HALFLING: A FAREWELL TO LEGS - Part 15

The latest in the series about my collapse, surgery and subsequent life in a wheelchair, and the attitude of society towards the disabled - not quite humans, but 'Halflings‘.

It’s not cancer - it’s kidneys! To think, as a child, I used to regularly and with relish eat those belonging to some other poor beast, all piquant with strips of steak in a Bird’s Eye pie, never guessing that revenge of the masticated creature was waiting somewhere down the long and winding highway of life. The CAT scan has revealed that something is amiss with these twin scamps and while I’m very pleased to have swerved the Big C, I can’t help feeling that I’m about to embark on yet another chapter of my hitherto healthy-as-a-horse life which is going to increasingly make me feel ‘O, FFS - just put me out of my misery and give what’s left of me to the viable, so they can have some fun with my bits and pieces!’

Because I was so happy with my old life (lots of people aren’t - I’ve known my fair share of non-stop moaners) I fluctuate at making a decent fist of being disabled. On one hand, when I feel blue about not doing certain things anymore, I think about all the times I did them - enough for nine lives, I reckon. That cheers me up! But on the other hand, I do sometimes think crossly ‘Why couldn’t this have happened to moaning old X? Then they’d have even more to moan about!’ I remain sanguine about death; while generally relishing life, I can see that there would be a blessed relief in not having to drag my poor Halfling body between couch and commode half a dozen times a day, literally extracting the urine from myself and waiting for a bowel movement with the excitement and anticipation with which others waited for Oasis tickets to go on sale.