Archive
on cataracts, part one
I can’t remember when I was first diagnosed with a cataract in my right eye. I do remember that it was during an eye test in the US, and that it was whilst we had a home there, so it was before 2019, and probably about 2015 or 2016, so that has a significance that I will come to in a moment.
Having my eyes tested in America was done for three reasons; firstly because I wanted to experience the service over there as compared to home in the UK, secondly because of the more attractive range of frames available, but lastly because I knew that I had some sort of issue, and wanted to find out away from risk that the optician would tell the DVLA that I had a problem that would put may driving licence at risk.
The process was different to any that I had experienced in the UK, and I was impressed, both in terms of how they did it and the fact that I could come back a couple of hours later and collect my new glasses. No 2 weeks wait over there. But the news that I had a developing cataract was troubling, even though I was assured that it would take some time before I needed to address it.
It was during a routine visit to my doctor a year or so later that I mentioned the cataract and was told no to worry, that it would be as long as ten years or more before it got to the point where an operation would be considered.
The issue had been on my mind since but it was still a shock when I went for my annual eye check at the opticians in January this year to be told that things were bad enough for an operation referral. Not only that but that I also had one developing in my left eye. My ten years seem to have elapsed as predicted.
We had been discussing the probability of an operation, and that going private might be the best option should the waiting list be too long for one with the National Health Service. However, I had the referral letter by email two days later and, having accessing the web site that day, an operation scheduled for 6 weeks later. I was impressed.
And so there we are. Der Tag is this Wednesday. I am terrified. Hopefully I will be back in action next week to report back on the results.
on falling, a random rant
Che said; “You had a fall at home, an ambulance crew attended”, I interrupted the doctor, sorry, but I collapsed at home, I didn’t fall. To me, there is a big difference between a collapse and a fall. Yes, you end up on the ground in both cases, but they are not the same.
Unless you are the National Health Service, and you are over 60, in which case you have a fall. I don’t know why they are so pedantic about this, and yes, I know that I am being pedantic too, but there seems too me to be a significant bit of age discrimination going on here.
In my case I had been feeling ill, and with a thumping headache I had gone upstairs to lie down. The Berkshire Belle, who had been a nurse in her younger days, had given me strict instructions to call for help if I wanted to use the toilet, but I had got up and gone there anyway. Leaving the smallest room, I passed out and collapsed onto the landing.
I was running a temperature of around 40c, the result of a streptococcal infection that had caused ulceration in the portal vein from my brain, which, in turn, had resulted in blood clot, although we knew none if that at the time. What we did know, or at least the BB did, for I was enjoying the carpet, thinking how comfortable if was and understanding why the cats liked to lie there. She also knew that she could not move me, and that I was too close to the top of the stairs for any attempts to get me to move myself. She dialled 999.
I was very ill and not too far from shuffling off. It took a day to find the type of infection and start to counter it, but a week to work out where it was coming from, by which time I was a lot closer to shuffling off. But, once they’d worked out the source and cleared it out, I was quickly back. I had to learn how to walk again, and there were some indignities to face, but I was home after a 4 week stay in hospital and it took another two months to recover enough to go back to work. I’d been that ill.
But I didn’t fall! I am stuck with that on my medical records now though, and it rankles. If anyone reading this knows why the medical profession decided that old people fall, please write in and explain it to me. I really would like to know.
So there, a random rant. I haven’t had one here for a while, so maybe it was about time. I’ll shut up now and let you get on with your day.
life log #15
My recent stay in hospital has had a profound effect on me, the Berkshire Belle and thus my life. It is something that I am only just beginning to recognise, and therefore I have not yet fully understood it and cannot, as yet, come to terms with.
I had not realised until a couple of weeks after I came out of hospital the full picture of how ill I had been. I had not inkling of the conversation that the Hastings Hottie had had with the cardiologist on the first Thursday of my stay in hospital, and how she had gone home that evening with a real expectation that the ‘phone call would come to say that I had gone.
As an ex-nurse she is in that difficult position of knowing too much and not enough at the same time, and recognised that, despite the platitudes, I was close to the end and that the medical team were running out of options. Fortunately, on the next day, Friday, they worked out where the problem was and scheduled me for theatre.
My memories of that first week are sketchy. I can remember lying on the floor and thinking how nice the carpet was, then I have a memory of a lady paramedic talking to me, but I was floating in and out of consciousness. I can recall being taken back into the ambulance and then being in a bed in a corridor, and then being taken for some test or other, of having lost my parking space in the corridor on return in A&E and having to be found another space there. I can remember ringing the BB and telling her that I was in Bay 16 and then of being taken up onto Amply Ward where a bed was available.
Most of what I remember of that first week is pleasant. The ward was just around the corner from where I had stayed for the bulk of my last stay eleven years ago and so I could see the helicopter come into land and, in the distance, some of the same countryside. There are some unpleasant memories; one nurse who had trouble finding a vein to take blood from being brutal with the tourniquet and leaving me with a bruise that has only just faded, and having to wear incontinence pants. I am not sure if I was sedated or not at that point, but it could explain why I was, as the Wonder of Wokingham puts it, not really with it a lot of the time.
This is me at 0700 on Saturday the 16th June, ten or so hours after coming back from surgery. I am not sure who took the photo, I don’t think that I did.
And this is me at 1045 the next day, Sunday 18th June. I am feeling pretty good and have made the effort to put a decent shirt on. At that point we hadn’t got my electric razor sorted and so I am unshaven. I am on the Critical Care ward with my own room and a nurse stationed outside where she can see me through the window by the door. There is a visible transformation.
In the Critical Care ward I may well have been sedated. Certainly I was confined to be from the time that I arrived there on Friday evening until around the middle of the following week when, having asked if I could have a shower instead of the daily blanket baths, I was assisted to the shower by a nurse who washed and dried me as I sat in a plastic chair.
I had no strength in my legs and, on the Thursday of that week two Physio ladies turned up to see me and to get me out of bed. I quickly came to loathe them as they got me doing things that I really did not enjoy. Walking with a Zimmer frame was just about bearable, but standing on one leg was not, and nor were any other of the exercise that they put me through. I christened them Bambi and Thumper after two characters in Diamonds are Forever who give James Bond a working over.
They came twice on the Thursday and then again on the Friday morning. Friday afternoon Bambi turned up with a male colleague and they took me out for a walk in the ward using a walking stick and, presumably liking what they saw, asked if I would try some stairs. Whilst walking on the level was an issue, the stairs were a breeze and I flew up two flights with no problem and came back down equally confident. My torturers were satisfied that I could walk and my days in critical care were numbered; the next day I was moved out.
Back on an ordinary ward I quickly weaned myself off the incontinence pants and began to walk up and down the ward’s corridors. I needed my walking stick, but the main aim was to be seen to be making an effort as I wanted to be sent home.
I was on a schedule of drugs, in tablet, injection and drip-feed forms, these being served up around the clock, and I was also still having my blood pressure and sugar levels checked at regular intervals. My room on the ward was one of the standard five bed type and I was, this time, in the bed next to the bathroom. One of the problems with being in this sort of situation is the risk of becoming institutionalised, and I tried to resist that, but things like mealtimes can assume a level of importance, that need for a routine is very pervasive, especially as I enjoyed the food.
My efforts to avoid sinking into the mire were in my walking, and that gave me an escape, even if only for a few moments. The Berkshire Belle persuaded my that she and I should go down to the Costa Coffee bar in the hospital’s reception area and we did that a couple of times during my last week and I also went down there after breakfast on my last two days.
I was released two weeks earlier than planned, primarily because I had shown that I could get about unaided, and had intended to go back to work a couple of weeks later, but my GP signed me off for longer on the basis that I needed the time to recover. He was right, although I was disappointed, but the reality is that I am struggling with my physical fitness. A combination of Sciatica and Plantar fasciitis makes walking difficult and I need to be able to walk around six miles in a four hour session when I go back to work.
So my first change is physical, in that I walk like an old man for the first time, age looks to have caught up with me. The other change is really mental in that I have been off work for two months now, the longest I have been off work in my adult life. I desperately need to get back into the saddle to sort my mind out, but am not fully confident that my body will take it, which is another mental issue.
Time will tell, and I hope that the next life log will tell of everything being fine.
on life and death
Sorry that I have not posted for a few weeks, but I have been in hospital. Some eleven years on from one infection trying to finish me off, another made an attempt, and, like the first one, came close to getting me.
This time I am going to take a while to fully recover. The previous one took nearly six months to get over. This one may take a year, but at least I am still here.
I am in not too bad a condition for 70, but this sort of thing just goes to show how thin the line is. A random event within my body nearly brought an end to everything, but it could have been an accident of some sort. No matter how healthy you are, the Grim Reaper can swipe you away at any moment.
Normal service should be resumed from today onwards. I’ll cover this event in a bit more detail in the next Life Log.
life log #10
Between us, although mainly myself, the Berkshire Belle and I have been keeping the NHS busy lately. I have had my annual diabetes check (results not back yet), we have booked in for our Covid boosters and will try to get our ‘flu jabs at the same time. here’s also a new app to install that allows video appointments. On the non-NHS front, but still medical, I am off to the fang-puller to talk about an implant to replace the tooth that got knocked out in a fall about a year ago. I’m also due for hearing and eyesight tests that I need to make appointments for, and I’ve had this morning my letter about my annual diabetic eye test. Seventy years of use, and abuse, have taken their toll.
One result I do have from the diabetes test is my weight on the surgery scales which I assume must be accurate. When I weight myself at home I do it wearing just my underwear, but at the surgery I was on the scales fully dressed, including shoes, and with car keys, ‘phone and wallet in pockets. 121 kg is too much, but probably more like 117 kg and that is about 10 kg more than I would like to be seeing. I am writing this at the end of a two month period in which we have had a variety of birthdays and anniversaries to celebrate and that has involved some good eating. No excuses, but, with Christmas coming up, I need to get a grip.
Finacially we are reasonably comfortable at the moment and have no worries over the energy crisis other than what a series or power cuts might do to our web stocked freezer. However, we are trying to cut back on consumption and have both turned the heating down a degree and cut back on the hours that it runs for. We have taken various devices out of service; the Alexa dots for example, and are carrying on with our usual efforts like only putting as much water as we need in the kettle. Such things are ingrained in people of our generation perhaps.
I once of my former professional careers I used to manage a large property portfolio and dealt with energy bills in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. Finding ways of reducing those costs was always a priority. Reducing consumption was only a vehicle for reducing cost, but such things become habit. Any home we might only be saving pennies rather than thousands, but every little helps and if we are working towards helping to stave off power cuts then that’s fine.
The Wonder of Wokingham and I both remember well the scheduled power cuts of the early 1970s. She was in RAF quarters back then with two young children and I was working as a stock controller. We saw the cuts differently because of those lifestyles, but neither of us want to have to go through all of that again. Today we all have so many more electric devices than back then. In the time of the last cuts not everyone had a TV, now it seems that most homes have one in every room. Then most rooms downstairs had two single power sockets and upstairs rust one. We have seven in the kitchen now and there is something plugged into all bar one of them. It is a different world and we have to face up to our excesses.
I have had another couple of weeks off work and we have tried to get out and about a bit more. That has left little time for the garden and garage, but I have been doing a bit in both. Autumn maintenance in the garden and getting the garage cleared out a bit so that I can get back to using it without risk of being buried under an avalanche. I have started getting some things off to auction so that should see a few extra pennies dropping into my piggy back over the coming months. Other stuff will go to charity and the rest to the council tip. We just have too much stuff.
Collecting is habit forming and I am especially guilty of it, to the point of an addiction at times. Fortunately some of what I have collected has accumulated in value (a lot has not), and it is the former that I am firing off to the auction rooms. None of it was bought as an investment, I bought it because I wanted it, but there comes a time when I realise that you have things that have been shut away in cupboards or the loft and start to think that it is pointless. There is little satisfaction, for me, in k=just owning something and so I have hardened my heart and started to move it on. If it generates some cash then that is doubly welcome.
With the Hastings Hottie and I having both seen milestone birthdays in the last few weeks we have decided to face up to another harsh reality and we are going to having lasting power of attorney documents drawn up in case either of us loses our faculties. We took out funeral plans earlier in the year and, whilst these things are depressing, it is worth sorting out. Having been through the problems of a parent with dementia I understand how hard it is and, should I fall foul of that, I would not want the Berkshire Belle to have to deal with the fallout without the relevant piece of paper to allow her to manage me.
Cheerfull topics are required now, so a few words on how the garden recovered from the heat and drought. We did loose some things and others were badly scorched, but most plants have recovered. As I get through the Autumn tidy up I will have a better idea of where we have issues. My move to more and more containers planted seems to have worked and we are looking around to see if we can find a few old chimney pots to add some variety. Containers can be moved and so I can shift them around as I like.
The garden isn’t getting too much attention at the moment, but another couple of weeks work on the garage should have that sorted out and I can get the garden ready for Winter. It has been an odd year again, but now that we have the fences sorted out I can have a more normal run through next year all being well. No doubt there will be odd weather again, it has become the norm, but I now have nearly 600 litres of water storage to help me over any drought conditions and I have improved the drainage in the garden to cope with the odd monsoon. The new fences give us some shelter from high winds and so we are in a better position too start a new year than ever before.
the lockdown log 15
Here we are again, one week older and, in my case, a couple of kilos lighter. Yes the paid up member of the carnivore and pudding clubs is on a diet.
It is nothing to do with the current plague, just a change to lifestyle brought on by being diagnosed as having slipped into type 2 diabetes. It all started with a prescription review back around the start of lockdown. These reviews are now done by a pharmacist rather than the doctor and, due to lockdown, was going to be over the ‘phone.
When the call came the lady on the other end was quite agitated and wanted me to come in for a blood test, but would not say what for (my last one was in early 2019). I declined on the basis that I did not want to go to the surgery at that stage of the Covid-19 outbreak and asked to defer the test for 3 or 4 months.
The surgery rang me last month and in I went. The results came back and I was asked to come in for a second test and was told that my blood sugar was too high. I had actually passed the threshold in the 2019 test, but no-one had made any contact to tell me and now I had gone up again. I provided the second blood test and have to assume that it confirmed the first one as I have not had a call to discuss what they found.
It was a wake up call. I am annoyed that the surgery knew that I had a problem eighteen months ago because, had they told me, I could have addressed it then, but I can do nothing about that. What I can do is to change my diet and exercise regime and that is what I have been top to for the last 10 days or so. Carb intake has been more than halved, sugar intake likewise and I have started banging in at least a 1k walk every afternoon after lunch (except for Sundays).
When I was weighed at the surgery I was a bit down on what I had expected, but have paired off over 2 kilos since then which is pleasing, but, as we consultants would say, that is the low hanging fruit and an easy win. I have not set any targets here besides the one about power walking for at least the 1 kilometre on 6 days out of seven (I already walk 8-10k per day on average anyway, but that is not exercise, it is to do with work). I have to go back for more tests in 3 months and just aim to be in as better shape as I can manage by then.
In other news I am trying to get back on course with some of the projects around Bowen Towers. The recent bad weather, along with the news from the NHS, has knocked me off course a bit on the outside jobs and I need to get my focus back. I am slightly hampered by a couple of things that I cannot influence too much and my afternoon walks, whilst not that long at the moment, do interrupt my day. What I have done to overcome the weather issues is to switch focus to indoor projects and am making good progress on things like my internet based business activities.
Time seems to be flying past and it is hard to accept that we are on the downward slope in terms of daylight hours already. for me the lockdown has not made time drag in the slightest. I am lucky in having so much that I can occupy myself with. Away from work I can just enjoy not having to interact with anyone other than the Berkshire Belle and am very happy in isolation.
We do have to face up to the fact that we will almost certainly not be going back to America this year. Apart from Covid-19 being rampant over there we would also be due to be around for the presidential elections and have a feeling that things might get a little nasty. It already looks as though this will be a year without flying anywhere, only the second time since I first flew back in 1986, but there seems no point in taking any such risk at the moment and we will start to look at what we might be able to do in 2021.
That’s all for this week. Stay safe out there.
the lockdown log 12
Life has really not changed too much for the Berkshire Belle and I. We have refined our choice of intent supplier here and there, but the only real change so far is that the double B has not been out.
By that I mean that she has stayed in the house apart from two occasions when she has walked down the front path to bring in out dustbin and recycling crates. This she will do if the weather is good and it is important for us to get these things in quickly after they are emptied because the team doing the emptying often replace them at the wrong house. Other than those two outings she has not been outside of the house.
I am still working on the front line five days out of seven, but other than that my trips have been confined to food shopping plus one trip to a garden centre and I felt guilty about that. Last week I drove over to Cirencester and back, about a forty mile trip, on a business matter regarding something that I am currently involved in restarting on June 15th. That felt really weird, but made more so by the number of tourists I saw up there; where have they come from? Well in the case of a group of around half a dozen from Italy. I did not stop to make further enquiries.
So far here in Swindon we are not doing too badly on the Covid-19 front compared to some other areas and, whilst we are part of the South West where numbers of infections are rising, here we don not seem to be getting too many. I wonder if the mass exoduses to the beach and other beauty spots over the bank holiday weekends have contributed to the rise in cases.
Today it is raining and looks to be wet all day so my plans for a few hours in the garden have been shelved. I have to go out at lunchtime to the doctor’s for a routine blood test. I would rather avoid the place, but have already pout this appointment off once and they are nagging. To me this is an example of today’s society at its worst because the appointment is largely a waste of their time and mine.
The problem started when the health practice that I am registered at decided that periodic reviews of regular medication would be carried out by a pharmacist to save the doctor’s time. My review came up and the pharmacist rang me for a chat. She called top my records and latched on to the fact that I have had, from time to time, high blood pressure. I explained that my doctor had elected to stop the periodic blood pressure tests on the basis that he was happy enough with me to have stopped the blood pressure medication, but this was not good enough: I would have to come in and had a BP test plus a blood test for a variety of routine function checks.
And so I am going today and am fairly certain that what the pharmacist gets back will mean that she will compare the results to whatever chart it is that they have and she will want me to come in and see a doctor. There will be no peace until I do and so I will make an appointment and go in for a chat at which we will agree that I am an overweight 67 year old white male who is vulnerable too certain risks. The same 67 year old etc etc who has walked an average of 5.8 miles a day over the last 12 months (according to my tracker), works 4 hours a day 5 days a week at a physical job, does not smoke and drinks little. Whatever else we achieve from that appointment I doubt that it will be a productive use of the doctor’s time, but they have to go through the motions because of a duty of care and all that bureaucracy that is in place these days. This is one of the areas of waste that I would love to see swept away.
Please do not think that I am knocking the NHS; I am not. The health care practitioners are wonderful and have saved my life eight years ago. They have also saved the life of my son who is 38 today. It is the ludicrous bureaucracy that costs too much that is drowning the NHS, but that is a feature of the world that we have created now whereby nothing is our fault and there must always be someone else to blame (and sue).
Anyway, rant over. It is a wet day, I will not have to water my plants and my water butts will be replenished. There is alway some good in everything, no matter how bad it might seem.
Stay safe and have fun.
supporting the front line doesn’t mean holding it up
I have been very lucky over the years in that I have been able to be part of some massive changes in the businesses for whom I have worked, from small parts in the early years through to influence and then responsibility. These days my role is usually one of influence because that is what mentors and consultants do (I can’t recall who said it, but I love the line about a consultant being like a castrated bull; he can only advise), but I do love the opportunity to get back into the trenches and do something. Read more…
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the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke 