Is This My Feminine Side?

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So, apart from having the flu every week, experiencing riba-rage attacks, feeling generally shitty, fatigued and can`t be arsed with anything and going around bursting into tears like a demented Gazza – apart from all this, what good is the treatment doing me.
Well, quite a lot actually. Aside from what the combo is meant to do, namely, clear the virus what else am I getting from this consciousness changing experience.
I said to my nurse just 3 weeks into tx,
“Previous experience with mind altering drugs is a definite advantage when you are on combination therapy”.
She said nothing but smiled sweetly and knowingly to herself. She is very pleased with me, by the way, and says my bloods tell her the tx is working. I have put on a couple of pounds which she was delighted with, even though, according to the NHS weight chart I am 2 stone overweight already.
“You`ll be needing that weight later on” she said, with a knowing nod that did send just a mild chill through me.
The only people who take that damn weight chart seriously are dyed in the wool “health professionals”. It`s the biggest load of bollocks since Anton Mesmer claimed he could heal “hysterical women”, by putting them in baths of iron filings. Mesmer wasn`t that daft, as he soon discovered that once you had persuaded a woman to do that, well, need I say more………He was french, of course.
Speaking of women, that is the first major area of change in my thinking. I am familiar with the term paradigm shift but never use it because I don`t like it. It doesn`t tell you anything does it. I much prefer the terms consciousness changing, mental shift or mind blowing. But my attitude towards women and my understanding of them has increased massively.
It all began when I complained to my nurse of waves of nausea, especially early in the day. She said,
“Yes, that`s normal, it`s like morning sickness”.
Having never experienced pregnancy and now that I am 50 never likely to, I did find that rather an odd comment. But I thanked her anyway and let the thought drop into the file marked “odd comment, but may be something in it”.
Next, I was on the phone to my sister and telling her all my symptoms. She is a “health professional”, but in her case I mean that in the nicest possible way.
I was going on about my morning sickness, mood swings, fee;ing hostile and paranoid, being emotional and weepy, and she said,
“I feel like that all the time, or at least some times of the month!”
Well, after the initial shock thought of ,
“My God, combo therapy is turning me into a woman”, I began to see that maybe there might be some advantages – after all, I `ve pretty much tried everything else lets go with this. I have never believed in fighting the symptoms, never. And still don`t. It takes a lot of guts to let strange, alien feelings just wash all over you, but it is the very best way to get them to pass quickly.
My next paradigm shift relating to women came when I was sitting listening to a radio program on Pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS). It was a phone in and there was a professor there (a man) to answer all the questions. Wow, it was pretty graphic and the professor instantly went up in my estimation as he was on the receiving end of all this female angst.
But as the program went on I found myself agreeing with the women and their complaints. One would say,
“Sometimes I feel so tense I think I will explode”.
Another said,
“Sometimes I can`t face going out and just want to sit in the house and cry”.
And I am sitting there nodding away and saying,
“I know what you mean dearie, yes, I know what you mean”.
THEN, the final forbidden thought entered my consciousness, the final blasphemy was uttered that no man should ever acknowledge,
“I have never really understood women, have I”.
Well, there it is, my confession. I`ve lived nearly an entire lifetime and never understood 50% of the population.
Combo therapy, it ain`t all bad.