Two Tiers

I have moved up in the world in a few ways. 

I am up north, in the big smoke.

I have started my stereotactic body radiotherapy. I had to have two planning sessions a few weeks ago, where they trained me in and figured out if I was up to the challenge. 

Basically, in order for the super-duper-extra-lethal radiation dose to go to the right place e.g. cancer, and not the wrong place, e.g. vital blood vessels, I have to lie extremely still while they zap me. Being clever scientists, they do not rely on twitchy unreliable humans to lie that still, so they have found a way to immobilise patients without having to hit them over the head with a hurley. 
Clever scientists that they are, they have come up with all sorts of restraining techniques which apparently do not breach the UN charter of Human Rights (or maybe no one bothered to check). 

First, I lay down on a comfy enough but slightly plasticky mattress. Nice enough. Then, when my angles and bulges have made a decent imprint on the bed, they suck all the air out of the mattress and leave it like a personalised egg-box, with the shape of me forever indented upon it (think Han Solo). 
My head is wedged in a block and I have to raise my arms over my head and clutch a pair of handles to keep me there. Not a bit intimidating.
Then they cover my body in cellophane. Where the heck is this going, I think. 
Out comes the vacuum cleaner.
Right. 
The air gets sucked out from under my plastic coating, and hey presto, I'm ready to be sous-vided.

So I am pretty stuck. Not much wiggle-room here. But I can't complain if it means they will keep their zapping in the right spot. 
But what if I sneeze?
What if I hiccup?
Or fart? (I know, I know, girls don't fart).

They reassure me that the machine has an automatic cut-off if I move. 
So what's with the extreme incarceration then?

Anyway, they did a load of scans with me in the right position, and they did a load more the following week to make sure my body had suddenly morphed into an ostrich or something, and then the big day came when the zapping would begin. 

It all went swimmingly. No sneezing, no hiccuping...
I have to hold my breath on the out-breath and then "breathe normally" (that old chestnut again).
The first day I listened to the Bee Gees, then Boney M, then Buddy Holly from, presumably, The ABC Album of Safe 70s Music.
Yesterday I had a few minutes of Bach's something or other and then it all went silent, except for the sci-fi noises of the machine rotating and twisting and suddenly stopping, and the kind ladies saying "hold your breath" through the intercom. 
There is a round hole in the roof tile directly above my head, with a deep darkness beyond. I'm pretty sure there's a metaphor there.

Anyway, I have three more of these sessions to go, and then presumably someone will find out if it worked or not, and then someone will tell me. 

A familiar road. 

What I am not familiar with, though, is my environment here. 
I am in a different city, and in a different social mindset. 

The hospital where I am receiving treatment caters for those people in Ireland who can afford private health insurance, or who have wads of cash to throw over the counter. 
It is not the type of hospital that I am used to.
There are living plants in the lobby. There are no cigarette butts outside. The restaurant has quinoa salad and mushroom roulade. 
There is an air of calm around the place. You get the feeling that, most of the time, everything just works. 

I feel like an imposter, the same as I do when I set foot in Brown Thomas. I am hoping no one will notice that I am an intruder. The fact that I am having my treatment paid for by the HSE does little to alleviate that feeling. I have been upgraded to First Class on Singapore Airlines when I bought a Ryanair ticket to Benidorm. 

Even the suburbs around the hospital are swish. The roads are wide and heaving with impatient commuters. The houses are behind gates. The unfinished recession-victim apartment blocks still have faded signs promising modern sophisticated living. This is the actual name of a not-made-up, real-life shop.

I don't know why I am so uncomfortable with privilege. 
I have never suffered from Catholic guilt, but I have a desperate dose of the middle-class stuff. 

I was sitting in the restaurant of my (cheap) hotel this morning, and I could see the chimney tops of the large stately home where my mother grew up, which is now a rehab centre for those with enduring mental illness. 



Where's that Freud lad when you need him?








P.S Here's a great song about Cork people's attitude to Dublin. The quality isn't great but trust me it's a good one. (2 million people can't be wrong).