Blues

Today's Composition assignment was to take/make a mono image, and not necessarily a B&W one. So I decided to use the set of mini vases in aqua gradient colour that I got for my birthday in June and use the background of the blue bathroom floor tiles to create a marine blue arrangement. And though the angle is not totally to my liking all was good in my world for a while.  News came through about the horrible shooting of a tv presentator and camera man in America and more of the daily news about the thousands of desperate people fleeing their war-torn countries and trying to reach the EU, whole families with young children walking for days carrying the bare essentials, leaving everything else behind. Just imagine how desperate you would be to risk your lives and those of your family to get to a safe place.

And then I opened our mail box and found a large envelope from the hospital with in it the report which you can see as the extra photo. And boom, my world was once again reduced to my own fears and despairs. Something that I can not flee from. The report is the PhD thesis of one of the co-assistants about the research on the disease I am facing. It's an invitation to come to the presentation of the thesis. I'm one of the test persons for part of the research discussed in the thesis. I've had a quick browse and as far as I can understand (I'm not a doctor after all) the basic changes to the brain start at least ten years before the actual noticeable onset of the disease, which is on average before the patient's 65th year. And the first noticeable signs of that brain degeneration are visible through MRIs. I'm 59 and so far I'm ok, but time is getting critical, as those changes in my brain would already be going on. The medicine that is being tested and for which I participated in the trial still needs more testing and won't (if suitable) be available for another couple of years. So this meant an extra confrontation with a very insecure future.
A different kind of blue. I don't mean to go on and on about this, after all there is nothing anybody can do or say to change this, plus I am not ill with it right now, but it needed to be mentioned for the journal, because this is one of the reasons why I started this Blip journal, to keep a journal of my time left.