Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

So many of my friends are shaking off their mortal coils. It’s depressing, and at this time of the year there seems to be enough depression.

Marlish was my GP and a friend. I remember when I received the news that I had Multiple Sclerosis Marlish visited me to tell me what she knew about the condition. It was in Marlish’s presence that I first injected myself with this beta Interferon concoction to which I seem now to be inexorably linked.

Marlish was always someone with whom you could share a laugh, often about life’s idiocies. I remember telling her the joke about the London sperm bank that had been forced to close when it lost its last three clients; the first of whom came on the bus, the second who couldn’t come at all and the third who had missed the Tube.

Marlish also had to put up with my childish but no less real phobia for injections. I once joked to her. “You’d think Marlish that after living in Cavan for so long I’d be used to pricks.” And then there was the time when I got so “keyed up” about having a blood test that my veins just collapsed, a sign of a “fight or flight” reaction. I responded by writing a really awful poem, to which Marlish responded in much more polished verse.

Her loss will be felt very far, both amongst her friends and her patients who usually belonged to the one group.