Hello,
The last 10 days have included more time on my couch than I care for, mostly due to a cough that RATs insist is not Covid. I find illness a quite cerebral affair, I experience my most confronting bipolar delusions when fever rocks up, and the manacles of depression hold tighter during infirmity. Earlier this week, I met with a collaborator for a new project in its infancy, and I came mostly empty-handed due to this infection demanded couch-retirement - our collaborative workshop turned instead into a discussion.
I shared the story of counting with my teeth, a hilarious, and precarious delusion I had some years ago. I remember vividly it was 5am, the morning after I had been on sepsis watch at the Royal Women’s until 2am with a fever. As I began to wake up I had the sense the Prime Minister had tasked me with a role of national importance, of life and death. My instincts kicked in and I began to fulfil my role as a bean counter - using my left teeth to count in small increments, and my right teeth to count in large increments. It doesn’t take a genius, simply someone of complete mind, to be able to tell you this is impossible to do simultaneously and is generally futile nonsense.
The tragedy of course, was I was not of complete mind, I was literally deluded. The emotion I remember feeling was not chiefly anxiety or fear - that came later. The first emotion I felt in light of my failure was guilt and mourning - I understood in that moment that people would die because of my actions and I accepted that responsibility. Obviously, I recovered and when I came to full consciousness I learnt it was nothing more than a nightmare at sunrise, but not for a while. What I have been thinking about, and what I discussed with my collaborator is how these sentences may be received.
