Wild at Heart (of London)

This mother and her cubs have been playing in my garden over the last few weeks. You would never guess you are in the heart of London. In fact, my niece who lives in the countryside of Lincolnshire saw her first fox ever when she visited me in London a few years ago.

Living the High Life

One of my patients has been discharged from my care - I took my mother home a few days ago. She is not completely better, but had to return home for a long-standing appointment and wanted to try to fend for herself once more. I suspect she is not eating as well and has returned to taking the easy option of drinking a glass of Complan rather than even micro-waving a ready meal. I still have the canine patient, but he's chugging along.

On Saturday, Kay and I managed to escape for a bit of mother and daughter time and shared the company of Elizabeth McGovern, better known as Cora, Lady Grantham, of Downton Abbey fame. Actually she was playing the guitar and singing at the Taste of London, a food festival which has been in London's Regent Park over the last four days.

There was a lot to see, do and sample.

This attractive display of carved fruit and vegetables caught our eye, particularly the carved marrow and water melons.

Thai dancers entertaining in the Thai food section.

The Baker Brothers showing off a new arrival to their family, hopefully not part of the ingredients for their recipe demonstrations!

  

Antonio Carluccio discussing gnocchi with fellow chef Gennaro Contaldo

  Elizabeth McGovern strutting her stuff. You can hear her here.

We  staggered home with lots of free samples and tummies full of several celebrity-chef taster lunches, including some beautiful Thai signature dishes. It certainly made up for the weeks of hard slog, caring for my patients.

Kay passed her driving test a couple of months ago and also sat the Pass Plus test a few weeks ago, getting a bit of practice on motorways. At 22, she is certainly not as young as she could be and, as a medical student, has her head screwed on, so it was with some degree of shock that we started to hunt for a  first car for her.  Nothing too expensive. Just a reasonable run-around to practice and perfect her driving skills, yet nothing too cheap, as she would need to travel between London and The North with it, as well as regularly travel to medical placements within a 30-mile radius of her uni.

Finding a car itself is no problem. There are quite a few to be had within our chosen price bracket of £3,000 - £4,000. But typing in the number plates of those on the short-list to find out the insurance premiums is another matter.  These, for example, are the options for annual cover on a nine-year-old Vauxhall Corsa.

What 18-year-old would pay £12,693 per year to cover a geriatric Corsa worth about £3,000? It defies belief. (Apparently it reduces a bit if she adds me as a named driver on her policy, even if I don't ever set foot in it.)  Maybe Lady Grantham can lend us her chauffeur. At those prices, it would be almost as cheap.

Crying Wolf

picture courtesy of www.firstpeople.us

 

Thank you so much for all your comments and well wishes. I wish I could thank you individually but I have been seriously chasing my tail over these last few weeks. Both my patients continue to require 150% of my time and, as you know that is nigh impossible, unless you run yourself flat into the ground, which is pretty much what I am doing.

My mother has been with me for five weeks now and it is  six weeks since she had the fall. Sadly she is still in a lot of pain. I have taken her twice to our local Accident and Emergency Department (once at the three-week stage and again at the five-week stage)  to see if anything else had been overlooked, but each time they confirmed that all else seemed to be in order  and that she "just" has cracked ribs which will take many weeks to heal, especially at her age. The trouble is she has also had a flare-up of gastric trouble, because of all the painkillers she is taking, and is not eating, feels nauseous and has terrible indigestion. I did wonder at one point whether some vital abdominal organ had been punctured by a jagged rib, but with six x-rays on her spine/ribs and a further two x-rays on her abdomen, as well as an ultrasound scan, nothing alarming  was found, although the utterly charming Italian doctor said to my 90-year-old mum "we are just looking for babies"!  She has now been put on the very strong painkiller Tramadol which is helping to blot out the pain by rendering her comatose most of the time. Meanwhile, I run up and down the stairs in my lighthouse-like domicile with cups of tea, meals, snippets of news, a plump of the pillow and the drugs trolley. At least it's keeping me slim!

My other patient, Snoopy the dog, has been on the critical list. In fact on Bank Holiday Monday, when Kay was home for the long weekend, we were 95% on the way to the vet to have him put down. He was not eating, not drinking (which considering he now has kidney failure to add to his woes, it is essential he drinks), he was lying listless on his bed and occasionally trembling, we presumed in pain. The vet had very kindly left his mobile number on his surgery answer-machine - strictly for emergencies - so we texted him for advice and he agreed to come out to  the practice to do the deed. However, as one very last resort, I gave Snoopy a canine painkiller and within a hour or so, he had completely rallied round and was looking lively and full of geriatric zest. Since then it has been a bit of a roller-coaster, resembling a Whitehall farce.  Because of his incontinence, I have washed his bedding and sofa covers almost on a twice-daily basis, bought toddler nappies  for him to wear at night, but having to cut holes in them to accommodate his tail has meant wads of disintegrating nappy lining blowing around the room like tumbleweed in the morning. He has thrown up on carpets, come in from weeing in the garden and then, only once safely inside,  absent-mindedly pooed on the kitchen floor and looked so endearingly at me that I could not possible contemplate euthanasia. Talk about crying wolf!

My mother has my bedroom, as it has an en suite bathroom all on one level which she can manage comfortably. She sits in my lounge chair as it is the only one she can get in and out of without too much pain. The dog wees on all the others. I sit and sleep where I can - at one stage on a 1" camping mattress on the kitchen floor so that Snoopy, who has separation anxiety and always has to be in glancing distance of me, had quick access to the garden at night, when he was at his lowest point.  I felt like Cinderella sharing quarters with Little Red Riding Hood's wolf. And so you see how enriched my life is, right now, and why I haven't been blogging. Hope things are better in your neck of the woods.

Nurse Addy

If my blog dries up over the next few weeks or my comments on yours seem less frequent, please forgive me. I have my nurse's uniform on. Before you go getting all overheated and excited, I am talking metaphorically of course. I currently have two patients in my charge.

The first patient is my elderly mother who has still not recovered from her fall and three weeks on is in fact in tremendous pain. I collected her at the beginning of the week and brought her back to my house to care for her. She has cracked her ribs and so, according to most websites, the healing process usually takes 4-6 weeks. She's pretty much bedbound at the moment, so I am getting lots of exercise running up and down all the many stairs (4 flights) twixt kitchen and her bedroom with every cup of tea let alone trays of meals.

The other patient is Snoopy, the dog. At fourteen years old, he is in reasonable condition, bar the chronic gastric problem he has, but he has now added excessive drinking and incontinence to his symptoms. He cannot control his output either on his bed at night or on the sofa during the day, despite hourly visits to the garden. This morning found me running around behind him in the garden to collect a urine specimen (bet the neighbours thought I was one crazy lady) and then taking him to the vet. The vet has ruled out diabetes but the shortlist is that he has either a bladder infection or (more likely) the beginnings of kidney failure. An antibiotic injection has dealt with the possibility of an infection, but if it is kidney failure, my washing machine is going to have to man up and cope with the daily sofa cover and dogbed cover washing!

At the moment, I am less like this

and more like this

Bridge over troubled waters (or in this case a railway)

I had to take my car for an MOT test today, so left it at the garage and walked about a mile or so home to wait for the call to collect it again. Near where I live is a little hump-back bridge over the railway. It is often the scene of many a road rage scene. The road narrows just before the bridge on either side so that the road over the bridge is just one-car width. There is a road sign denoting who has priority to cross, should two cars arrive at once from opposite directions. However because of the rise of the hump, it is often quite difficult to see who is coming from the opposite direction.

However, some people don't put their brain into gear when they approach that bridge and use the priority arrow to mean carte blanche for them to go across the bridge without using any other consideration for anyone else. Even if someone from the red-arrow direction is three quarters of the way across the bridge before white arrow car comes hurtling along at great speed, white arrow car will more often than not force red-arrow car backwards three-quarters over the Bridge to their original start point!

 

At peak times, such as rush-hour or school-run times, it can get quite hairy, as people just don't use their heads. There are often arguments, gestures and I have even seen the occasional physical fight. Confrontations have happened to me in my car several times (quite recently I was red-arrow car going happily across the bridge with nothing in sight at all on the other side, when white-arrow car came hurtling along well over the 30 mph he should have been travelling at, in a souped-up, open-top Porsche and forced me three-quarters of the way backwards. My comments were unprintable!) If I had more time I would sit it out or even call the police, as in fact I did once before when Greg was still alive and sat beside me for moral support.  (The police's view by the way is that people should use common sense when approaching the bridge and not take the sign too literally).

 

It happened again today, as I walked over that bridge on my way back from the garage. A young woman in a VW Golf was white-arrow car trying to force some middle-aged man in red-arrow car three-quarters of the way backwards over the bridge. He remained cool, got out of his car, still three-quarters over (and blocking) the bridge, strode purposefully towards her car and said something to her. I was out of earshot so could not hear what he said, but behind each of the two opposing cars  a line of other cars was forming, tooting and honking their horns. The man then threw up his arms in mock horror, returned to his car and decided to back up over the bridge (as did all the cars following him), while white-arrow woman revved her engine and then proceeded to sail ceremoniously past him with a self-satisfied smirk on her face. I felt the sudden urge to tap my forehead with my finger at her as she passed me, to indicate what I thought of her. I don't wish her any harm, but can only hope that in the meantime a big pothole has swallowed her up.

 

Yes, the sign indicates who has priority if you both reach the bridge at the same time and there is any doubt about it, but it does not require you  to leave your brain behind and force backwards someone who is already three-quarters of the way across, just because you technically have priority and arrived well after them. I despair of the human race sometimes.

 

Oh yeah.... my aged car passed it's MOT for another year. Put the flags out!

Will you still need me, will you still feed me?

When the Beatles first sang this song in 1967, I was a mere teenager of 17 years old. I couldn't imagine being 64. It seemed so ancient and so far away. Even when I married Greg just under 10 years later, the thought of us reaching 64 seemed out of this world. I always suspected we would still need one another and feed one another, when we did reach that milestone, as we were deeply in love. The years went by, sometimes too fast to hold on to. We lived in Germany, we returned to the UK, we climbed the first rung of the housing ladder, we coped with new and ever-demanding jobs and we had Kay. And still that deadline seemed far off.

Last week saw the date that would have been Greg's 64th birthday. "Will you still need me, will you still feed me?"   Now at long last I sadly know the answer.

Things that go bump in the night

I've been away from home for nearly two weeks, staying with my Mother  It's been a hectic two weeks. We were finally at the point where we could put her house on the market to start the long process of her moving back to London to be closer to me. I've been doing all sorts of jobs like weeding the garden for the umpteenth hundredth time, creosoting the fence and shed, washing net curtains, washing down paintwork, getting three agents to value the house and then picking one to proceed with the sale. Then we had to engage a firm to do the necessary Energy Performance Rating. So it's been one long round of hard work, organisation, paying out money and waiting for people to arrive. The house sale went online last Friday, will be in the local newspapers later this week and is already being sent out to prospective buyers in leaflet format. We had our first viewers visit on Sunday. There came a time in both our minds when we wondered if we were doing the right thing. My mother will be ninety this summer, so I do worry that this comes a bit late in her life to cope with a big move, selling a 4-bedroom house and massively downsizing to a warden-assisted one-bedroom retirement flat, thus having to dispose of extraneous furniture and a lifetime of memories. Even though I promised to do as much if not everything I could to take the load off her.

As if fate were reassuring us, albeit in a rather drastic fashion, I was awoken from a very heavy deep sleep (all this physical work has exhausted me at the end of each day) at 2am on Sunday night by my mother calling out to me. I staggered out of bed to find her slumped on the floor in the hallway splattered with blood. It appeared she had turned over in her sleep, was too close to the edge anyway and she had fallen out of bed onto the floor. In the process, she had bashed her face on the corner of the bedside table and couldn't get up again, because she has scoliosis - a back deformed by arthritis. She had shuffled on her bottom across her bedroom and out onto the landing to get to my room. Blood from her gashed face dripped down her nightdress. I  fetched a stool and managed to haul her into a sitting position up onto that and then to stand her up and assist her back to bed.  I got her to lie in the very middle of her double bed and surrounded her with a wall of pillows to stop her falling out again. We both slept fitfully in our separate rooms after that. I was due to return home on Monday but agreed to stay a few more days as, although nothing seemed broken, she was now in even more back pain than usual. She has never fallen out of bed in her life and cannot fathom why she has now, but I guess maybe the stress of the move had made her sleep in more turmoil than usual. However, one thing is clear, the move makes even more sense now. If anything happens in the future, she would be living 5 minutes away from me,  as opposed to the 2 hours she does now, with a warden on call if she fell.  A strange thing is fate.

One L of a Girl

Today is noteworthy of a celebration. Kay has just passed her driving test today - first time too. She's been learning on and off for the last two years... mainly off as she has had little time in-between her time-demanding university studies and raging social life to fit in lessons. Occasionally she and I have been out together with her at the wheel  (all those warnings of not teaching a relative to drive are true - we nearly murdered one another). She took the theory test just under two years ago, so the pressure was on to take the practical test before that two years was up, or else she had to resit the theory test - thus costing more time and ever more money over and above the arm and a leg it has already cost. One driving instructor down here in London, used to get Kay to drive to the part of London where the instructor lived and nip in and fetch things from the house. Not quite sure that was kosher, but never mind. The instructor who has been teaching her up north seems a bit more on the ball.  This week she's been juggling her driving test with finishing her dissertion and revising for end of year exams. She seems to thrive on pressure. She's just got to do the pass plus test now to get her up to speed, so to speak, with motorway driving and then I suppose I've got to conjure up a car with car insurance!!!  Now where's my magic wand?

Trouble in the Playground

It must be difficult when you look as if you have only just grown out of short trousers and you probably want to look a bit more macho if you are playing at being a leader of a nation, but Kim Jong-un is playing a very dangerous game. All this posturing would deserve an Oscar or Bafta, if it were purely for entertainment value, but this game is for real and people could get seriously hurt. Boys will be boys and I suspect he just wants to show off to everyone how big his conkers are (bet it's all talk). If he's not careful, he could end up in the headmaster's office. So someone should put him in the naughty corner NOW, before things get too out of hand.

Lest we forget

Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day and London Daily Photo had posted a picture of the statue erected at London's Liverpool Street Station to commemorate the arrivals of the Kindertransport - a rescue mission to ship Jewish children from all over Europe to the UK to escape Nazi oppression.

photo by John Goodall

 

I have mentioned in the past that my father (aged 14) and his brother(aged 17) were two of these children.  Although their mother (my grandmother) had come from a Jewish family,  the family were not practising Jews and my grandmother had never even been in a synagogue in her life. She married my grandfather who was a Protestant Lutheran and raised their children as Lutherans.  In their early years they lived in Berlin, then later moved to a town near Dresden where the children grew up. Both were christened and confirmed.  However this was not enough to appease the strict Aryan codes of the Nazis and my father and his brother were excluded from partaking in anything their friends were expected to do, such as the Hitler Youth.  It became very apparent they were being side-lined.

 

Things came to a head in late 1938 when the Nazis came one evening and "arrested" my uncle. They took him to Buchenwald concentration camp where he spent three months. "Before and after photos" of him showed such a striking difference: in the "after photos", not only was he much thinner, but the fear in his eyes was palpable.  I was told he used to have to watch hangings and bury the dead. In that short time he also had a number tattooed on his arm, which I can still remember seeing as a small girl.

 

My German grandparents were middle class and had some standing in the community as well as wealth. They turned to the Lutheran church for help but their cries fell on deaf ears.  My grandfather somehow found out about the Quakers in England and the work they were doing to help Jewish children get over here. With connections and money he was able to "buy" my uncle out of Buchenwald on the understanding the family would leave Germany forever and never ever return. He set about organising the boys' passage to England in March 1939 with the Kindertransport.  When the boys arrived at Liverpool Street station, my 17-year-old  uncle was sent in one direction, my 14-year-old father in another, having to board a train to West Mersea in Essex. He was billeted on a farm to do light agricultural work. He spoke no English and the farmers were a Scottish family who only spoke Gaelic! He earned a few pence by doing extra work such as scrubbing out the stables, so he could afford  a few necessary things like toothpaste. He must have been so frightened. Months later my grandparents were able to get across to England as well, so the whole family were safely over here, when war was declared on Germany in September 1939. 

 

Eventually my father met a Land Girl, married and I was born five years after war ended, growing up as an English woman, studying German and even living in Germany both as a student and also when newly married to Greg. Ironically I have a good many German friends there now with whom I stay in contact.  As time passes, it would be easy to forget what happened all those years ago, but I shall always remember.... I owe it to my father and to the wider family on his side who were not so lucky to  escape the death camps.

Recoiled Spring

Looking out of my window for nine days out of ten, you'd be forgiven for thinking that we were not in the first throes of Spring, it having officially started on 20 March. It has been wall-to-wall grey skies punctuated with rain, rain, rain, or snow, snow, snow for weeks on end, nay,  months on end. Once in a very seldom blue moon, we have seen a strange yellow thing up in the sky, but it hasn't stuck around for long, preferring to hide behind the clouds for another few weeks or so. The thermometer seems to be stuck on single figures, mainly below 5 Centigrade and sometimes below zero.  This last weekend has seen non-stop snow. With the wind-chill factor, these last few days have even seen icicles on the trees in my garden.

It may not be Spring outside, but I decided it was high time I did something about it: I treated myself to a bunch of flowers. Something I never do, normally.  Now every time I enter the room, my spirits soar. It can do what it likes outside now. See if I care?

Here is The News

Felt kinda sad seeing the BBC lunchtime television news today. They were broadcasting for the first time from their super duper new newsroom, which incorporates BBC domestic radio news, BBC domestic TV news and BBC World Service. It now boasts to be the largest newsroom in the world housing 2,500 journalists under one roof with all the latest state of the art technology.

It's been a long time coming. It was first mooted  a good ten years ago when Greg was still working there. He could have been in that newsroom now, if he had opted to do the occasional shift after retirement, as a lot of journalists do. I used to visit him at work in the old World Service newsroom at Bush House (and that was pretty impressive) but this new one looks even more jaw-droppingly amazing, like a  giant satellite, and must be a real Tower of Babel, as all the foreign language services are there in the same room now.

Just another milestone he's missed out on. Along with many more.

A week of ups and downs

Last week had its fair share of ups and downs.

The "up" of all ups has to be the phone call I received from Barclaycard following my yours disgusted letter to them about my demise. An extremely pleasant man from their complaints department gushed his sincere apologies to me over and over again and then said he would like to credit my  account with £100 to clear what was already accruing for this month, leaving me with a small amount in profit. That took the steam out of my ears and left me feeling that there can be hope for a small cog dealing with the inefficiencies of large organisations. Yayyyy.

On the "down" front, I  received some bad news about an old friend I had not seen in a good while. Our children used to play together as toddlers, but in the meantime she and her husband had moved away to get their son into another school, so our contact became the Christmas card variety only. Last week I bumped into a mutual friend who broke the bad news. She had driven her 57-year-old husband  to the station a few weeks ago to get a train to work and he had waved cheerily as they parted.  Next thing she knew,  some policemen turned up at the house to say he had died from a massive heart attack on the train. She is left with a 21-year-old  and an 11-year-old son. There was no warning and she didn't get to say the final goodbye. She still feels he is going to walk in through the door and it has all been a terrible mistake.  The only good thing to come out of it was that we managed to meet up for coffee on Friday to catch up on a lot of back news and promised to stay in touch more regularly.

Of course last week was also a crappy week for me as it was the third anniversary of Greg's death. If anything, the anniversaries seem to get worse, not better. I did my usual trip to the crematorium to take brightly-coloured flowers to the chapel (Greg always loved bright flowers even if he did not usually know the names of them. He was not a natural botanist. It took me ages to get him to recognise the difference between Lavender and Lilac, and still he always got it wrong). It's good that his anniversary always coincides with the time when the brightest flowers of all are in bud: daffodils and tulips are always the order of the day and really cheer up the chapel of rest.

With the passing of each month that goes by since his death, and certainly with each passing year, I am saddened by this thought: Greg had ample opportunity to seek rehabilitation in his last years, even though he never took it. He was detoxed several times either in hospital or at a detox centre, but he never went for rehab afterwards. As I've said before, there is a distinct difference between detox and rehab.   A week of detox merely stops you coming off the drink in a safely -controlled environment, without you experiencing any seizures or other withdrawal symptoms, but a much longer rehab gets down to the more psychiatric nitty gritty of why you drink, what triggers it, how you can overide these triggers to prepare you to cope with a life without alcohol in the future. Detox alone will not stop the pull towards drinking again, so detox and rehab need to be done in tandem. 

After detoxes in hospital, Greg was offered rehab several times. It would have involved an almost prison-like six-month stay in an institution, away from home and with little contact with home.  However, Greg would never entertain the idea of even one week let alone six months in rehab on the basis he would miss home comforts and would not want to share his life with other addicts or possibly criminals.  He also once told me he was afraid I would take the opportunity to leave him, while he was away, although I had never said anything of that sort to make him think that and heavily reassured him I would not do that. I think now that if he had risked the benefits of what rehab could offer, against the torture of being away from home for just six months, he might have still been here now. Instead of which he swapped that risk for being away from home and missing out on things for three years to date and forever more to come. How was that for poor judgement on his part? Sadly, that is usually the case for an alcoholic in the grip of addiction: they can't see further than the bottom of their glass.

Three years

 

Greg

† 6 March 2010



 

I'm Late, I'm Late. For a Very Important Date

The words of the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.  I feel my world has become just as crazy at the moment. A few weeks ago, I received a letter from my credit card company, Barclaycard, with a new card which was due. Also enclosed was a card for Greg, as the additional credit-card holder. I was a bit surprised as I had told them almost three years ago that he had died, but then I began to doubt whether I had told them, so sent them a letter, just to be on the safe side, saying he was dead and would they remove his name as the additional cardholder.
 

I've been away for a few days tending to my mother's house and  garden.  I got back yesterday to a pile of mail including one from Barclaycard. It was addressed to Greg.  In it it, they expressed their condolences at my death and referred to me as The Late Addy. A second letter pointed out that my credit card bill (which I clear every month, so I only owe for any expenses during the previous month) needed to be paid by the Late Addy's Estate.   They also said they would be cancelling the account in two weeks' time.


It seemed horrible seeing my name in black and white referred to as The Late Addy. As if someone had just walked over my grave. I have rung them this morning and the operator seemed so surprised to hear from me she asked me about ten security questions just to make sure it was me. By the time I had answered all questions correctly, she ventured that she knew what I was ringing about! I think it has now been sorted out and they are going to confirm it to me in writing that I am not dead. Until then, I can't be sure!

Well worth it

I'm glad to see that all the hard work and expense to date towards Kay's education is paying off. She texted me these two deep, meaningful poems last night, as I sat watching TV......
 

 

Rosies are red.

Violets are blue.

My lasagne said neigh,

When it should have said moo.

 

 

Rosies are red.

Violets are glorious.

Don't try and surprise

Oscar Pistorius!

 

Let the train take the strain

Back in the good old days, if you wanted to go somewhere in the UK by train, you walked into the station booking hall and you bought a ticket. Apart from the options of whether you wanted First Class or a seat reservation, the price was set.  You knew how much you needed to pay and what change you'd get for a sandwich. You could pick your train departure time at whim (unless you had a seat reservation on a specific train). Life was simple and uncomplicated.

Not so, nowadays.  The price varies for the same stretch of line by extortionate amounts depending on how close to departure you book it, whether it's at peak times, whether you want hifi access, just want a single fare or (for all I know) need to breathe in air on the journey.  You can even be charged the excess fare by the ticket conductor on board, should you decide to go on an earlier or later train than the one you originally bought if that attracts a higher fare. The variation in prices has always puzzled me, when I am selecting train tickets online, and last night's BBC2 fly on the wall looking at the railways confirmed the madness of it all, when a passenger at  London's Kings Cross asked for a return fare to Newcastle and was quoted £301. The look on his face said it all but he managed to stammer incredulously "I could fly there and back for less than that" to which the rather boring, no-nonsense booking clerk replied unhelpfully "your prerogative sir."  The booking clerk had just spent a few minutes talking to the camera about customer service and how to treat the public but had obviously not mastered the technique himself.  Another rail employee was even heard to say you could have a 5-star holiday abroad for the same price of some of the train fares. Given the number of times the train I have caught has left late or been held up late along the line, because some low-life has stolen the signal wiring, I could have probably nipped over to Greece and back by plane for the same money and in the same timescale!

The distance from A to B is constant, the train is going anyway, so why the difference in fares? Surely the nearer to departure you book, the more grateful the train company should be that the train is filling up and not travelling half empty, thereby making them more profit, so why clobber the passenger with a higher fare for booking late? I appreciate that it's all about the consumer having choice but who in their right mind would pay £301 for a return trip to Newcastle, if they can buy the same seat on the same train travelling the same stretch for a quarter of that price? Is it me or is it them?

The second day of February

The day of the operation arrived. I recall the Registrar (a youngish-looking woman in her mid-thirties) coming to see me at my bedside to get me to sign consent forms.  She told me she was going to be the one to do my operation, although the consultant would be in the adjoining theatre, if there were any problems, and she would try to do a bikini-line cut (going from left to right) rather than one going from north to south, although much depended on the location of said mass and its size.

The rest of that day was a blur. Obviously I was out of it for much of the time and only had snatches of consciousness back in the ward afterwards, as nurses came and poked and prodded or moistened my mouth or took my blood pressure.

The day after that the consultant visited my bedside. He was able to tell me that the mass removed by his Registrar measured 8 inches by 6 inches, roughly the size of a rugby ball, as if I needed to visualise it, but was thankfully a benign fibroid, as he had hoped it would be. He said he had never seen one so big in all his forty years of medicine. Trust me to produce a whopper!

Once I was over the worst Greg then broke the news to Kay about her granddad, as we had been anxious not to alarm her until I was up and running. Over the next week in hospital, I gradually went from horizontal to vertical taking a few faltering steps along the ward until by the end of the week I was able to move with more speed. Greg had already collected my mum, so she was living at home with us and stayed for a couple of weeks, seeing me back home again, before she returned to her home to prepare for the last-minute funeral arrangements. Three weeks after my operation, Greg drove us to my mother's house 60 miles away to be there for Dad's funeral, with a pillow stuffed between my healing scar and the seat belt!  And the rest, as they say, is history.

All that was 12 years ago. The Registrar made a grand job of the scar, doing a left to right bikini line cut in a natural crease of skin. You cannot even see it now. The red line eventually went white and has now completely faded. However, the scar etched on my brain is still very much there.

First of February

I suspect, should I ever die and they need to perform a post-mortem on me, they'll find the First of February 2001 etched in my brain like a stick of Brighton rock.  It is a date I shall never ever forget.

In mid December 2000, I had been told I needed an urgent hysterectomy operation. I had developed a large mass in my womb. If I lay face-down on a hard floor playing a board game or doing a jigsaw with Kay, I could feel it digging in to me. The consultant gynaecologist I went to see was fairly hopeful it was a benign fibroid but because of its large size, could not rule out it was something malignant. He needed to open me up and see for sure, but did not want to leave it too long. However, with the Christmas and New Year period in the way and therefore an obstacle both from my and the NHS point of view, my operation, although urgent,  was fixed for the 2 February 2001, some six weeks away.

However over Christmas, it became apparant my father was very ill. I have written before about how special he was to me, how close we were and how upset I was when he died, untimely ripped from our lives by leukaemia and (cruelly) to have two kinds of the disease at the same time: one which he could have lived with for many many years and, apart from the occasional blood transfusions, would have caused no problem, but the second type was more aggressive and by mid-January 2001 revealed the diagnosis that he had but a few months if not weeks to live. Not certain when exactly he would die, I was nervous to go ahead with my operation, but my father begged me to carry on, as it was much needed and he would not be happy if I postponed it.  He argued that I still had my life in front of me and would be recuperating by the time he grew worse, so we stuck to the schedule.

A few days before my operation, Greg, a nine-year-old Kay and I drove the sixty-odd miles to stay with my parents for the weekend. We visited my father who was by now very weak and in hospital. The consultant haematologist told us that Dad was rapidly fading and that his blood was showing more of the killer leukaemia cells day by day. Again I protested that I ought to cancel my operation, but again my father insisted I should go ahead and be all the more stronger to deal with what would happen to him later. At our parting, I hugged and kissed him and could not bear to let go or turn the corner out of view from his bed in the ward, all the time trying to keep a brave front for Kay who did not really understand or suspect what was going on.

A few days later, it was Thursday 1 February 2001: the day before my operation. I had been told to report to the ward at about mid-afternoon. I was to have a bath at home beforehand and to have brought a case full of stuff to last me a week in hospital. The hysterectomy and removal of the "mass" would take place on the Friday morning. I was at home busy preparing  myself and making sure that Greg and Kay would have enough to be fed and watered during my 7-day absence. I was also packing a case and getting ready to have a bath after lunch.

At about 12:50pm the telephone rang. It was my mother in floods of tears. My father had suddenly passed away ten minutes before. I froze. Now what to do?   I was all for rushing to be with my mother but Greg wanted me to have that op so badly  as he was nervous it could be bad news and to postpone it was madness. However I could not leave my mother to cope with Dad's funeral on her own and in any case I did not want to be incapacitated for it either. I decided to cancel the operation. I rang the hospital and left a message with the consultant's secretary. I rang around my circle of friends and relatives telling them the grave news.

I was in a daze. I could not think straight. There were a million and one things to think about, not least of which was how we were going to break the news to Kay. The phone kept ringing.  Then in the late afternoon my consultant rang me back. He said he sympathised with my position, but he would seriously urge me to reconsider the operation for the next morning. "Your father can no longer be saved, but YOU can", he said. He also said he could not guarantee that putting it off for a few weeks would have a good outcome if the mass was malignant. He begged me to think about it and ring him back with my decision. Meanwhile people were ringing me saying much the same thing, that my father would want me to go ahead with the operation. My mother even rang to say she had been taken by close friends  to collect the death certicate and the funeral could be arranged for three weeks hence by which time I would have recuperated. There was nothing else for me to help her with, so even she said I should go ahead with the op.

Thus it came to pass that on the evening of 1 February 2001, Greg delivered me to the hospital and then rushed off to collect Kay who had been with a childminder since leaving school that afternoon. I found myself sitting up in a bed in a large old Victorian  gynaecological ward of twenty beds or more, ten down one side and ten down the the opposite side. I sat listening to people laughing with and chatting to their visitors, while the tears rolled down my cheeks. My beloved father had just died;  I sat all alone surrounded by people; and I faced major surgery the next morning. A day I would never ever forget.

Winter Wonderland

Heavy snow has finally reached London for the first time this winter. It snowed non-stop for five hours on Friday and for about twelve hours on Sunday.  This is the view from my study window this morning........

 

 

Last night when I took Snoopy for a walk, I might as well have been on the moon. There were no people about and no cars, as they don't grit my road. Just lots of snow, lamplight, me and the dog. And absolute silence!  You would never have thought you were in the midst of a big city.

Peace at last

I've spent the last four weeks with company. Either with Kay on Christmas leave from uni, then with Kay and my mother over the Christmas season, then just with my mother, once Kay had returned to Uni for her January exams and finally with my mother at her house, when I took her back and stayed with her for a week. I finally returned home two days ago to peace and quiet. It was nice having company, don't get me wrong, but I do seem to like my own company too and it was great to pour a well-deserved glass of wine on my return and watch some pre-recorded programmes I had not gotten around to watching over Christmas. Of course having company meant I was running up and down my many stairs between rooms like a mad thing serving teas, coffees, meals, tidying up etc, not to mention taking the dog for two walks a day. Mum in particular is finding she cannot manage to stand and cook for herself (she has severe scoliosis and arthritis), so even at her house I was doing all the cooking and chores for her, still walking the dog etc.

I've woken up to a fine dusting of snow this morning in which Snoopy and I tentatively ventured out, but apart from that I'm currently catching up with my blog reads and a nice cup of cappuccino. Then I'm going to plan having my two rather antiquated (1960s) bathrooms renovated in the spring.

Happy New Year

I have often heard that some people see the days of the week or the months of the year as colours, presumably depending on their mood and whether they regard colours in the spectrum as happy ones or sad ones. If that were me, Mondays would be as black as soot, as traditionally they have always been the first day back to work after a relaxing weekend. Saturdays would probably be vibrant red - a day to party and unwind. But, all this is academic, as I personally do not really see them as colours.

However, I have been thinking, I do see the year as a looming cliff before me. Starting in January at the foot of the cliff, I climb upwards and ever higher making my way through all the annual anniversaries and birthdays to my own birthday in November.

This is then swiftly followed by Christmas, where I stand at the top of the cliff exulting in my success after the long slow climb, enjoying the lovely food and warmth that Christmas brings. Suddenly before you know it and before you can say "Last of the Christmas Leftovers", it is New Year's Eve again. Now I find myself on the very pinnacle of the cliff  (standing on tiptoe on a big rock admiring the view). The clock strikes midnight, the fireworks shoot into the sky and there is much hugging and celebrating. However I find myself projected within seconds into the 1st January at the bottom of the cliff once more, having to start the long slow climb yet again. Far from wanting to make resolutions and looking forward to the year ahead, I  am slightly annoyed that I have got to start all over again. Does New Year do this to you?

Merry (although not too merry) Christmas

Hearing some of the stories people at my local Al-Anon meeting tell of their life with an alcoholic makes me appreciate what a better place I am in now. Six years ago I was living with a 24-hour, 7-days a week drinker. I thought I was going crazy living on a merry-go-round I couldn't get off, with no prospect of a solution or salvation. Nobody to help me, no professional body to turn to with any practical means of help and only my (then teenage) daughter to talk to about it.

Almost three years ago, the solution came. A drastic one at that. A death, a funeral, a catharsis. It was not meant to be that my alcoholic would stop drinking and we would ride off into the sunset to start retirement hand-in-hand together. I would have preferred it, but it was not meant to be. Instead I have become stronger, calmer, at peace. Alone, but at peace. I really feel for those at Al-Anon and elsewhere who continue to suffer their living nightmares. I want to tell them that peace will come eventually, although maybe at a price.  I have much to be grateful for, not least of which is that I am not living in that hell any more.

I'm building up to that annual crescendo when I collect my mother, welcome back my daughter from uni for a few weeks and pile the house high with enough food to feed the Albert Hall in one sitting. Beds are made, the house is sparkling and the cards all sent to their far-flung destinations. All that remains is to wish you a happy and peaceful Christmas and all the best for the New Year, especially for those still on that nightmare merry-go-round.

 

Merry Christmas (although hopefully not too merry for some!)

Hang on, Snoopy.

I was hunkered down in front of the X-factor final on Saturday with a German beer and some nibbles when Snoopy jumped off the sofa and looked at me with that look says "ignore me at your peril". He will often do that during the course of an evening. It is almost as if he hates to see me finally relaxing after I have been buzzing about all day like a blue - a****  fly while he snores his head off on the sofa. Come the evening, I slow down and he comes alive. Well, no wonder, he's been asleep all day!

He'll stand in front of me and fix his gorgeous brown eyes right on mine, look right through me and try to tell me something. It can mean "I want a biscuit for looking cute", "I want a biscuit for not looking cute", "Just give me the biscuit" or "Let me out into the garden, I need to do a wee." By process of elimination, I usually get to find out what he wants.  I can't simply ignore him, because he stands between me and the television  and, as he is quite a big dog, he blocks my field of vision.  Which can be pretty irritating when you have just settled down to watch the X-factor final with a beer and some nibbles.

I had to pause Christopher Maloney singing a duet with Gary Barlow (thank goodness for being able to pause live television these days) and go downstairs to let Snoopy out into the garden. He did a wee AND a poo, came back in again, got a biscuit for looking cute and I then returned upstairs to the lounge to carry on watching TV. He didn't follow me upstairs and after a few minutes, I paused the TV again and went back downstairs to see what he was doing. He has a habit lately of scavenging in the kitchen waste bin, pulling out the discarded cellophane that has wrapped meat or fish and chewing round it for the flavour. He'll then leave the tell-tale bits of cellophane all over the kitchen and when reprimanded look at me in all innocence with a look that says "it wasn't me". I half expected to find him doing that. What I found, however was not nearly as pleasant. Diarrhoea all over my kitchen floor! Eeeeeeuugh! All hopes of returning to the X-factor were rapidly abandoned, as I gathered kitchen towel, plastic bags and gloves for the mop-up operation.

I already know he has something wrong with his liver and pancreas (see here). However, looking cute is no compensation and I suspect a trip to the vet will be on the cards this week, if this continues.

Footnote   We went to the vet yesterday and after three injections (painkiller,antibiotic and steroid) Snoopy seems much improved this morning. Could be a touch of colitis, thinks the vet, but I am to observe what the steroid does over the week and report back. Now I have a pain in my purse!     12.12.12.

Daylight robbery

I'm still recovering from the shock. I've sat down quietly in a darkened room and am hugging a mug of hot chocolate to calm my nerves. It's  never happened to me before, so it'll definitely take some getting used to. I expect once it's happened a few times, or I can talk it over with one or two supportive friends,  I'll come to terms with it, but nevertheless, the first time is the worst, I suppose.............

This morning I went to the local Post Office. I had about 5 small-ish ebay parcels to send, a parcel to some friends in Germany, a few stamps for the USA and Germany, and an order for sixty 2nd class stamps and ten 1st class stamps. The bill came to £66.65! I usually spend a lot in the post office every Christmas but it has always been under £40. I love sending Christmas cards to my kith and kin in the USA, Germany and around the UK, but am beginning to wonder if emails and e-cards are the way to go in the future. Either that or re-mortgage the house!