the surface. The truth will out. I am sick again. I don’t know the details yet. It might take weeks, months of consultations and second opinions before a treatment plan is in place. As that rising tide of emotions choked me out, I did the only thing I could think to do, write about it. Let it pour out of my fingers, relieving some of the pressure building up in me.
Only now I’ve created space for the rest of my life to flood back in as well. My mom, in hospital with an as yet mystery illness, but getting a bit sicker every day. My partner who was made redundant. Even my law school studies found their way back into my thoughts. How hopeful and determined I had been when I started my studies. What impact would my disease have on those around me? What impact would it have on me?
So what am I doing about it? I’m going to read some more.
I’m going to read the third book in Sherry Thomas’s London Trilogy: His at Night.
And after that’s done, I’m going to read another historical romance.
And I’m going to keep doing that until I have an action plan. I’ll put the books down long enough to meet with doctors and take care of other aspects of my life. But I will pick them up again as surely as I overcook my rice (which is always).
Romance novels are only one of the arrows in my mental health quiver. I have a thoughtful, insightful, responsive psychiatrist and a therapist who is always available for emergencies. I am blessed to have them. I have a close circle of friends and family who I can rely on. And while I might occasionally ostrich myself away from reality, I always always return to it and face it head on, just once I’ve built up some strength. Romance novels give me the quiet space I need to gird my emotional loins and face my circumstances with clarity.
Reading romance novels got me through this disease once before and I’m counting on it to do the same again.
Have romances gotten you through really difficult times? Which ones?
