Tag Archives: illness

The Week Moves On

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I am, as I have said before, on drugs to suppress my immune system. This controls my arthritis and allows me to get around, type and do a bit of baking. Without he drugs, even typing would be tricky, with bent fingers and painful knuckles.

However, I do tend to pick up a lot of low-level infections in winter, and this year I have, so far, had three. They don’t really amount to much, but they do make me tired, hence the amount of time I spend writing about the time I slept instead of blogging. Whilst recovering, I also sleep a fair bit.

I can tell when I have recovered, because my brain seems to move up a notch and I start to write again and answer TV quiz questions faster. I actually beat a contestant on Mastermind last night. I was three behind on the specialist subject (Waterfowl of the British Isles) but pulled it back on the general knowledge. Sitting at home, relaxed, I would still only have come second, because the winner answered all his specialist question and then beat me on general knowledge.

So, self-congratulations done, I’m still a long way off the pace required to do well on Mastermind. I got a few on University Challenge, including a few that the students didn’t get, so I was happy by the end of the evening. Winter Olympics are OK, but it’s nice to have the quizzes back.

 

Julia made a nice curry last night, using the leftover pea soup as a base for the sauce. She also put meat in it, which was nice for a change, as i tend to make my curry vegetarian these days.

I noticed earlier today, that I have done 3,802 blog posts. It made me wonder how many individual titles I have come up with and how many I have duplicated.

I just did a quick search, but after reading about 30 titles became aware that my ability to procrastinate had taken over again . . .

 

The pictures are from February 2015 – I only have 9 photos that month – my early days as a blogger.

 

 

 

A Post in Need of a Snappy Title

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I’ve not been 100% since the beginning of the week, and though I seem to have managed to do plenty, when I look at my lists, I did spend a lot of time sleeping.  I’d been a bit under the weather the week before and just thought this was my body catching up. However, I kept sleeping and started to have trouble sleeping, sometimes waking up in a fever. It was not quite time to seek medical assistance, but it was very close.

It can be very difficult, having been in hospital earlier last year I didn’t want to start panicking either. You can’t call an ambulance every time you feel poorly. I’m still a bit tired, but otherwise everything seems to be OK. If I continue to feel well I will do nothing. If I continue to be vaguely unwell, I will call the doctor. It’s very annoying not really having symptoms and not being able to call it anything.” Flu”, is good, “a virus” is good too, but “under he weather” and ” a general feeling of being unwell” are not so good.

Ah well, it’s old age and taking immunosuppressants. It’s just that I hadn’t though I’d be old so soon. My retirement, as envisaged until about ten years ago, was a lot of walking and sightseeing. The last few days, I have actually found it hard work walking round the house.

The good news (I always like to finish on a positive note) is that I really haven’t felt like eating for he last three days and am hoping that I am going to lose some weight. I’m hoping to continue that by working on lower portion sizes. I’m having porridge today, though I’m not particularly hungry – Julia thinks I need to eat, and porridge is healthy and I like it. Hopefully this will do me for today and she will stop banging on about me having to eat.

Breakfast – 3 fruits plus wheat

The pictures are Weetabix (or TESCO own brand Weetabix, to be accurate), not porridge, but it’s the closest I can get.

The Beauties of Retirement (Part 1) Infirmity

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On Friday night I noticed I seemed to be getting cold, so I put on an extra layer. It’s been a bit colder recently and we have the thermostat turned down so it is to be expected at this time of year. Later I put on another layer, but as I went to bed I felt even colder. Then I started shivering, and despite the expensive pocket spring mattress I bought when we moved, Julia was able to feel the tremors. This launched her on a path of nursing and worrying and, eventually,  hot lemon cold cure, paracetamol and hot water bottles seemed to solve the problem.

On Saturday morning, I wrapped up warm and spent most of the day watching TV. This included Sharpe’s Waterloo, which isn’t my favourite episode, but was undemanding for an addled brain. It also avoided breaking into any series that we watch in the evening. I didn’t even set foot in the office or check my emails. I was that tired. That’s one of the things with getting older, being ill takes much more time than when I was younger. I used to be ill, go to bed, get up and go back to work. Over the years this has become a much longer process. However, as I annoyingly, tell everyone, patience is the key.

Of course, in those days I was fit and not taking a cocktail of medication to suppress my immune system.

By Sunday I was back on the computer. I entered the BTO Garden Bird data – I’m doing the birdwatch and the blackbird counts. Science that you can sit down whilst eating breakfast has always got to be good science. Then Julia went out to do an afternoon serving teas to thirsty visitors to the Nene Valley Railway and, freed of supervision,  I bought two medallions and a book online.   The medals were cheap, and the book is about Captain Athelstan Popkess. He was Chief Constable of Nottingham for 30 years and was a pioneering modern policeman. He also tended to attract controversy.

Then it was time for a small meal (my digestion has still not settled) of Quorn chilli (my sister came to tea) and a little light TV.  I think you can make a perfectly adequate vegetarian chilli just by leaving the meat out but my sister uses Quorn so we have it a try last week in Bolognese then tried chilli this week. I still cling to my opinion that it is alright to eat meat, but it is also good to eat meat-free some days. Expensively produced mushroom protein doesn’t really figure in my diet as it seems less kind to the planet that just having the veg without additions.

This is part One of my musings on retirement. I expect my readers, being people of intelligence, have already spotted the possibility  of this having more than one part because of the hint in the title. You have also probably spotted that I just said “more than one part”. That’s another hint. I’m not sure how many parts there are going to be. It all depends when I get distracted by something else.

 

 

 

Topsy Turvey

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I took to my bed on Monday night after an evening of shivering. All my joints ached and I could hardly move. The slow climb to bed confirmed the wisdom of our decision to move to a bungalow. I stayed there most of Tuesday, only rising in mid afternoon, and a lot of Wednesday, rising at noon. Gradually I began to feel better, and mobile. By Wednesday Julia was able to pronounce my colour to be “better”.. By this she means “less corpse-like” as I have a habit of turning grey when I am ill, and my natural disinclination toward rapid movement becomes more pronounced. At best I appear to be a grumpy zombie, and at worst I have found myself prodded violently awake “just in case”.

I’m not sure what it was, or what caused it, but I think cold, lack of sleep and hours sitting immobile in the car all contributed. OK, and old age. And my immunosuppressants. I always blame them these days.

I managed a few taps on the keyboard yesterday, but didn’t do much. Today I feel a bit more enthused, but still not overly motivated. I have also lost my appetite and reduced my calorie intake despite Julia’s efforts to a feed me back to health.

That’s about all there is to report, apart from feeling like Rip van Winkle. I went to bed in a world where politics seemed dull and ugly, and woke in one where politics appears to have run down a rabbit hole and returned with an unsubtle double act where a megalomaniac billionaire is bankrolling Mr Teflon, the man to whom nothing can stick. At the moment I am puzzled rather than worried, but I imagine that will change in the next few months.

 

A Month of Illness

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It very quickly became apparent that Plan A (the active one involving doing lots of stuff) was not going to happen. It’s too cold and my back feels stiff.

Plan B (the one that involves salmon for tea and some moderate tidying) looks like the one to aim for.

I have others, going right down to Plan F – watch TV, think of a good excuse for when Julia comes home. Even I wouldn’t sink that low after she’s been working all day and I’ve been at home. Not until next week after the novelty of Mondays off has sunk in.

Yesterday was a notable day. My bowels returned to proper function. They have not distinguished themselves during my recent illness and I have been concerned. However, it’s not necessarily a subject for in depth conversation so I will leave it there.

It was also the first night when I have felt comfortable sleeping on my back. I had a much better sleep than usual, slept in too long and, as a consequence have the stiff back I already mentioned. It was good to get back to normal.

The first cough I recall was on the tram as I travelled to my knee X-Ray appointment. That was 14th December or thereabouts. It’s 15th January today, so that’s a full month from one end to the other of the illness.  It’s been a long time, but having lost weight nd had some decent rest I have to admit I feel better than I did a month ago when I thought I was well. Strange how you need to become ill to get better.

Looks like a bishop in a cage – Crowland Abbey

End of an Era

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Last night, when I went to bed I took enough pills to rattle and enough spray to inflate a medium sized party balloon, I coughed and spluttered my way through the night, but at a much reduced level compared to many of my recent nights. Julia had applied hot water bottles to the bed, my breathing was improving (though far from acceptable), I have a doctor’s note for up to two weeks and, after discussing it with Julia over Christmas, I had definitely decided that I was going to retire in May rather than keep going until November. Although that decision comes at the cost of 6 months of wages, it also allows me to take some control of the direction of my life, work towards the house move and take things a little easier.

The earthworks and that stone is all that remains of Fotheringhay Castle – birthplace of Richard III

My current working situation is that I am squeezed into a small gap in a shop with a damp problem, where I use a faulty second-hand computer and an old camera which I provide myself. I work with two people who, though pleasant enough, have a number of increasingly irritating idiosyncrasies and I am, quite honestly running out of patience. I could go on, but I won’t.

I have been worrying about the decision to go in May as, despite our recent pay cut, I had agreed to stay until November. However, things change and decisions have to alter. After the pay cut, it felt like I had a slight vestige of control and, by going in May, was still in control of my destiny (even if illness was the main driver).

The Falcon and Fetterlock that tops the church.

All that changed just after 9.00 this morning when I had a phone call from the shop owner, during which it was suggested that I might like to leave in May, due to my increasing ill health. If I do this it seems it will also allow him to change his plans for the shop. I have no doubt that concern for my health has some part in the suggestion, but, being completely honest, know that the majority of the suggestion is based on financial motives.

It’s not a big thing, but did leave me feeling a bit flat. Having lost any vestige of control over my life, I sat down, drank tea and spent twelve hours reflecting on how my life has been a complete waste and I even lost effective control over the timing of my retirement.

As I photographed the church and castle I was surrounded by the song of the grasshoppers 

I have been a great disappointment to myself over the years, and even in choosing the time of retirement, I have proved to be a failure.

However, I’ve learnt a few things in the last 66 years and will be using them to full effect as I try to fill retirement with as much as possible.

The pictures are selected from an old photo card I found filled away in a box on my desk (as I call the dining table where we haven’t dined for twenty years or more). Some I’ve used before, but I think some are new. The header picture is from one of the days the peacock from the village came to see the farm guineafowl.

Creaking gates, they tell us, hang the longest

Detail of old gate

Old gate, Northamptonshire

 

I can never resist an old gate . . .

2023 – The Last Post

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Yes, I know it’s slipped round to 2024, but these things happen.

Somehow, with my frequent slippages of time and my good intentions about punctuality never quite working out, it is appropriate that I am late. I have just, as usual, fallen asleep in front of the TV, woken and made a decision about whether or not to blog. Really I should go to sleep, but he urge to write is strong.

I am finally beginning to feel like I am recovering from my chest problem, It’s far from a full recovery, but I am at least starting to feel like I am making progress. It took a while at the beginning as there were symptoms from several things to unravel and I spent at least a week getting worse. Even yesterday, I felt very weak. Today I have begun to feel a little better. It’s surprising that you can sleep for 8 hours at night, then snooze through a lot of the day, and still end up feeling tired, but that’s how I am at the moment. While you are sleeping, you are healing.

Yesterday I decided I wouldn’t make any submissions for December. There seems little point in rushing work which can be left to mature. There are plenty of opportunities for submissions in the next few months – better to do something decent than rush into doing something badly. It always seems slightly rude not to support an editor who has accepted work in the past, but it also seems slightly rude to send something when you know it isn’t your best. There is so much more to making a submission than merely writing it and sending it off.

Photos are mainly Julia.

Enough About Me

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Tufted Duck in the sun

Another day and another sliver of progress. Unlike the first few says of the week progress is slow but moving forwards. The early days of the problem were marked by a tendency to move forward then to slip back during the day. This is not happening now. It’s slow but the slipping back seems to have gone. Unless a miracle happens I think that’s enough about me and my ailments for now.

I’m also going to try to extend the range of my blogging. Most posts seem to be about me these days, and there are plenty of other subjects.

Mandarin Duck – Arnot Hill Park

Like Joe Biden. Remember when he won the election and immediately told the UK he was brought up on his grandmother’s stories of our tyranny in Ireland and we were going to suffer for it? Well, I assumed that his grandmother had suffered at some point in the 20s. Doesn’t look like it. When he won the election the main Irish parts of his family had been in the USA for 170 years. His grandmother was born to parents who had themselves been born in the USA.

He could, I suppose, take comfort from the fact that his Irish family had, since 1921 lived in a free Irish state. Imagine if he had come from a group that still lived under occupation, and still hadn’t had their land back. He’d feel really bad then, I expect. You can see where this is going can’t you? It would be embarrassing to have President lecturing on the evils of repressive government whilst it had unsettled claims from people it had stolen land off, wouldn’t it?

Mallard – Arnot Hill Park

And what if land was still being stolen in 1954? Or 1973?

Actually, he’s a politician, so he probably wouldn’t feel bad.

We were actually taking about this in the shop a few weeks ago. At what point do you stop hating people for the past and try to work with them for a better future?

Gadwall drake

It’s ducks today. I had trouble finding them, then realised they are mainly listed under species rather than just “duck”. They are in descending order of colour. gadwall are actually identified by their lack of obvious identifying features. Poor things.

Things Can Only Get Better

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797 views, 12 visitors. The mystery continues. I have not been able to work out why, and it probably isn’t worth the effort.

Royal Mail announced that it is now accepting international parcels again, which is good. However, on reading the actual text rather than the headline it turns out that if you live in Northern Ireland you can post International Mail to the Republic. That’s not a lot of use to most of us and as a news release is misleading and almost untrue.

I don’t know details of the ongoing computer problems but I suspect a lot of it is due to the vulnerability of outdated systems (as was the case when the National Health Service was hacked a few years ago).

The lesson I will take from all this is not the lack of investment in new kit, but the way they kept lying to us about the resumption of services, and the way that all through the pandemic and into the cyber attack, the way they keep charging full price for a shadow of a proper service.

Big news of the day was that Julia was off work ill. She was poorly all yesterday but I still had to force her to take a day off today. I’d be happy to see her have tomorrow off too but they have been pestering her on the phone all day and she says even if she was still ill (she claims to be cured) it’s a waste of time staying at home.

When we retire I am going to make her change her phone number. When we were on the farm she used to give out her phone number to Quercus clients. When she went to work for MENCAP the clients we had in common shared her number so now all the MENCAP service users have it, and even on holidays and Sundays we get calls from them.

She is nicer than me. I would either be rude to people or change my number.

The staff are nearly as bad. Her manager has been ringing up too, to bully her into going back to work tomorrow. They will be sitting in a heated leisure centre with running water and flush toilets. Julia will be out in a garden with one lousy heater in a portacabin, water they take down in containers and chemical toilets. They have no electricity in the gardens, so no lighting either at this time of year. It’s not the sort of place you want to be when you are ill.

Snowdrops in the MENCAP garden

A very short post

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Sorry I disappeared so abruptly.  I wasn’t feeling very well as finished my last post and after closing down and going to bed I started shivering. The next day I found I couldn’t speak because I didn’t remember the words I wanted. Fortunately I’ve had it before so I didn’t panic. It’s phlebitis, an inflammation of the lower leg. It’s been sore for few weeks but I ignored it. I won’t provide a link to the relevant pages as they make it seem far more dramatic than it really is.

So, sorry for my abrupt departure and sorry for all the brief answers to comments.

I’m going to b away for a few more days but hope to be all fixed early next week.