Granuloma trauma

Its always hard to judge what to make public and what is best kept to yourself – but if you search for granuloma on the net you find some informative personal stories – I nearly wrote personal traumas – of this condition so I am adding one. This year has involved a couple of traumas for me so far but the granuloma trauma is sufficiently distant to write about it. Granulomas are a skin growth that can emerge anywhere but sometimes, for the particularly lucky, they are on the face or lip. Mine started as what first appeared to be a herpes sore on my lower lip but then outstayed the normal 5-7 days and kept growing. After 3 weeks I took it to my GP who searched on Google images but could not diagnose it. He referred me to a maxilo facial unit and an appointment was scheduled for three weeks hence. Unfortunately between then and the appointment not only did this keep growing but I had an international conference which I was organising to attend and do a great deal of appearing in public. Though I never believed that this was malignant or there to stay, this was a sudden initiation into the experience of disfigurement, of people glancing twice or of me feeling they were, of avoiding a chat with my neighbour, of sitting with my hand over my mouth at meetings. I was shocked by how powerful and constant my consciousness of this minor disfigurement was. The conference involved lots of speaking to a full auditorium with my face projected twenty feet tall on a screen behind me. This was great timing. Some people would ask me about it but most ignored it. This growth had the habit of bleeding profusely if I drank a hot drink, and in the shower and my hotel pillow would be stained with blood in the morning. This was ghastly. The conference over and, uncharacteristically for me, I lobbied my GP to try to bring my appointment at the hospital forward. Even an extra week with this would be terrible. In the meantime, because it changed from being more like a large red pea (picture 1)

into a small crusty carrot shaped thing (picture 2),

I realised, using Google again, what it was – a granuloma. The clinic said they could fit me in early and I arrived before it opened and was prepared to camp there all day if necessary. I had sandwiches, a flask and plenty of work to get on with. I was seen before 10.30. Once in the chair I was told that it was not normal to have these removed at the first visit (I don’t know why).  Again, uncharacteristically, I insisted and they agreed. An injection of lignocaine and adrenaline in my lip turned it into a large flapping piece of liver approximately a foot wide then there was the slight sawing sensation as Mr Granuloma was being separated from me, and then some unimaginably neat needlework was done, three stitches in a little quarter inch wound. At this point I started to travel somewhere very strange and was given lots of glucose drops by the surgeon and her assistant. They encouraged me not to hurry out of the chair as the paperwork would take forever anyway. In the recovery room I talked to someone who had had her jaw broken and reset for a reason I did not quite understand. See picture 3 for the finished result (of my lip, not her jaw)

The end of the world dream

I am in Hong Kong (not anything like it in reality) and I am in a hotel (like the Adelphi Hotel that I stayed in in Liverpool recently) then walking across the flat roofs of buildings and I climb into the window of an attractive young woman that I am about to initiate into some sexual practice. As I look out again I have the impression that the buildling is moving quite quickly sideways. I jump out onto a nearby roof and realise that there is a huge earthquake about to happen and that this is going to be the end of the world. There is something hidden just beyond the end. A huge light falls apparently from the sky and I just avoid it as it smashes down onto the roof. Someone goes by on the road riding a motorcycle with sidecar. I pray and realise that afterall, the end of the world is a religious event and that I still go for refuge to Christianity.

A dream of The Last Woman

In the dream I am lying in bed with a gay man and he starts to unzip my trousers. I decline this advance and get out of bed and am standing nearby. He says something like ‘Ah I understand, you are waiting for The Last Woman’. I say yes I am. The Last Woman will be the final fulfillment, the merging of the two women.

The body I had to bury

A gloomy and tense atmosphere. I can see into a mausoleum or a mortuary. There is a body in an open coffin that I have to go and take out and bury in a grave. I never quite see the body but I know it is dark bluey-greyish and is possibly me. Martin agrees to help me but I can’t find him. I tentatively ask Steve and he is uncertain. He says he has only done this kind of thing once before and it went a bit wrong. He says something about having a face covered in dark dirt. I realise he thinks that I want help to embalm the body.

Later, or in another dream, I am waiting around in some public area, the foyer of a shopping complex or offices of places that I have worked. It is very late at night or rather early in the morning and I am with my boys and I am chatting to a man who I can see is covered in white luminous paint from a show he did earlier in the night. The whole place is seedy and the shops are selling pornographic videos. I am waiting to leave and I think I know I have to deal with the coffin in the morning. (In reality I had to return a hired van that I had damaged the next day.)

Underground areas and a man who is a lion

It is like a film or, I am thinking, is this a computer game? We follow a woman around as she, with trepidation, discovers an underground apartment hidden under a house. There is a strong feeling of danger.
Then I am outside on the street with a woman and we are waiting for someone. It is a smart part of a town. We are with a man who is somehow a lion, a dark lion and he has four long dark tails trailing on the ground. Suddenly our lift appears, a man driving a silver open top Mercedes and he drives over and parks on the man-lion’s tails. I say to the man-lion that this must hurt but he doesn’t seem to mind.

My Cat is coughing up broken glass

My cat is somewhere in the house and starts coughing up large pieces of broken bottle and blood, or is it wine? I look around and see he has broken a bottle by knocking it on the ground. I start to panic and wonder how I can call the vet.