Hi Diddle Ho Hum Diddley!

(Friday) 3.40p.m.  I can't think of a title for this blog post, so came up with the ridiculous effort you find here. Sorry it's so idiotic, but there you are! Do I care? Absolutely not!

Just listening to music on Alexa (by the way is Alexa male or female? Just a thought. It sounds vaguely female, but if you ask 'her' she doesn't seem to know.) As I was idly minding my own business, as one does when you listen to music, there was a 'clunk' as something was thrust through my letter box. I got up to find out what it was, and it turned out to be a copy of 'The Phone Book.' Something I haven't seen in years. Is this what the Telephone Directory has become? This rather thin and nondescript book? Not what I remember the Telephone Directory to be. What happened to Yellow Pages? Or Thompson's Directory. I have a glance inside and it's just advertising. Such businesses as drainage contractors, electrical engineers, plumbers, television aerial installers, advertisements for chair lifts and goodness knows what else. I was somewhat amused by the fact that if you get stuck down a cave you can be rescued if you dial 999. Seems a bit odd, because I can think of no caves to get stuck in and need rescuing from in Milton Keynes or thereabouts, but I suppose if you should need rescuing it's good to know you can call to get rescued. Also, coastguard, similarly, if you ring 999. But I don't know how far Milton Keynes is from the coast, but you'd be hard pressed to find a coastline anywhere in this vicinity. Must be at least 90 if not 100 miles if going east. Not sure if going west. Likewise, mountain rescue. Oh well, it's good to know you can be rescued from these areas if needed. 

I just can't believe that the Telephone Book still exists. I don't honestly think I have missed it or even think I've had any use for it, particularly since if you need a telephone number you just go on Google, if you need a plumber or someone to sort out your central heating boiler or MoT your car. As it is, the current copy which was thrust through my letterbox is likely to end up in the recycling. I just wonder if everyone who lives in Dexter House also got a copy, and if not, why did I get a copy. I do have a landline telephone, but not with BT. You used to get a telephone directory in the days when the only telephone provider was British Telecom or, before it was privatised, it was part of the Post Office and you automatically got a copy when you were a customer. That's a good many years ago. The Yellow Pages and Telephone Directory lived next to the telephone and one or the other probably sat UNDER the telephone, one of those old fashioned Bakelite models, black, with a dial (how many children today have any recollection of this type of telephone? Probably none. It had a cord that connected to a point somewhere nearby and this cord, brown, many-stranded, got twisted, because people used to play with it as they talked. In a separate room, which was cold and crafty. Such are  the memories. With a mobile phone you can call from more or less anywhere, inside or out, and have no end of apps, for Twitter, Facebook etc. Also, the Telephone Book or Telephone Directory used to be inches thick. This pathetic effort is thin and rather weedy. Just not very good somehow or other. Do people have their phone numbers in such directories? I my landline number in this? I'll have to have a look. Also, the Yellow Pages was also fairly substantial. I seem to remember at one time I delivered them around the village where I used to live. A car-load of Yellow Pages took up a lot of space, and they were heavy! Try carrying a load of them around with you and then depositing them at each house as you pass! 

(Saturday) I've just got back from taking Alfie out (10.50a.m.) We had gone out for our fist walk at about 6.10a.m. As we walked around Oldbrook Green, Alfie stopping around every couple of yards to have a good old sniff, I found an object laying in the grass. I had to have a closer inspection and it turned out to be a Casio calculator. I wasn't sure if it was working. Having picked it up (probably not such a good thing to do, on reflection, considering covid-19.) It did work, so I decided to keep it and put it in my jacket pocket. No doubt a student from MK College or Milton Keynes Academy dropped it. Oh well, their loss is my gain. Having got it home in the flat, I have wiped it with alcohol wipe, so it should be safe from any viruses or bacteria. I have wanted a calculator for some while, so here it is. Looking on line to discover it must be worth at least £20.

I've just heard the most appalling piece of news, about an 82-year-old woman who lives in sheltered housing in Charlton Kings, near Cheltenham, who decided to have a cup of tea outside with a friend, and some jobsworth (I can think of a worse word here, but I won't.) who had to telephone the police, who turned up at approximately 9.45p.m. The lady was IN BED, to tell her she was BREAKING THE LAW! She was FINED, apparently, which makes this even worse. I trust she gets some sort of apology for such outrageous behaviour.This lady had recently had the vaccine and she and the neighbour were sitting socially distancing outside. What is going on here? It smacks of something out of some dystopian novel or even satire. It hardly sounds real. The person who snitched on her should be ashamed of themselves! Not worthy of the name 'good neighbour.' Why on earth do we have such idiotic legislation which allows this sort of thing? Makes me think it's more like Nazi Germany..We really have a totalitarian regime in power. I would never have believed it if it wasn't real. In fact, if you were to write it into a novel, people would say 'that's not real. It would never happen,' but, unfortunately, it is real. PLEASE don't let this sort of nonsense happen again and PLEASE repeal this crazy legislation IMMEDIATELY! The police had no ID, apparently, and the lady was quite deaf! The whole thing is OUTRAGEOUS! What would have happened if they'd dragged the poor old, deaf lady was clapped in irons, handcuffs, and put in a Black Maria and taken off to be put in the slammer. This whole thing has bought out the absolute worst in people (but more nice and kind, mind you.) I think people have lost the plot. It must be the effect of being confined they way we have been for more than a year. Sounds like something out of some crazy comedy to me or even a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

Remembering Carol- Part 1

Today, 7th March 2019, would have been Carol's 55th birthday. I miss her so much, we had a fantastic marriage. We had  only recently had our 11th anniversary in the May, barely weeks before she was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. I'm not going to dwell on that. I want to celebrate her life, how she had such a sense of fun and spontaneity. 

We met through a Christian website called Fusion 101 in 2006. At the time I was working as a live-in carer for a young man with cerebral palsy. I stayed in his flat 24 hours a day and worked two weeks on and then one week off. I had started chatting to Carol via the internet and we discovered fairly early on that we had a lot in common, such as theatre, art, literature and just life in general and above all, that we were both Christians, which was very important to both of us. I then stopped chatting when I went off to work with the young man in Milton Keynes, bearing in mind that this was before smart phones and other devices that you could connect to the internet, so we weren't able to continue chatting. I had a computer connected to the internet at home in my flat, but this was well before wifi which is so easy to connect to than having your computer connected physically to an internet connection using a cable. Carol was working as a humanities teacher at Stantonbury school in Milton Keynes. She was having trouble teaching 'Twelfth Night,' but had absolutely no experience of teaching Shakespeare, even though she was expected to teach this as part of the humanities curriculum. Because I had such a huge interest in Shakespeare and had studied 'Twelfth Night' from G.C.E. Literature level right up to degree level, I was able to help her with lesson planning and understanding the text of this play. So we had that in common.

So there I was in mid-May in 2006, working with that young man in his bungalow in Milton Keynes. This particular week I was coming to the end of my stint and would have gone home on the Monday of that week and to be replaced by another support worker. But on the Saturday that week I began to get a pain in my chest. The previous week I had a bout of bronchitis and had almost got over it. I couldn't return home, because I realised that it would be difficult for the agency which I worked through would't have been able to find a substitute to take over from me. So, when I had this odd pain in my chest, I was assuming it was like heartburn or something related to the bronchitis. It didn't go away, so I walked to the local Tesco's to buy some mint tea, because I had used this in the past to relieve heartburn. But it didn't relieve the discomfort.

When I got back to my flat in Bedford I made an appointment with my doctor and mentioned the odd pain in my chest. I was given an examination but the doctor didn't say what it was. I think I had to have a blood test, but honestly don't remember. All I remember was that I was given a prescription for something called a G.T.N. spray and was told that, if the pain continued and didn't go away, I should read the instructions to use the spray, a few squirts under my tongue and rest for 5 minutes until the pain went away. I don't think the word 'angina' was mentioned, or if it was, I have no recollection and I certainly didn't connect it immediately with having a heart attack. You would have thought, as a carer I might have done, or from memories of my mother who had regular angina attacks, but that was in the late 1980s, well before the sort of mediation we have today. The fact is, that night the pain in my chest got worse and worse, but being me, and doing what most men do, or are supposed to do, I imagined it would go away. Ignoring it was the only option. I didn't want to ring 999 as I should have done, the thought was, I didn't want to bother anyone. I could cope with this thing on my own. But I couldn't. By around 6a.m. I just had to ring 999 and call and ambulance. It's just as well I did. The paramedics arrived, by which time I was hyperventilating and it took them some time to calm me down. I was taken downstairs to the awaiting ambulance which was parked on the grass outside the block of flats where I lived.

I'm going on a bit here. I hadn't meant to. But it explains how Carol and I met. Anyway, I was rushed off to hospital, where I was given the message that I'd had a heart attack and stayed there for a week. Meanwhile Carol must have wondered what had happened to me. Perhaps I had lost interest. She had no idea where I was or what was going on.

I eventually arrived home, not in exactly top condition health-wise. I wasn't particularly strong and could hardly walk. I was given a load of medication to take which I was told I'd have to take for the rest of my life and  that  I wouldn't be able to drive for at least a month, which was difficult, because I'm quite an independent person and can't stand not being able to get out and about. Carol and I continued to chat via the internet, for a few weeks. The one day she said 'I'm going to phone you.' So she did, and it was the fist time I heard her voice. She said 'come to Milton Keynes and we can meet.' So, it just happened that I was okay to drive, more than a month since I had the heart attack. She said 'meet me at Furzton Lake.' I didn't have the faintest idea exactly where that was. Today you'd use Google Maps, or if you had one, a SatNav, but it was well before this sort of technology was available. It just shows how much we rely on it nowadays to find our way about.

I went to the wrong carpark. I went to Caldecotte Lakes, the place with the pub with the windmill on the top. I'm not sure if it's original or a sort of reconstruction, but does it matter? Then Carol telephoned me on her mobile. 'Where are you?' she asked, and I told her. It wasn't Furzton Lakes, as I soon discovered. She turned up in her car, along with her dog, Poppy. What was she expecting? Tall dark and handsome? Driving a B.M.W. or some open-top spots car? No. Instead a clapped out Renault 5 and a similarly-clapped-out bloke who could barely walk properly since his heart attack. I certainly wasn't at my best, so it wouldn't have surprised me if she'd taken one look and driven away, but she didn't.

We went for a walk, although I wasn't exactly steady on my feet. We took the dog with us and she jumped in the lake, which added to the fun of things and got us talking. She (the dog, that is.) come out of the lake and shook herself, most of it all over me, so that was a good start to things. We went into the pub to have a drink and continued to talk.

I can't complete this in one blog post, so I'll have to continue in a second post. There's so much I want to write about, which can't be done in just one post.

999 Paramedics Call

Carol was  violently sick all Sunday afternoon. It calmed down for a couple of hours, but by 11.30 it was necessary to call 999. An ambulance arrived within 10 minutes and the paramedics did an assessment and it was decided that she should go to the emergency department at Milton Keynes hospital. I followed in our car and met up with Carol within the hospital. Fortunately it was relatively quiet and we spent around four hours as the nurses and doctors got things under control. It was decided that she should have to be observed and would need to remain in hospital and that the doctors and surgeons would meet up during today (Monday) to decide a pathway for her treatment. She was taken to Ward 20 where the nurse on Emergency handed over to the staff on Ward 20. I will be returning later this morning to be in attendance when the meeting is held to decide how Carol's treatment will be set up. I will post on here as things evolve.

Later

I've been in to see Carol this morning. She wasn't in a happy frame of mind, unfortunately. She's in a side-ward, so it's a good deal quieter than being in the main ward. Extremely busy. The nurses are very good at what they do as well as friendly, which makes things better. I've been to the Macmillan unit, which is on the floor below ward 20. I have had a brief chat with one of the counsellors there and have made an appointment for 8th November.

I had to come home as I needed to have something to eat. I went to Sainsbury's for a sandwich and had to buy a new mop as things need cleaning around the house. Fortunately it's sunny and mild, but last night, when I returned to the car to come home, there was some ice on the car's windscreen. It took a while to defrost. It's a good thing the new car as efficient heating and the windscreen has a heat strip to melt any ice. This morning I went to the hospital after 9 a.m. and parked as usual. On leaving later, I had to go to the ticket machine to pay, as you take a ticket from the machine when you enter the carpark and then put this ticket in the machine to pay on the way out and then use the ticket to get the barrier to lift when you leave. The machine would not accept my debit card, for whatever reason, and I couldn't read the digital display as the sun was too bright to make it clear to read. I asked a lady passer-by where the nearest pay machine might be as the one I'd tried wasn't cooperating and she said if I drove to the barrier and pressed a certain button I might be able to leave without having to pay if I said the machine was faulty. In driving to the barrier I found the barrier raised and I could leave with having to pay. This happened a few weeks ago when we were at the hospital so no doubt there was a technical problem with the ticket machine. Thankfully, because I saved at least £4.50.

My Heart Attack

I'm new at this. Well, there's a first time for everything, I suppose. At one time the very thought of a computer would bring me out in goose-bumps. But here I am, using the internet, writing letters on my Mac, sending emails and now writing a blog! Whatever next?

Why am I at home, in the middle of the day, you may be asking, which allows me time to write this? A fairly simple answer (if anything is simple!). I had a heart-attack on the night of 17th/18th of May 2006 . Not something I was expecting, but it happened. If I hadn't rung the '999' emergency number for an ambulance, I might not be here now.

I worked as a carer for a young man who had cerebal Palsy. I 'lived-in' with him, and did two-weeks at a time. The pain started on the Saturday at the middle of my two-week period. I felt quite awful, but really thought that it was no more than a chest infection as I had had a bout of bronchitis the previous week and imagined that this pain was associated with that. I had to walk to the local shop to get milk and also got mint tea as I thought that the pain might be a sort of heart-burn or indigestion and this would help to relieve it. I knew that it would be really difficult to leave to go home as I have to remain with David as he can't look after himself (the whole point of being a live-in carer, of course.) If I'd rung the agency whom I work for, I very much doubt that they would have been able to send a replacement at short notice. So, unless things improved, I would just have to remain with him and wait until I went home to deal with things. I went to a chemist and got some linctus, thinking that this would relieve things. Of course, it didn't. On the day I was due to leave and to hand over to the next carer I rang my doctor and made an appointment for later that afternoon. I went to the doctor and I was given antibiotics, as the doctor wasn't sure what the pain was. When, by the end of a week, the pain hadn't gone away, and I taken all the tablets, I returned to the doctor's surgery. I saw a different doctor this time, and when she said the word 'angina' then things started to make sense and I got slightly scared (to say the least.) She told me to ring '999' if the pain kept on, and gave me a prescription for a red spray which I had to spray under my tongue if the pain didn't stop.I really thought, when the 'thing' first happened, that it was a chest infection. I'm not the sort of person who makes a fuss about things. I usually just 'get on' with things, which is basically because I'm a carer. I'm used to looking after OTHER people, and I suppose I haven't looked after myself, hence the surprise when I was in need of care and attention.

The following two days I got some chest pain, so I used the spray. It happened several more times. By the Wednesday evening it didn't go away. At around 7.30 I decided to settle down to watch some television, and the pain started, but this time it didn't go away. I used the spray, but it didn't seem to help. I thought to myself, 'I may need to ring 999 for an ambulance.' But I decided that I wouldn't need one, and continued using the spray. I thought to myself 'I don't want to bother anyone at this time of night! If I need an ambulance, I can ring after 9 in the morning!' I even prepared a holdall with clothes that I would need for a hospital stay. That's the sort of person I am, as a carer, I have to be organised to look after someone else. As the night progressed, the pain didn't go away, in fact it got worse. By 6 in the morning I had to ring 999 as the pain was really bad. Within 20 minutes the paramedics arrived at my flat. I was getting stressed and was hyperventilating, so they had to calm me down and used oxygen which was given to me through a mask over my face. They eventually walked me down to the ambulance which was drawn up to the front entrance of the block of flats. Well, I thought, if I can walk, I can't be too bad. As we left the flat, one of the paramedics told me to bring some cash with me as I'd need to pay for a taxi to bring me home, so I imagined that I'd be at the hospital for an hour or so and then come home by taxi. How wrong could I be! My hospital stay lasted a week.

We got the the hospital and I went into the Accident and Emergency department. I was told to lay on a trolley in a curtained-off area. A tablet was put in my mouth and I was told not to swallow it but to hold it under my tongue. An X Ray was taken of my chest. Doctors and nurses came and went and a canula was put in the back of my hand. I was left alone for what seemed like ages. Nurses came and went, but they wouldn't tell me anything. I really wanted to know what was causing the pain. No answer was forthcoming. After what seemed quite some time I was informed by one of the nurses that I was going to be moved to the Acute ward. I wasn't sure what that meant. Why couldn't I just go home? Why couldn't someone just tell me what was causing the pain?? I was kept on the trolley and pushed rather unceremoniously out of the Accident and Emergency department and through the corridors of the hospital until we arrived at the Acute ward. I seem to remember that a doctor did come and speak to me, and the words 'heart attack' were actually mentioned. I didn't stay on the Acute ward for long as I was evenutally moved to the Coronary Care Unit which is several floors up from the Acute ward, and by this time I realised that if I was in the Coronary Care Unit things certainly weren't too good for me! All during this the pain in my chest was continuing.

I had to give one of the nurses my daughter Chloe's phone number, as none of my family knew what had happened to me and where I was. She turned up later in the evening to visit me, which was a real surprise, as she was in Worcester, where she is at university. Also, someone I know through my church, Steve LePage, was also telephoned, and he and his wife visited me during my stay in hospital.

I haven't spent a great deal of time in hospital. I had my appendix out when I was 12, but I haven't spent any length of time in hospital more recently. I had never realised what a noisy place a ward could be. At night there is always the sound of something or other. I was connected to a monitor, for heart-rate, pulse etc. Other people on the ward were also on these things, as well as drips etc. I had several of these, connected to me via a canular in the arm. When the drug or whatever that they administer runs out the machine automatically sounds an alarm, and these keep going off all night, and the duty nurse will come and replace the drug. Also, as part of the on-going observation ('obs') you have an E.C.G. attached to your chest by way of electrodes and this measures your heartrate etc. I am also somewhat impressed by all this modern technology, as well as the blood-pressure monitoring system which in some cases can automatically take your blood pressure, for example, at night. The thing automatically inflates and takes your blood pressure. One poor man had one which took his blood pressure every hour on the hour all night. I doubt very much whether he actually got a good night's sleep.

It took three days for the doctors and nurses to get the pain under control and at one time I was on morphene and warfarin, which is also used as a rat-poison! It is used becuse it helps to prevent blood clots, but as a result of this I was advised not to shave for several days, because if I cut myself it would be difficult to stop the bleeding. I don't like going without shaving, so as soon as I was able, and after I was taken off the Warfarin, I shaved again. There was a time when one of the canulas was taken out of my arm, but the nurse who did it forgot I was on Warfarin and there was quite a flow of blood when the canula was taken out. Not nice.

As I write this I've been for an angiogram at Bedford Hospital and have also had a Stress Test and two M.I.B.I. scans at Papworth Hospital. I expect that I will get an appointment within the next week or so with one of the heart specialists at Bedford Hospital and from that I will learn what they have discovered from the scans. I'm not too worried about all this as I know that they know what they're doing.

Well, the reports eventually came back from all the tests and I was told that I wouldn't need any sort of surgery, and that the medication I was put on is sufficient to manage my heart problems. I don't need any sort of surgery.

The medication I was originally put on was Clopodogrel, (which I have since been taken off by my doctor.), Bisoprolol, Pravastatin and Dispersible Asprin. I have been on several types of Statin tablets, but they have had severe side-effects. When I was in hospital the Statin drugs I was on gave me flu-like symptoms, and it wasn't until I talked to one of the nurses that I discovered that this was that particular statin drug which had that side effect, so it was changed to another type. I have since been on several other types of Statin drugs, all of which have side effects, usually upsetting my stomach, causing me to run to the toilet a great deal, stomach and muscle cramps, sleeplessness and tiredness. This seems to be fairly general with these drugs, but I have found that Pravastatin has the least side effects. The statins are for lowering the level of cholesterol in my blood, which is what causes blood clots and leads to heart attacks and strokes. Asprin prevents blood clots.

I have had two emergency visits to hospital, one when I had a really bad angina attack and another similar one in May 2007. On both occasions I had to stay in over-night as they wanted to keep an eye on me. After the May 2007 attack I had to undergo two sessions of tests, one done on a treadmill, to test my heart's strength, and another where they put a drug into my blood stream which made my heart beat faster, as if I had been doing strenuous evercise, and they used an ultra sound scan to see my heart working. On both cases it appeared relatively healthy. I have not had any really severe angina attacks since then, but if I do get an attack I use the red spray, which helps to relieve the pain.