Dizzy Blonde

Two years ago I woke up, tried to get out of bed, and promptly collapsed to the floor retching while the room span nauseatingly around me.

No, I hadn't reverted to my solace of yore and gone on the lash.
I had developed acute labyrinthitis and it was a month before I was able to return to work.

Call me superstitious, but I have postponed writing about the scenario which faced me a week ago...

I wake to feelings of dizziness and nausea which cause me to bump into the walls as I try to get to the bathroom. A horrible sense of deju vu assails me and leaves me feeling sick in every possible way.

It isn't the thought of being off work for ages (a prospect which, frankly, I can contemplate with complete equanimity).

No.
It is the thought of letting down the 20 people who have been working so hard on our play.

Naturally, being amateurs, there are no understudies !
(Recently, when the director was asked what our Plan B was should anyone go sick, he responded: "There IS no Plan B".....)

Fortunately, the symptoms are not acute enough to prevent me making my way down to our local hospital. Having a Drama Queen moment? Not a bit of it. On phoning my GP, I learn that the first available appointment is two weeks hence. So I join the long queue of people at the hospital's Walk-In centre - the 21st Century's contribution to medical advancement.

Wow. The treatment I receive here is nothing short of spectacular! So good is it, that my loyalty to Gorgeous GP actually starts to waver....

The triage process is efficient and professional. The waiting is not inordinate. I get medication swiftly, which relieves some of the symptoms. And then I meet Sally, the Nurse Practitioner who will assess me.

I adore Sally ! She is one of the warmest, most lovely people I meet (out of many that day, in a clean, new clinic which inspires total confidence). Habituated to 5 mins of GP time, it feels unbelievably reassuring to have every bit of me poked and prodded; and my entire medical history interrogated.

"Well, you don't have a brain tumour!" laughs Sally merrily, once the barrage of tests has been completed. I pretend to laugh too, but naturally - being an appalling hypochondriac - I can't pretend the thought hasn't been flickering at the edge of my consciousness...

I am prescribed Procholorperazine. I was given this drug last time, and I seem to remember that it made me sleep all the time. But I feel concerned enough to take it without demur.

Fours hours after my arrival at hospital, I am discharged from their care into that of Husband who has arrived to collect me. We essay the walk home, very veeerrrryy slowly.

All I talk about is the play, and how impossible it is going to be to tell the director I am too unwell to perform. Husband looks unconvinced. "Nothing will stop you doing this play" he says. "Because you are obsessed with it".

For two days I munch Prochlorperazine and sleep a lot. Miraculously, by the time the Technical Rehearsal swings round, I am able to remember my lines and not bump into the furniture (the only two mandatory requirements for amateur actors...)

"See?" says Husband, as I sit sewing buttons onto my costume, and running through some speeches. "Totally obsessed".