Paris

Thursday 24 May

A routine day for the first half, including full breakfast (seated), and a visit by doctor Willemot. We discuss with her about prospects for the coming week. A big crystal ball. Nobody can tell with any certainty hows long this is going to go on for. Lara feels she's fading by the day physically, but still she seems to be drawing on hidden reserves deep inside of her. We have seen the same phenomenon last year when she showed us a medical miracle. Is a second one excluded? Many friends choose to believe in one.

Soft weather. I slip out to have lunch with Eli and Nick at Le Pain Quotidien, sitting in the shaded part of the court yard. Tartines et salades. Meanwhile Lara's friend Nina visits with her, having come up by train from Paris.

The only painful spot on Lara's body is her left side. Due to her coughing fits, the intercostal muscles are lightly ripped in her lower rib cage, and they hurt pretty badly every time she coughs. Three different kinds of cough syrops have to keep it in check. Arnicagel is the only remedy against the muscle pain. We remember it well from a similar ailment, on both sides, last year.

Since a few days her homeopathic medicine, Staphysagria, has been upped for a second time, to the level of XMK (10,000). The next steps would be LMK and CMK. Dr Schroyens will direct accordingly. Also I feed her concentrated drops of vitamin-D. The drops are so thick, that when you put them in water they move like heavy cream. But what she really needs is protein; she takes in too little of it. When I remind her, she shrugs, as if to say "for what?".

Lara sleeps and rests after Nina has left. Eli and Nick will drop by around six, and prepare a little dinner. They promise they won't stay long, for their friend is likely to conk out early tonight.

I flip through the dozens of pictures on my iPhone, taken in the second half of last year. The two of us out on a walk in the park, on vacation in Normandy. Days full of promise they were, of careless optimism, plucking the day. We had done battle, and won! Lara, over the course of the months, regained her vitality and her beauty. She looked attractive, even lush, and her confidence rose again. Now, five months later, she really doesn't want to be seen by anybody anymore, and has become self-conscious. Look at me, she said. I truly feel for her. Poor kid.