I was looking at ageing in action, in black-and-white MRI pixels, death and dissolution foretold, and already partly achieved. My 70-year-old brain was shrunken and withered, a worn and sad version of what it once must have been. There were also ominous white spots in the white matter, signs of ischaemic damage, small-vessel disease, known in the trade as white matter hyperintensities – there are various names for them. They looked like some evil pox. Not to put too fine a point on it, my brain is starting to rot. I am starting to rot. It is the writing on the wall, a deadline.
Originally asked
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You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 September 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 61 →Possible dementia.
I am genuinely buzzed about it! I think we just keep getting better, smarter, wiser, truer, happier.
Not being able to fend for myself and being a burden to others.
More from Róisín Murphy
View profile →I recently had a dramatic fall on stage in Hungary. It was a massive stage – I was miles away from the audience – and I didn’t expect there to be two monitors in the middle of it. I went completely arse over tit and landed on my chin. First, I felt shock, pain, embarrassment, and then I felt lucky that I didn’t break any teeth or bite through my tongue. I asked for an ice pack for my chin, got up and finished the set.
When I was a teenager, I worked in a vegetable shop on Saturdays, and the guy had a rotation of 10 pretty teenagers working for him and was really sleazy. I only went twice because the second time he made me go up to his flat above the shop and clean his toilet, and he was watching me.
My problem with clothes. I’ve got an issue, haven’t I? I’m not a fella in a band who can turn up in his T-shirt and jeans. I’ve got the whole drama of what I’m going to wear: the hair, the makeup. All that preening and pruning that adds to the stress. I have begun to hate that perfectionist in me.
My car. I don’t even drive, but I bought a Toyota hybrid for my assistant.
Last week, because of an ear infection: I cried my eyes out when they put a big injection into my arse.
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