Mine's a flat white.

As I promised last week, here's one of my photos I've been working on.

Yep, a cup of coffee.

I've been drinking coffee for years; I think I started when I was 13 and by the time I was 18 I was onto real coffee. I'd become an utter coffee snob by that stage as well. I remember, during exam time, I'd make myself a stove-top espresso and add some cream. I did that every morning, effectively making myself a macchiato before I even knew such a wonder existed.

When I was in uni my treat would be going to my local coffee shop every Friday between classes. I cannot even begin to tell of the wonderful memories I have associated with that place. We would take over a specific area and discuss everything: politics, religion, anatomy, love and what our plans for the future were. I remember sitting there with my friend telling her my plans to emigrate to work for a PhD while she gave me updates on her mum's health. She told me how her mum had been on high dose prednisone for so long that her vertebrae were collapsing, how her mum was trying thalidomide to see if it'd help with her rashes, how her mum had beed admitted to the ICU after having haemolytic anaemia for 3 weeks without anyone noticing, and how her mum's arthritis would often leave her crying in pain. I remember thinking that this lupus thing sounded like the worst thing in the world, that I'd rather die than have to live with it.

A few months later, in that same coffee shop, I was telling my friend what was happening to me. I told her about my rashes, my arthritis, my chest pain. I was telling her I was being tested for lupus. That was also the coffee shop where my professor and mentor sent me to after a meeting with her. She had decided that I wasn't well enough to finish my degree at that time.

Now I'm being told I've got to give up coffee. I'm so far refusing, but as my reflux is getting worse again, it's something I'll seriously have to consider. For me it won't be giving up a drink, but giving up a lifestyle. To me, a cup of coffee is so much more. When I go for a coffee now it's to take a break from being sick. In a coffee shop with a book I look like just anyone else in there, anyone who is taking half an hour to themselves. That's what I don't want to give up.