Persevere

WE had bad news yesterday, a friend has been diagnosed with a brain tumour. She’s to have an operation as soon as possible.

This is a lady who’s never had a day off work in her life. In the summer she went on a week’s Med cruise. When she came back she found her sense of balance was off & she tended to feel nauseous. She saw the doctor. He fobbed her off with a diagnosis that it was a temporary blip due to her recent air flight home. Give it time & she would be fine again. She’s in her 60s after all, you can expect such things to happen.

As she didn’t improve, she persevered with the doctor. He threatened her with having to go to the hospital. She took him up on the offer & is now relieved to have a diagnosis that makes sense to her even though it’s a bad one.

I’m reminded of the problems I had when I first started to have knee problems. I’m quite convinced the doctor thought it was all in my mind, a minor sprain at most that a bit of rest & gentle exercise would cure.

I’m no more given to undue to complaining than our friend. You know when there is something more serious with you. It took me years before I convinced the doctor I should go to the hospital & see a specialist. When he did, he commented it was one of the worst cases of the problem he’d ever seen & instantly put me on a waiting list for my first set of operations.

I sometimes think so many people turn up at surgeries with nothing much amiss – wanting something for a minor sniffle – that doctors assume all patients are like that. It takes perseverance to get treatment if there is something wrong, especially if there isn’t something instantly visible such as a rash.

My most recent hospital experience was when I went to Accident & Emergency with severe stomach pains. The doctor on duty diagnosed it as constipation. It turned out to be pancreatitis. 

You would have thought the clue lay in the fact I was still in such pain despite taking 8 paracetamol, 8 codeine, meloxicam (an anti-inflammatory drug) & 3 audmonal (an antispasmodic) per day at the time! In the end I refused to get off the bed so she threatened me with an overnight stay in hospital. I took it. Eventually I was diagnosed with pancreatitis & should have been in intensive care.

Some of us only complain when there’s something seriously amiss. That goes for our friend & for us two.

A veteran's plight

It has gone dark. The rain is beginning to fall. It looks like the sun has gone for today & we’re back to another damp day ahead.

As we sat in the pub yesterday we were joined by friends. He is a market stall holder selling militaria & antiques. We were told about all the difficulties that are being put in his way by Lancaster Council.

His stall is only allowed to be so big. Now they’re proposing come the new year he should be moved to a back street where there is little footfall. Needless to say he isn’t happy.

It seems the local shops are complaining that the market stalls are preventing passing pedestrians from seeing their shops. The cafés are especially vociferous as these days they extend their seating out into the pedestrianized street where the street market is.

As I’ve said in a previous blog, I love markets. I love their colour & atmosphere. I feel they can only add to the ambiance of a city, but clearly our council is determine to drive all market traders away.

It seems to me our friend has a precarious enough income as it is, without this hassle. He’s outside in all weathers trying to make a living. It’s certainly not a lifestyle I would choose - give me a warm office or shop any day. Without people passing in front of his stall, he doesn’t stand a chance. He’ll probably end up another person signing on unemployed.

I suppose his plight strikes me particularly poignantly at the moment as he is an ex-soldier who is still coping with the trauma of seeing sights no-one should see in defence of our country.  As we think at this time of the sacrifice of so many people in the World Wars & after, it seems we continue to kick the veterans in the teeth if they have the audacity to return to come back alive, apparently fit, to civilian life.

Not doing

“What have you two been up to lately?” he asks.

How I hate that question. As we see the questioner most weeks, it’s difficult to answer. Like most disabled people, my life goes around in small circles. You’ve probably realised that by now.

I don’t actually do much. My time is spent writing my blog, watching tele, doing the shopping & cooking, jigging, reading,  attempting as many of the daily chores everybody else does as I can cope with.  We try to get out most afternoons to see other people & have a chat. None of this is particularly newsworthy. Indeed it is rather boring as a subject matter for a potential conversation.

I suppose I do a lot of thinking, hence the fact I’m rarely short of something to write about here. But again I can hardly claim this as something exciting to tell someone else about.

You can see why I hate the question. Do I go on about the minutiae of my life? Or do I admit to doing nothing & having a rather boring life? And yet I don’t find my life boring. I get great satisfaction from doing my jigsaws, from the conversations I have with my friends & acquaintances, from listening to music & the radio, from reading my books, from watching the birds in the garden, above all from simply being with the Fox. I just don’t do much. Instead I watch & think.

Roasts

We’re having a roast chicken for dinner tonight.

It’s seems ages since we last had one. I checked in our diary - I usually note down what we cook each day. Sure enough I haven’t roasted a chicken since May. We’ve had other roasts particularly lamb, but no chicken.

In my childhood roast chicken was a fortnightly treat. Every other Sunday was roast chicken day. It remains something to look forward to.

The intervening week was roast pork or lamb depending on season. We never had pork in months with an R in them. In pre-fridge days, pork had a tendency to go off faster than lamb. Months with an R in them are the cold winter months whereas the months without an R are the warm summer months. Mum kept to the tradition even though all my lifetime we did have a fridge.

These days I also look forward to what can be done with the leftovers – chicken curry, chicken pies, chicken in all sorts of sauces, chicken vol-au-vents, chicken croquettes etc. In my childhood any leftover roast was served cold with chips on Monday – a quick & easy meal on washday in the days before you had automatic washing machines so Mum had to spend all day with the machine, clearing it away, mopping up - water seemed to inevitably land on the floor as washing was heaved out of the machine to be rinsed in the sink before returning to the mangle, or later the spin drier. Life is so much easier these days when washing machines can just be filled, programme switched on & left while you can go away & do other things.

Left over turkey was the only exception mainly because there was so much of it. Then we also had turkey sandwiches & turkey salad. Mum never re-heated cooked meat of any sort. Dad reckoned it could collect bugs which would multiply when the meat was re-heated so she never re-heated meat. Much as I suspect he was right to some extent, I’m also convinced, heat up the meat high enough & thoroughly enough, & any bugs will be killed off. I’ve never hesitated to re-heat meat & we’ve never had upset tums. We’re also excited by the idea of leftovers & what they can become. Sometimes the leftovers are more exciting than the roasts.