A day of reckoning approaches

Tomorrow - my study of the alignment of the stars, the tilt of the earth towards the moon and my homemade sundial tells me - will be May 31.

Which means it's almost June already and time to discard the first calendar which has marked Year One on dialysis.

It also means I have a date with a bottle of vodka and several boxes of pills in a pre-planned suicide attempt.

It was a pact I made with myself this time last year, that if I got to this point, I'd just give the sadistic bastard that is God the last laugh and quietly surrender.

This was the only means by which I could trick my brain into ceding to dialysis. I had to convince myself that such would be the brevity of my reliance on the treatment that one day I would only have a hazy recollection of the time when I was dependant on a machine to keep a heart attack or stroke at bay.

I am reminded of that song from the musical 'Rent'. How do you measure a year? They suggest markers like sunsets and miles and cups of coffee. While there have been many smiles and moments of loveliness in the past twelve months, I largely measure the year gone by in boxes and litres of fluid and hands worn from many, many three-minute hand washes.

And now there is the awful thought that this may just be the overture. The Ballad of Brendan may in fact be a full-blown opera and there isn't one fat lady in sight, unless you count Mary Harney and she's hardly going to help my case.

There will be those reading this who have been or once were on dialysis for much longer and they will regard me as a wimp and a moaner.

Two charges I accept without protest.

But luckily so, because for all my dramatic talk, it is my wimpishness that will ensure I could never carry out my threat.

So it'll be Happy Anniversary to me and Brendan. I'm looking for suggestions as to how we can mark the occasion. The official date is June 21. The longest day of the year. How very apt.