Now or never

Some of you may already know this but for those of you that don't, I have spent a good chunk of the last month in hospital. The first time was just a couple of days for a couple of planned procedures. This was shortly followed by just over a week when both sites became infected and I was running a temperature of 40.8 then when I got over that one of the sites ruptured (fistula) and I had an arterial bleed all over the kitchen. That meant surgery that day to tie off the fistula and another stay in hospital until the surgeons were happy with it.

The reason that I am telling you this is that this last thing, the arterial bleed, scared me. Never during the whole of the last year, not even when I was in critical care, I have ever thought that I wouldn't get through this thing. But that Sunday, first of all in the ambulance going to hospital and then while I was waiting to go to theatre I was scared, really scared. I don't mind admitting that I was very relieved to wake up afterwards.

To get to the point though, and there always is a point I just sometimes tale my time getting there, it occurred to me that I have to do this thing now ....or never as the title says. I've dabbled with this writing thing for a long time but to be honest I haven't done it with any real enthusiasm for a few years. No enthusiasm isn't the right word (but its said so it stays), effort is probably a better one. I haven't put he effort in. I haven't written enough, I haven't submitted enough etc. etc.

That has to change and recently it has to a certain extent. The pink pen has been out and had written maybe half a dozen short stories and last week I rediscovered my love of current novel NRIMH which I haven't looked at for a long time and I added about 10,000 words to that. All of these are at the first draft stage and need working on but its more than I've done in ages.

I don't expect to become a millionaire from writing, I never did, but its the pleasure that I get from getting work accepted and published that gives me a buzz and if I'm going to do it I have to do it now because what was it Ronan Keating said about tomorrow never coming? Well one of these days it won't and then it'll be too late. Now is the time to get serious.

One final thing I should mention though is that I am fine. I am currently off work sick and have been for 3 weeks but I would have been off this week and next anyway as I had holidays booked. Other than the two open wounds I have at he two surgery sites I'm as good as I was 6 weeks ago. These need to be repacked a couple of times a week but seem to be healing nicely. Oh and one last thing, hopefully I'll be going on the transplant list in about 8 weeks time.