Up to a point, I have a compulsive order disorder. In other words, I'm a control freak. It makes perfectly sense to me to have a bee dangling from the roof side with a spade and a bucket. Even though I only know this outside world as being covered with snow.

I'm on a delayed Christmas getaway from it all, in the warmth amid a crystal blanketed 'Grundstück' near Hamburg, Germany, under the wings of Isabella, empress-in-wellies of this sweet refuge. No mother goosing my mobile in anxious expectation of an any moment call for my transplant operation. No scrutinising my expenditure so I can pay the rent. No ice-cream sign banging in the wind.

             Photo Isabella Ruediger

Instead a gentle breeze touches the dangling pipes in rich resonance, a fence wears snow flaked crowns and the Rhodon dendrons in black and white, it's buds already to burst a purple abundance. A tiniest of birds errors in landing a breath away from me and prompts off in fright, leaving it's feet in the snow. A faraway train amplifies the rush in the treetops. The treads of yesterday are delicately dipped with virgin powder. It's wintering pure poetry.

Like the cleft firewood that has found itself into stack, my meeting Isa seems to have no chance consequence. Her firm belief in the thrives of homeopathy has inspired me to dare a fighting chance. My kidney deterioration has been pronounced irreversible, but yet a glimmer of hope sparkles like a frost crystal in the night-clad white.

Meanwhile I sip my tea from an oversized nest of happy swallows. How many will it take to make the summer? From seven bottles and a tube I have to dissolve exact combinations of drops and grains, among which Lithium, Cadmium, Lead and Phosphor compounds. And take these at fixed intervals. A challenge to my order disorder.

On an intimate level there are definite improvements, but it will take explicit measurement of several blood values to give as much as a shimmer of a green light to pursue hope. Meanwhile I keep myself alive on the unforgiving regime of dialysis. By missing an exchange my energy dwindles like a snowflake, but next has to toil up on a staircase. Also my faith is too tender to get caught in medical controversy. I need time, time like I took it by staying in Ireland on the chance of a Christmas cadaver. But now time to allow homeopathy to kick in. Time, a cruel condition, to postpone the so fervently craved for transplant. Time to live whatsoever way…