Day + 5: The Doldrums

In one of my favourite books when I was a child, The Phantom Tollbooth, the small boy at the centre of the story, Milo takes a wrong turn and ends up in The Doldrums where he meets an odd group of people called the lethargians, who live by very strange rules...

"Well, if you can't laugh or think, what can you do?" asked Milo.

"Anything as long as it's nothing, and everything as long as it isn't anything," explained another. "There's lots to do; we have a very busy schedule-

"At 8 o'clock we get up, and then we spend

"From 8 to 9 daydreaming.

"From 9 to 9:30 we take our early midmorning nap.

"From 9:30 to 10:30 we dawdle and delay.

"From 10:30 to 11:30 we take our late early morning nap.

"From ll:00 to 12:00 we bide our time and then eat lunch.

"From l:00 to 2:00 we linger and loiter.

"From 2:00 to 2:30 we take our early afternoon nap.

"From 2:30 to 3:30 we put off for tomorrow what we could have done today.

"From 3:30 to 4:00 we take our early late afternoon nap.

"From 4:00 to 5:00 we loaf and lounge until dinner.

"From 6:00 to 7:00 we dillydally.

"From 7:00 to 8:00 we take our early evening nap, and then for an hour before we go to bed at 9:00 we waste time.

"As you can see, that leaves almost no time for brooding, lagging, plodding, or procrastinating, and if we stopped to think or laugh, we'd never get nothing done."

"You mean you'd never get anything done," corrected Milo.

"We don't want to get anything done," snapped another angrily; "we want to get nothing done, and we can do that without your help."

"You see," continued another in a more conciliatory tone, "it's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?"

"I might as well," thought Milo; "that's where I seem to be going anyway."

I have become a lethargian I think but mainly through the meds they're giving me. I've slept most of today away and am not great company for poor old Nik after she's driven into London. Other excitements: the nausea may at last be under control, I've not been sick all day. I had a platelet tranfusion yesterday as mine had got critically low. And just before midnight I was wheeled down to x-ray so they could see if the infection is sited there. That was an odd experience suddenly sitting in a waiting room full of people who'd broken bits of themselves on their way home from the pub! Now if you'll excuse me I'll have my mid evening nap.