Athletes and Dancers

I often read WCD's blog and it makes me wonder about stuff. In fact I read lots of blog entries that make me wonder about stuff (as well as smile, laugh, cry and empathise and generally provoke all kinds of emotional response!) but she's amongst my favourites. Anyway she was talking about dance and injury and it made me think how true this was for athletes too. I get physio every two weeks and my physio is in the sports science department of a large sports training centre. The treatment benches are always full of athletes from table tennis players, runners, weight lifters, archers, badminton player and judo guys. Occasionally you see big rugby players and rowers - in fact, you name it - most sports have probably been represented. The nearest we get to dance I think would be the gymnasts and I don't know how many disabled ones of them that there are - is there disabled gymnastics? There should be if there is dance, surely?

Anyway injury in sport seems to be pretty common - people are trying to run faster, jump higher, lift more or push harder. All these athletes work so close to the edge so much of the time that you really get to see people who are pushing their bodies to the limit and still expect them to work perfectly. This is especially true in disability sport (and dance I guess) where those who choose not to accept their limitations require and expect their bodies to perform at their peak without question. Often, they expect them to perform at the peak performance of their able bodied counterparts which is amazing when you come to really think about it. People like Oscar Pistorius and Jody Cundy are trying to qualify for able bodied teams and they are not alone in this desire . I wonder what it is that drives people like us - is it that we are just stupid and cannot recognise that our bodies were not designed to do all of this stuff? But then what of runners like Kelly Holmes or cyclists like Chris Hoy? Are their bodies doing what they were born to do or did they get to the top by gritting their teeth and pushing through the pain. I wonder if the injuries they picked up along the way were a warning to them that their bodies were not designed to be abused in that way. In fact , do you ever wonder if pushing your body to out perform itself, and everyone else, is just another form of abuse like cigarettes alcohol or drugs. Plainly no one who looks at a top athlete sees someone who is abusing their body in any way, but day in day out, these guys are pushing and pushing, running faster, harder and longer, swimming until their lungs burst, pushing until their fingers bleed... and along the way picking up small niggles, an injury here, a fall there all of which land them back on the physio bench. All pretty deep questions eh? and ones I don't have any real answers to either.

The only thing I know for sure, is that I don't know that any of these people were born to do what they do - sure, they plainly have some kind of basic talent for what they do, but what pushes them forward is their mental approach. They see no limits to what they can try to do and they set themselves up to just try harder in pursuit of their dreams . They judge that the risk to their bodies in pushing ever onwards is an acceptable one. They are prepared to put up with the pain of injury as well as the pain of training. They see the reward (whether that be perfection of the move, accolade from an audience or a gold medal) and they decide that it is worth whatever it takes to get it.

So, there's all this talk of dancers and athletes and I guess quite a few readers out there are wondering just how an entry like this relates to them. Well maybe it doesn't at all but I think it's true that we are all faced from time to time with fairly debilitating stuff -pain, colds and flu, arthritis, stomach ache, migraine - you name it we all struggle with stuff. Sometimes we really are too ill to do anything and sometimes we just don't want to go to work and are favouring a duvet day and I guess these represent the extremes of the things that we are faced with not being able (or not wanting) to do. Assuming though that you fall somewhere in between those 2 extremes, you often find that how ill you feel depends on what you are faced with doing - i.e. what your 'reward' is. If you are going out with your friends to do something you booked tickets for ages ago and are really looking forward to then you are more inclined to push yourself to do it, compared to, say, yet another boring day in the office. Risk and reward - it's true right through life - we all have that capacity to push ourselves a little bit harder if it's for the 'right' outcome. Those disabled people who push themselves to out perform their able bodied counterparts are just the same - it's just that they are prepared to take the greater risk - even if it does mean injury along the way. You see, mentally, for them the reward is worth the risk, worth all the pain, worth all the potential for injury and worth all the time on the physio bench. I guess that it all just equates to the fact that they just figure it's always worth going in to the office (if humanly possible) if there's a pay check at the end of the month.

Emotion on show.

I was at the hospital the other day and because the NHS is a slow lumbering beast I was sat for ages and ages in the waiting room. Waiting rooms generally are quite strange places, usually full of old copies of National Geographic, Hello magazine and Hamster Breeders Weekly and even if they're not, then there is often a TV to watch. Most people stare gormlessly at the TV if its on, regardless of what it is showing - that's no reflection on the type of clinic people are waiting for, its just that TV can be hypnotic like that (even if it is showing some wild daytime programme like Celebrity In The Attic Tells All To An Audience Before Auctioning It). Anyway, unusually, on this day, the TV was off and there were no magazines to sit and read and I was amazed to note that people actually started to talk to each other.

There were a couple of clinics on that afternoon and about half the waiting room (its a big room) was full of (mostly women) waiting for the breast clinic. Its an awful wonderful clinic, full of many, many people whose emotions are so close to the surface and to me, that made it even more unusual that they had started chatting. It was so busy as well, not a seat to spare and I noticed that several of the people were looking around, and it seemed to me that they were wondering who was with who. Some were obvious - the lady with the very flat chest and the wig and two friends (they looked more like friends than relatives) - each one holding a hand, like two bodyguards, one for each side. Close to her was a lady with a headscarf with a gentleman (husband?) who dropped off to sleep while she read the paper (taken out of her own handbag) and generally looked very unconcerned. I wondered about the headscarf - more people seemed to look at her, than the bald lady in the row behind who was sat next to two men who came in together. One of them was in full army fatigues and his friend was casually dressed in shorts and a t-shirt - they just didn't seem to go together at all , but they went in to the clinic together (and came out smiling). There was a family- mum, daughter, husband, child (mum and daughter looked so alike) - they also went in - en masse, and also came out smiling. That wasn't true for everyone - as I said, it was both wonderful (for those who came out smiling) and awful (for those who didn't) - so many people, so many emotions...


When people started to talk, it wasn't about the emotions though, it wasn't about their lumps and bumps or their fear, or that very British subject of the weather, no, it was about the waiting times...! Now, I know this is the NHS and so this shouldn't have been an unexpected subject, but I guess I have never been in any hospital where there seemed to be so much discussion around the room. I was with someone who had a 2pm appointment and we were sat next to a lady whose appointment was 1.35 and as the waiting room was heaving and we were all packed in like sardines, somehow the subject seemed to spread outwards in a kind of ripple. I think it was the 1.35 lady who started it all, because she had been there for a while (she was early for her appointment) and at around 2.10 she pointed out the consultant and his minions who were just crossing the waiting room having apparently just arrived (or just come from lunch). I just couldn't believe that they (there were about 4 doctors/consultants and various nurses) would ever manage to get through all the ladies (and gents) who were waiting, there were just so many patients. Its the incredible thing about the NHS targets from both a patient and doctor perspective - I mean OK they started late, but maybe they finished morning clinic late - which would have been inevitable if they had a similar number of people to see. The thing is, that targets say you have to be seen within 2 weeks if you have a lump, but the clinic is only held one day a week and there are only a finite number of doctors to go round - just how is the system supposed to cope? The way it copes we discovered, as the conversation ripple spread outwards, is that they make lots of appointments all for the same time - there were three "1.35's" that were in our immediate vicinity and four "2pms". Now if there were 4 doctors then that might have been OK, but that was just the people sitting close to us, so I'm guessing that there were more than that number of patients for each slot. I am also guessing that the 8 (yes eight!) receptionists behind the main desk were in charge of meeting the NHS targets (or at least their managers are) and they can fit all these patients in by just magically booking more and more appointments all for the same time. It all makes you wonder though - if they had fewer managers and receptionists, maybe they could afford a couple of extra doctors and the waiting room wouldn't be so crowded. But then hey, if it wasn't, then we wouldn't have started by talking about waiting times and somehow ended up talking about baby sleep patterns and politics. At the moment politics has been a hot topic in the UK so that wasn't too surprising but I can't say I really expected baby behaviour - even when we are talking emotion…after all, no one threw a tantrum because they had to wait!

What an odd place...

I recently had to drive to the far side of the country and I think I encountered what is possibly the oddest stretch of road anywhere in the world (or in Britain at least). Now, it may just be that I was in a funny sort of mood and so I noticed some of these things in a bit of a different light to the way that I would another time, but all the same - wondering didn't begin to describe the way my mind was working after I saw all of this stuff.

It all started innocently enough as I saw 3 magpies on the side of the road. That was it, I thought, three for a girl, I thought...that'll be me - I'm a girl (well I used to be one anyway...I guess I'm a bit more womanly these days...) I must admit, I wonder about magpies as well. I think when I was a child (about 100 years ago) there really weren't that many magpies about and I've often thought that that was why the one for sorrow verse was invented. The strange thing is that these days, there seem to be lots and lots of magpies about -of course, plenty of single ones but also lots of 2's, 3's and more and I think if they were really so common when the verse was written, why would anyone bother to write it. Surely the point of poems like that, is because seeing five magpies (for silver) is a rarity... Or am I missing something here?

...Anyway, here I am, digressing and waffling again (I don't do that often, do I?) LOL! Anyway (I don't say that much either, do I?), shortly after that, I saw three wood pigeons together and that I really did think was odd. I mean, we get wood pigeons in our garden, but only either singly or in pairs...in fact, our pair, really looks like "a couple" - like they were married or something, but I don't think I've ever seen 3 at the same time. I guess they could have been gearing up for a menage a trois or something but its still odd. So, anyway as in the great tradition of things happening in threes, I then saw 3 long tailed tits together and I thought they were pretty rare too. So there you go, all quite a strange start to my journey really, but it didn't end there...oh no...I told you I saw a lot of odd stuff and so it carried on....and on...

It was not long past the magpies that I came across a sign indicating a layby 1 mile ahead - nothing strange there you might think except the sign said:

"Layby 1 mile. For Emergencies only" !

(They did not add the exclamation mark!)

I fell to wondering, am I going to have a breakdown in exactly one mile - is anyone going to have a breakdown in exactly one mile? How do you know you are going to break down in one mile's time - do you hear a strange noise coming from under the car and think 'Hey, I think my car is just about to break - I'll wait a mile and see what happens' - maybe you feel sick - 'Ew, yuck, I feel sick, I'll just hang on from hurling my breakfast for another 60 seconds until I get to that layby'.... Now, I know I'm labouring the point here, but I'm sure you know where I am coming from...it was kind of a strange sign to see...

It got even more surreal and bizarre after that as the next sign I was an overhead gantry sign which simply said "Animals in the road" - just that - no more information than that, even though these new matrix signs allow way more space than just for that. They could have said "Warning Animals in Road" or "Warning Cows in Road" or anything like that but just animals in road sounded like it could be anything - I wasn't far from a safari park - maybe it was lions (or tigers or bears) I even idly wondered if it was an instruction - was it compulsory? If I had a dog in the back of my car, should I put him in the road? Should animals be on the road and not in cars? Maybe it meant that only animals should be in the road - maybe it was me that was in the wrong in my little car - do humans classify as animals??.... OK OK so, you can tell, I was really rambling by this point but in my defence, I had had a late night the night before and I'd had to get up early to drive across the country - anyone's mind would be wandering...

It was about this point, when my mind had gone off on a tangent and I was thinking that I really did need to stop at the next services and as a bare minimum get caffeine inside me (and hopefully chocolate too) that I saw an even odder sight. In fact, I couldn't quite grasp it with my befuddled mind and when I did get my head around what I was looking at I really started to rue the lack of a camera. I saw ...wait for it... a man on a motorbike...not just any man though, this one was wearing a tutu....yes, a tutu....the kind of thing ballerinas wear...that kind of tutu. Hairy legs, motorbike boots, ape-hanger bars on the bike, Harley Davidson sticker on the tank and a tutu (like this one)...and in pink (of course!). OK, now get this when I say it didn't end there...he was wearing a proper bike jacket with this - black leather (no fringes though) and attached to the back of the jacket was a pair of wings. These were not the kind of typical Hell's Angel type wings you might see on such jackets - but I guess they did go with the tutu as they were pink and looked like they were a fine net stretched over a coat hanger - very fetching as they flapped around behind him in the breeze. To this day I'm not really sure if the lack of coffee was making me hallucinate but all in all, it added to quite one of the weirdest trips I have ever been on....

Warning light - the clue's in the name!

Warning: "a) a sign or signal designed to instill caution in its recipient"
but also
b) an amazing album by the oh-so-talented band green day. second only to their most recent album, american idiot.

Sorry, just got a bit distracted! Anyway, I was in the car the other day and I started wondering about the oddness of some of the (many) warning lights that are on (mostly modern) cars.

A few days ago I was in the car listening to the directions that my sat nav was giving me and therefore I had to turn around in a gateway - as everyone does, eventually! Anyway, it was a gateway to a field and the ground was a little muddy, it being the time of year when tractors are pulled out of the shed and go off roaming the fields, trying to earn their supper. In the mud, I suffered a weeny bit of wheel spin and a little light lit up on the dashboard of my car - 'Warning' it flashed at me - 'your wheels are spinning'…Well no sh*t Sherlock, like I couldn't tell that from the whizzy sound they were making as I was going nowhere and the amount of mud that was flying past my rear view mirror…

Anyway, after a few seconds of whizzing, I got a bit of traction, I moved back onto the road and the light went out, but it made me wonder about all the other superfluous warning lights that there are, especially those on cars, you see... we've had a few…(warning lights and cars!)

Once, we had a Renault 5 and it didn't have a temperature gauge (as was the custom at the time) - instead it had a warning light on the dashboard for the temperature of your engine. I actually thought this was pretty nifty to have such an uncluttered display panel until one day when I was in the car waiting for hubby to come out of the dentist's. Now I know you're wondering what changed my mind at exactly that point in time, but because I was a) in the car and b) bored, I decided to read the instruction book for the car ("First find your car…") - anyway, in there I discovered that the little water warning light was intended to come on if your car boiled over - not 'you are overheating, please stop your vehicle and find liquid to pour into the engine', nope it was more along the lines of 'Caution, you have overheated, your engine is about to seize at any second, if you do not stop this car 5 minutes ago, it will go bang very loudly and your con rod will disappear out through a hole in your front wing that you didn't previously own…' Well, you get the gist…

You see once you get started on these things, there's no stopping the lunacy…and there's another one - brake warning lights. Our car has 2 of them, loosely labelled the stopped and the not stopping lights (or something like that). The one indicates that your handbrake is still on - which I always find is also indicated by the fact that I am going nowhere fast while the engine whines very VERY loudly and smoke emanates from the wheels. The other one is the one that tells you your brakes have worn away - which is also indicated by a complete lack of stopping power and of course, the noise warning of the sound of tortured metal on metal…

I wonder too about fog light warning lights - I mean, fancy labelling most of these in such a similar colour to the dashboard display that few people can actually see it. Hmmm (am I grumbling here…?)

The latest thing appears to be the engine management light that most cars nowadays seem to have. This is a little light that is set by the manufacturers to light up at a random rate in between services. Often this little light goes out by itself if you ignore it for long enough, especially if the car is giving no other signs of distress, such as not going, making grinding, drumming or bleating noises or juddering uncontrollably every time to take it out of the drive. If you are foolish enough to take hubby to the dentist (or any other family member) and therefore read the manual, it will tell you to take your car to the dealer if this little light lights up. The dealer will turn the light off for £40 and reset the random switch for you…

I suppose it could be worse as we did have one car which mysteriously used to cut out at 70mph in a random fashion (usually in the outside lane of the motorway) - which is a whole other story in fact. I'm thinking then that some kind of warning light might have been useful in that situation - one that would go 'warning, your engine is about to stop working completely, all functions will cease, you will not be assimilated, you will not pass go…' …or something…. At the very least it could have said 'Warning, let this be a reminder to you, never buy a second hand Fiat…'!

I think I should stop here, I'm getting all hot under the collar and I'm starting to wonder if I am reading way too much Jeremy Clarkson...

This should not be funny at all…

I know a guy (CWP)^*1 and he recently told me a story that should not have been funny at all, but the way he told it just had us all howling with laughter…I will leave you to make up your own minds, but please don't shoot the messenger - I'm only telling you what he told me!

CWP was in China and decided to take a day trip to the Great Wall. Of course, there's nothing funny about that at all, after all, it's what you do, isn't it - Great Wall, Forbidden City, other tourist sites - not funny, nope. Anyway, CWP uses a wheelchair and owing to the fact that he was on his own, he was allocated a Chinese guide by the tour operators that he booked with. He was really pleased about that and because the Chinese are helpful and polite he had a really good time - his guide wasn't a funny man, but that suited CWP just fine.

Now at the time, the Chinese authorities had installed a lift (elevator) to get people to the top of a section of the Great Wall (I think they may have actually removed it after the incident, to stop other insane wheelchair users up there) and CWP was really excited to go up and see the view. I guess it was after he got to the top that he realised that as a wheelchair user there were a few limitations with the top of the wall that he hadn't previously expected. First off, it wasn't flat and so a certain amount of pushing by both him (and his guide) was required - especially since although CWP is a big guy, due to his disability, he's not really that strong. Anyway, he struggled and pulled on his wheels and his little guide pushed and struggled and they got him to the highest point on that section of the wall. He stopped to draw breath and to take some photos and sent his guide back down to the bottom of the slope to wait for him. It was sometime around this point that things started to go wrong, when he encountered another of the limitations of the wall - you see, hundreds of years and thousands of feet have polished the stone surface to a slick sheen, if not a high gloss. Now all the wheelchair users out there are probably just a bit ahead of me here and are all anticipating what happened next, in exactly the way you do when you hear about Paddy and the bucket but for the rest of you I will explain…

CWP started down the slope - he gripped his wheel rims to help him brake - he continued to move - he gripped harder - he continued to move - he took a death grip on the wheels and looked down at the ground - his wheels were not going round at all, but the world was moving quicker and quicker as he started to slide down the highly polished slope - gathering pace all the while, he started to go into a panic and it was at this point that he looked up….

…only to see his little Chinese guide (did I say he was little?) in a crouch position with his arms outstretched directly in CWP's path.

"I catchee you…don' worry…I catchee you…!"

Did I mention quite how big CWP is? Well, he told me that in an instant it flashed through his head about how he would clearly flatten his poor guide if he carried on in his headlong slide and so he did the only thing he could think of and stuck his arm out sideways to grab something…anything…

…up to this point we were all roaring with laughter about the poor little guide insisting he could 'catchee' - right up until the second that CWP told us he managed to catch something with his hand and stopped very, very, very suddenly and dislocated his shoulder in the process. Ooops, that had to hurt…

Ever seen a large group of people (except one) go silent, in an almost guilty way, just after they hear the punch line of a joke they don't think they should laugh at? (Anything with Adam Hills springs to mind). Well, it was like that - the only person still laughing was CWP - having had his shoulder put back in, he is going on with his daily life and is now regaling people with this tale which looking back on it, he finds hilarious from start to finish…


He snorted and chortled, "… I know it doesn't sound funny, but "I catchee you…don' worry…I catchee you…!" - well, you can just imagine it…." he roared...

^*1 Canadian with pipe

Scientific stuff...

Queens University researchers have discovered the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (symbol=Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called pillocks. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.

A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2 to 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration.

This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass. When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium (symbol=Ad), an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium, since it has half as many pillocks but twice as many morons.

4 years just slipped by...

I just realised that I have missed a very important anniversary - that of my metalwork. Yes, that's right, my surgery was over 4 years ago and in fact, exactly 4 years ago today I was struggling to even breathe without huge doses of morphine and could hardly lift a thing. I distinctly remember that I couldn't figure out the controls on my Mp3 player, my brain was that addled by large doses of narcotics and the BMB was trying to encourage me to get enough brain cells all firing in the same direction to try and read a book. It all seems so long ago and so much like it's just a story that probably happened to someone else. Funnily enough, I actually do some public speaking these days and the more of it I do, the more like a 'story' it all seems.

There is no doubt that my scoliosis surgery changed a lot for me - some things have had their down sides, but other things are nothing more than amazingly good. You know, I recently found some photos taken over the 2 years before my surgery and it was noticeable how much my curve had progressed in that short a time. In fact, when I look back (with a seasoned eye) I realise how awful my life would have been if I didn't get the surgery done. I know that this isn't true for a lot of people with scoliosis - those with stable conditions, whose curves are not progressing, have no fears for their future and even those who do have progressive curves may not to need to worry too much. It all depends on the speed of progression, the location of your curves and whether you have any other complications with your spine. My major curve was in the lumbar area with a corresponding thoracic curve in the opposite direction - and both were rotating to the right. My lumbar curve was progressing at around 6 degrees a year and had reached 75 degrees and if that wasn't enough, my spinal cord was split lengthwise (still is) and was attached (tethered) at the top and bottom of my lumbar curve. It meant that my spinal cord was getting more and more stretched, the further my curve progressed - this wasn't really too good a good plan I don't think....

Anyway, all of that background (which I know all you long term readers of my blog already know) meant that the surgery was really a no-brainer, despite how much I tried to kid myself that I didn't really need it! These days, I guess I am as recovered as I ever will be and I have the chance to look back and see what it has meant to me and the impact that such surgery has had on my life .Now, those of you who know me, know that I am a pretty positive person, so you may be surprised that I am about to give you some of the negative things^*1, but hey, you can't list all the good things honestly, without some honesty on the bad stuff too. Bear with me on this though - there isn't much bad stuff at all, anyway - here goes:

Bad stuff Number 1 - I still have back pain. I wish I didn't, but I do. Some days its not too bad and some days its horrid, but then lots of people have back pain, so that keeps me within the bounds of normality, doesn't it?
Bad stuff Number 2 - My metalwork is weird in extreme temperature. I found out that it contracts in the cold at a different rate to your interior tissues and it is just not a nice feeling at all. Last summer, in 44 degrees, I also discovered that it expands at a different rate too and so that is especially odd. When it gets cold, it also takes an age to warm up - this winter has been way too long for me but I have become an expert in vests and thermal undergarments! I now have lots of new vests (sexy!) and even a battery powered heated waistcoat - I am now an expert in a subject I previously knew nothing about! LOL!
Bad stuff Number 3 - My left leg really doesn't work in the way I'd like it to, but I have learned some control of it. I no longer move my hip and thigh forward to walk but throw my left foot forward from my calf (which sound odd but believe me it works!) and in doing so I get by just fine. It's also enabled me to get an amazing collection of very funky walking sticks (mostly bought from SwitchSticks.com) which I wouldn't have previously done. It has also meant that I make much more use of my wheelchair which has given me so much independence its not true. I find it truly liberating to be able to go into town and spend all day shopping, never worrying about how far away from the shops I have to park. Compare that to the way I used to be - parking close to where I needed to go - going to just one or two places and then having to go home, too tired or in too much pain to continue...you see, even the bad stuff really has its compensations!

Of course, in the good tradition of this blog, I'm sure a list is coming on for the good stuff...forgive me if I don't bleat on for ever though - I don't want to type my fingers down to stumps! Anyway, here goes:

• I am alive !
• I am straight! (well I look it anyway even if I do still have 35/30 degree curves inside me still!)
• I can go to the cinema without leaning over so far that the seat arm digs in my side.
• I can walk (no sniggering now...)
• None of my internal organs is squashed any longer
• My muscle spasms are so reduced its not true
• I can breathe with both lungs!
• I can wear stripy jumpers without making onlookers tip their heads on one side.
• If I am on a boat the ocean no longer looks like it will all run off the right hand edge of the world.
  
• I have no fears for my future and what will happen to me

In fact, I feel that I have the kind of future that I never thought I would and that really is amazing but as in all the great Oscar traditions, I have to acknowledge that this really has very little to do with me. I have to thank my surgeon for doing a great job and have to thank hubby for being my greatest support. There are also so many other people who helped me through, from the scoliosis forums, to friends like PTV and the BMB. Sometimes I say I cannot imagine what my future would be like if I hadn't had this surgery, but in fact I can imagine that very well and I am exceedingly grateful for all those people who helped get me through it. 4 years is quite a long time, but even though it seems more like a story sometimes, I know it happened to me and I am so happy to have my metal rod, despite its little idiosyncrasies!

^*2

^*1 Although given my last rant, you may not...!
^*2 BTW, this has nothing to do with anything in this post...I just liked it!

Those "down with disability days"

I recently had to go to the local hospital with the MIL who's been a bit poorly and I said I would meet her over there. Now, as it happens, the hospital really isn't too far from my house, but it's just too far for me to walk and is too hilly to use my chair, so I wanted to drive and park somewhere reasonably close. I allowed half an hour to get there (which is plenty when you can actually see the hospital building from my house if you squint through the trees) and was feeling pretty smug that I was organised and ready to go.

The smugness started to wax a little as soon as I approached the car park and realised that there was a queue to get in - I followed the signs directing me up a side road to the car park, only to discover that it took you round in a big loop and joined the back of the queue which only looked to be around 6 cars long from the entrance. Sneaky blighters - there were around 24 cars in front of me and nothing was moving so I decided to try elsewhere. I headed for the disabled spaces certain in my optimism that I would find something there. In fact there are a total of 8 disabled spaces in the hospital car park^*1 which seems ludicrous since many people attending hospital are likely to have a disability…aren't they? Anyway, my sunny nature started to fail when I saw they were all full and time really started to tick by quickly - my smug half an hour seemed to be fleeing like, well, like a flung thing…!

I headed for the overflow car park - this is a big car park, across the road and runs along what used to be a railway line - it's quite a way from the hospital, but it's flat and I had my chair so didn't have to worry about the distance being too far to walk. I got down there (and of course the traffic was awful everywhere, adding to my time pressures) and discovered that there was no space there either. Of course, sunny disposition or no, by this time I was really getting steamed up…I had been putting up with traffic, insane queuing systems, no spaces, few disabled spaces and just nowhere to park at all! In fact, that isn't strictly true, there was space to park, but it was up the hill - too far for me to walk and too far up a steep hill to use my chair without help. It was at this point I did what any sane person would do and phoned hubby. The conversation went something like this:

"Aaaaarggghhhh!!!! Blurgle, scream, car, aaargh, sniffle, parking, groffle, hill, waaahhhh!!...."

Hubby was at a loss for words in the face of someone plainly displaying all the signs of having a fit of the 'screaming ad-dabs^*2'. He did his best though and tried to remain calm despite not really needing an insane woman calling him up, just to that she could yell down the phone at someone, anyone…please…?

Anyway the upshot of it was that I drove back home and then ordered a taxi to get me to the hospital (how nuts is that?). I got there fine and in time since the MIL's appointment was delayed (aren't they always?) and was there to go in with her through her tests, which she was grateful for. I also discovered that the reason the car park was so full, was not that there had been a major incident in the previous hour, but in fact, parking in the hospital car park has recently become free to all. It's intended to be great if you're a patient, but apparently its also wonderful for all the shoppers and office workers who are now using it because it's close to town…and free...

I was talking to hubby later and apologised for getting in such a strop - which plainly he didn't deserve, but as I put it, it was just a 'down with disability day'. Most of the time I am happy and optimistic and I just get on with life. I don't really think too much about having a disability (even though I do blog about it from time to time) - my life is, well, my life and I live pretty much the way I want to live. Sometimes though, just sometimes, something happens to just remind you how horrid it can be. When you can't walk the distance and you can't use your chair, then you are prevented from doing something that most other people out there just do. Most people would have parked at the top of the hill and walked down - I just couldn't, and so I was reminded of my own restrictions. I didn't like that at all, and so, it became one of my down with disability days….


^*1 That is way less than Tesco!
^*2 My mother used to say this all the time….

Hmmmm....

...I wonder if this...






...and this....





...are connected in any way?....


...especially since my cat is a fan of pastry...

Just a quickie...

I am just about to go away for the weekend but I thought you might like to know that now I am 5 weeks and 3 days after my procedure.

My eyes are, well, like eyes….

Suddenly I find myself trying to take my glasses off at the end of the day (since I no longer feel like I am wearing contact lenses) and my vision is really, really good. I think my right eye is definitely catching up my left one now and my only real remaining problem is the dratted haloes at night, but even they are improving. I can even read easily and comfortably without ready readers too!

Now, I seem to remember some question about would I recommend it?

The answer's a no-brainer….yes, yes, yes! ^*1

^*1 OK I only have 2 eyes so I guess two yes's would have sufficed!

Things I can do

I am (as you may remember) a great list maker and I was reminded of this yesterday when I was stood outside in the rain. Now I am sure that you have no idea why the rain made me think of lists, but be patient (grasshopper!) and you will soon see what I am getting at.

The thing was, that I was outside, in the rain, on an almost average evening. Well, actually it wasn't that average, hubby's car had a flat tyre (long story which I won't tell you because I'm nice) and my little car was off having it's Mot. Now, there was good and bad about my poor little car - when they called me they said the brakes were sh*gged (like I couldn't tell this from the distinct lack of stopping power) and it needed welding. Well, OK, to get to 26 (and a half) years old and needing welding for the first time was a shame, but not surprising for a car of its age (and I knew that spot on the sill would catch me up sooner or later!), but that was all that needed doing. All in - less than £200 can't be bad! Anyway, because hubby's car had a flat tyre, I needed to get a taxi to get to the garage to pick up my car and so I was stood in the rain waiting for the taxi (am I boring you with my rambling yet?). I suddenly became aware of just what the raindrops looked like, falling from the sky and being lit up by the nearby streetlamp. It was really strange and I realised it was because I was looking at a wet world unencumbered by steamed up and dripped on spectacles. It was a 'whoa, like wow, like amazing man' kind of moment….and I fell to wondering about all the other things that I am starting to notice as pretty cool, now my eyes are starting to really heal up well…hence the list…

So, here it is, things I have discovered so far that I can now do, that I didn't realise I would be able to do and that are 'pretty awesome man'

I can:

• Read the clock in the morning
• Tell the difference between shampoo, conditioner and toothpaste in the shower
• Open the oven door without being blinded for several minutes
• Stir stew and see if it is just about to boil over without being so steamed up that I have to discover that by the noise the liquid makes as it trickles over the side of the pan and hits the hob
• Not bother looking for glasses just so I can get out of bed^*1
• Lie on my side in bed and see what is happening - I could do this before but it hurt my nose where my specs dug in!
• Find the ladies changing rooms at the swimming pool (darn no excuse for going in the gent's now - maybe this isn't such a great one)
• Use the steam room - I could do this before also, but blindly groping in a steam room can lead to some nasty surprises!
• Feel the rain on my face (do raindrops really look like that?)

Of course, all this is great, but even now, a month on I am still having a few issues with focus fluctuation and light starbursts and haloes. Now when they've gone, I definitely will do another list!

^*1 Actually, I am still trying to do this out of habit. I look at the bedside cabinet, see that my glasses aren't there, wonder where they are and then realise that I can see that they aren't there…very odd...

Things are looking up…

So, Saturday we went into town to do a bit of shopping and I suddenly noticed that the day was really clear. Now it's true, that it was a clear day, you know, one of those cold, crisp, clear days where everything seems to sparkle just a little bit and it was one of those days…but it seemed even clearer than that.

I suddenly realised that for the first time since the laser surgery, my eyes weren't sore and my focus was clear and even. I suddenly realised that looking at the world through grubby glasses, slightly out of focus contact lenses or (heaven forbid) the blurry world that I use to inhabit without specs is a whole different thing to what the world looks like when all you have is naked eyes to see. Everything looked so clean all of a sudden. Well, maybe that isn't strictly true, after all, it's our local town centre and I bet you know what yours is like(!) but it all looked like it does when you go to the optician, he looks at your glasses, tut tuts a bit, and proceeds to get out a bottle of cleaning stuff and a cloth. He works a few seconds of magic and when you put your glasses on the world is the clearest its been for months - only to disintegrate back into a grimy film almost immediately you leave the office! Well, my eyes are like that now (not the grimy bit, the clean bit), only its all the time. It has been the biggest revelation of all to me….

As to the rest of it, since that Saturday, day by day my focus is clearer and clearer - for a while I could read easily, see very far away, but mid distance (sort of 18 meters, 20 yards distance) was blurry - and that was both odd and annoying. Since then, that has improved too and I am getting more amazed every day by what I can see.

I am still putting in drops (not often) during the day and ointment (Yeuch!) at night and have to do that until my one month appointment next week. I am finding still that they get sore in the evenings but even that is getting better. I am much happier than my last blog entry….now let me see, am I happy I did this? Well, the answer is yes I am, but I would offer the advice to anyone thinking of getting it done that this is surgery and you need to heal. Although they occasionally can, in most cases miracles don't happen overnight - be prepared for that and you'll do just fine…

6 Days later….

This heading has been inspired by 2 things -

1. We have just watched 28 Days Later (and then 28 Weeks Later) on DVD as hubby had them for Christmas and
2. My eyes look like something out of the same films…

6 Days after my eye surgery, I woke up and looked at the clock - it looked odd but I couldn't figure out why. I could still read it, it just looked a bit strange. I covered my right eye and looked at it - perfectly clear and a pin sharp image - no problems there then. I covered my left eye and did the same - oops, that was it, there was the problem - the vision in my right eye was distinctly blurry and very dark it seemed to me. Left eye/right eye - I double checked them - same thing - for sure, through my right eye, the pale blue wall looked to be a much darker shade and I couldn't read the clock at all. In addition, my eye was sore and I felt like I had something stuck under my top lid.

Now at this stage I started to be a little concerned - I was, after all, only 6 days after eye surgery and things can go wrong. What made it worse, as those of you who know me particularly well may have already figured, is that this was my right eye we were talking about and I really tend to favour that one! I know both eyes are important, but I'm right eye dominant and so I was more than a little bothered by it all. I decided to sit down and give myself a good talking to….and wait until my 7 day appointment!

At 7 days my eyes were a bit better and I went in for my appointment where on the whole the surgeon was quite pleased with progress. It seems my eyes have developed dryness and I needed more drops (like already putting drops in 10 times a day^*1 is not enough) and this has meant that I am healing a bit slower. In addition I seem to have been left with a small amount of astigmatism that may need retreating if it doesn't settle down on its own as my eyes heal. Time and patience (like I have much of either of those) were the order of the day…and those eye drops of course!

At 10 days I went away for the weekend and the BMB offered to drive. Now, in reality, I am sure I could have done the driving but my eyes are just getting so tired over the course of a day that I appreciated and accepted the offer. I'm guessing at this point that apart from the people who have already had their eyes fixed, most people are a bit like my mother who just can't quite grasp what its like to go through this and even suggested that I keep my glasses…just in case…! It's just not like that - once they've 'removed tissue from your eye' - you can see without glasses…it's not like wearing contacts that you slip out at the end of the day. TBH, sitting here, typing this 2 weeks on, I wish it was, as I'd love some relief from that sore gritty eye feeling that I seem to have so much of the time.

So far, I have been asked several times if I would recommend the surgery and my answer has been the same in all cases - ask me in a month! I know all the adverts tell you how cheap it is and give testimonials of how wonderful and amazing it is to be able to see and how it is all pain free and sorted within 24 hours, but that's not been my personal experience and when I questioned the surgeon about this he said that recovery largely depends on your prescription. All those people who have a wonderful experience have a mild prescription - as he put it "The more tissue we have to remove from the eye, the longer it takes to heal". So with me, being very short sighted and having a bad astigmatism, they knew it would always take longer. Add to that the unexpected dryness in my eyes and we have a situation which is really taxing my patience.

Right at the moment I feel that I have vision that is as good or slightly better than with my contacts in but not quite as good as my glasses. My eyes are tired, get sore easily and look bloodshot. My focus seems to mildly fluctuate through the day and is poor in low light and I am getting glare and haloes around lights, my phone and my computer screen - I have also spent a lot of money. All in all, in answer to the question "would you recommend it?" I know you'd think the answer would be no, but I repeat my earlier statement and suggest that you ask me in a month. You see, my eyes really do seem to be a little better day by day. I can see to do some things with amazing clarity when my focus is right and reading is comfortable and easy without reading glasses (which I was told I would need). For every day 'looking' my eyes are working fine without specs (even though I really want to be able to do more than just 'look') and I am sure they will be even better once all the tiredness and soreness goes. I'll let you know my progress in another two weeks….

^*1 Seriously..I am not exaggerating here!

The eyes have it...

My only entry since the new year was actually written before Christmas as I have been 'out of commission' having surgery on my eyes. That's right, my days of peering myopically at everything have been brought to an end by a nice man and laser machine (or to be precise, two laser machines)!

Now, I am one of those (oops, sorry, was) one of those short sighted people who can never remember being able to see anything clearly unless it was less than 4" from my nose. In fact, when I first started school, I used to wonder what the man at the front was doing waving his arm around - I actually couldn't see the chalk on the board from the back of the class ^*1 and didn't realise that he was writing on a blackboard (how old-fashioned!)! I have never in my life been able to read a clock from in bed in the morning without shoving specs on first and I can't drive a car without them. Hell, I probably couldn't even find the car without them so driving was never on the agenda without help!

Over the years I have tried everything - hard lenses , soft lenses (the early ones were like inserting a small jellyfish into your eye), extended wear hard gas permeable (look 'em up - a truly hideous invention), monthly lenses, fortnightly lenses and what I ended up with, daily disposables for when I really didn't want to wear glasses. I still liked the lenses and live and die in them on holiday (I am a sunglasses tart and prescription Oakleys are out of my league so it's lenses and the regular Oakleys for me) but on the whole, for me, they are too much of a faff and too expensive to wear every day and so I simply wear specs the rest of the time.

For a variety of reasons, I decided to look into getting my eyes lasered - OK, I'll be truthful, there was a suggestion that I might get them done for nothing a while back under a scheme that nothing ever came of and it just sowed a seed for me. In the way that I do I started looking at the process and getting information and thought a consultation where I could ask loads of questions was the next step. The consultation went well - all my questions were answered, the price (although still requiring a sharp intake of breath and saying very quickly) was not as much as I feared and the success rate was quoted at 99.6%. So that was it, after a couple of weeks thinking and the offer of some interest free credit I signed on the dotted line.

Now I am not going to go into any gory details here (even though I know there are some of you who love a bit of gore), because I know some other people are a bit squeamish about eye things. All I will say is, to all of you who fit into this latter category, you are expressly forbidden to read any more footnotes on this entry…or if you do - don't say I didn't warn you…

That was how I found myself lying on a table and having my eyeball suctioned into place to hold it still while they create a corneal flap^*2. It didn't hurt at all - anaesthetic is a wonderful thing and its all over in less than 20 seconds. They them moved me onto another machine which did the actual business of reshaping to correct my vision^*3 and then the surgeon gently wiped over my eye^*4 and it was all over. It took less than 10 minutes in total for both eyes and that was it. I was told that my vision would look pretty steamy until the following morning and that I was to go home and rest for a couple of hours while the anaesthetic wore off.

Now, if you want my advice at this stage what they should have said was this:
"Go home, take paracetamol, take Night Nurse, take Nytol, have a slug of whisky to wash it down and then maybe add some Natrasleep into the mix. If you have any harder drugs, heck take them too…for the next two hours you'll be in agony unless you sleep though it…go with the best cocktail you can!"
But they didn't.
What they said was:
"Go home and rest, take paracetamol and try to sleep. You may have a little discomfort"

Hmmm, I wonder if I can get them on trades descriptions?

Anyway, to be fair to them, 2 hours later and the pain had eased and my eyes had stopped streaming like Niagara Falls. I went to bed and slept and when I woke up the next morning my eyes only felt like I had been to a really wild party and had left my contact lenses in all night. I went for my first post op check and discovered that apart from looking like I was peering at the world though a steamy window, my vision was now 20/20 - in fact, better than that - I could even read the bottom line on the eye chart! 24 hours later, the steam started to clear and I felt like my lenses had been in for 14 hours and my eyes needed a rest; another 24 hours and I felt like I'd had my lenses in for about 8 hours, but in a hot dry climate and this was all having a rather Benjamin Button kind of ring to it… the longer it went on, the more my eyes felt like they still had lenses in, but for a shorter period of time. At this stage now though - I still can't get my head around the fact that this is a permanent change - I think because I still feel like there is something in my eyes - I assume it is lenses. Even now, I can't believe that this is it…once everything has all healed up, that will be it, no more glasses or 'artificially' corrected vision…I will just be able to see….

^*1 I was always at the back of the class - much easier to misbehave when you are hiding behind everyone else….
^*2 Which is a very polite way of saying they cut your the cornea around the top of eyeball almost in half with a laser and fold it back to get it out the way so they can get on with the next bit!
^*3 OK, so they burn off the surface of your eye with another laser - and yes, it does smell of burning!
^*4 Well, they have to replace your cornea at some stage!

You did what with your crutches?

Quite recently I mentioned DP and I guess he was having a really on-form weekend when I saw him. Not only did he attempt to go sideways down the steps in his wheelchair, but he managed to tell us a really funny story later of how he managed to shoot himself when he was a kid. Now shooting yourself really isn't that easy, especially with a bow and arrow (as that was what he used) but when he told us that he had not only shot himself, but that he had shot himself in the back, there really was an amazing amount of frivolity around the table. It seems that at the tender age of about ten, he made himself a bow and arrow. Now I remember making bows and arrows out of bits of twig and string, but I never made anything that would shoot an arrow (another twig) more than about 5 inches before the whole thing broke! Anyway, it seems that DP was quite the little engineer and he made something that actually worked. Of course, in his ten year old brain, he decided he needed to test it and to do so decided to shoot an arrow in the air to see how high it would go. In fairness, he decided not to shoot it straight up and stand there as that would just be silly, so he shot it up at a slight angle and started to run...He had a couple of choices of which way to run, but he just picked the wrong way and discovered that what goes up must come down! So, the arrow went up and then it came down and so there he was with an arrow stuck in his back. That's not too easy to explain to the parents....

You can imagine the atmosphere around the table by this stage after he's now recounted his recent adventure with the steps and then of how he shot himself. His eyes are twinkling (told you he looks like Santa), his cheeks are ruddy and he is chortling at everything and everyone else is in a similar mood. It was sometime around this that people started talking about how they had slept the night before and I mentioned that I had had a nightmare. Now that wasn't in any way funny, but it led on to sleep disorders and the like. Somehow another conversation started at the same time (in the way that conversations do around a table) and someone else asked DP if he could get around with out his chair. He mentioned something about sleepwalking and also that he could get by with crutches in an emergency and I completely misunderstood what was going on and thought he meant that when he was sleepwalking he used crutches. In fact, there I was eating my dinner, with a mouthful of carrots and I damn near sprayed them way up to the far end of the table. You know what its like - someone whacks your funny bone dead centre and its hard to keep your mouth shut when all you want to do is scream out loud with laughter! Eventually I managed to calm down enough to swallow(!) and then, due to the fact that I was red in the face and had tears streaming down my face, I got asked what was wrong...

"....sleepwalking with crutches...!." , I gasped and fell about laughing again...and then so did everyone else....

...it was one of those times when for ages afterwards any time we looked at each other, we started to giggle uncontrollably...as I said, DP was truly on form...!

Microsoft takes over the world! (Again…)

I just installed Windows 7 on hubby’s laptop and overlooked the fact that (unlike me) he was using Windows mail with Vista. Now for those of you in the know, Windows 7 does not have an e-mail package built in and so at first glance the upgrade appears to have eaten all your addresses and all your email too. If I wasn’t such a level headed person I would have gone into a blind panic, but I decided not to do this because:

a) I am a level headed person who rarely panics and

b) its not my laptop or email…

Anyway, initially, since I was in the middle of Dirt2 on the Xbox and did not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances…I ignored hubby’s whimpers for a whole afternoon. This morning though I decided (before the Xbox is turned on again!) that I ought to help.

Repeated Google searches have led to much on-line whimpering by many others in a similar situation and we just stumbled across Windows Live Mail and are settling down to download and install it (yawn…why do these things take so long?). I noticed a little package called Live Writer for blogging and so, to pass the time thought I might download that too and install it on my desktop. To be fair I am also downloading Lesbian Vampire Killers, which was free from iTunes today, so that might account for the laptop’s reluctance to go at more than a slow grind but there you are…patience was never my strong point!

Anyway, in my very roundabout way, that’s why my last post said testing testing…I’m testing Live Writer….

…I’ll keep you updated on the mail situation too but in the meantime, please all think of hubby and say all together…”Ah, bless..!”

Testing testing

Just that….

Christmas …without the grumbles?

Last night I turned on the TV and there was some programme on about people being decidedly grumpy at Christmas. There were many famous (and quite a few not so famous) folks, who were grumbling about how it all starts too early, how its too commercial and how they really can't be ar*ed to take part …but will…albeit rather grudgingly. It reminded me of a recent visit to my in-laws where my FIL was moaning about Christmas - how 'it's only for kids' (who are all spoiled nowadays) and how when he was a boy they had nothing and used to make their own decorations^*1. In response, hubby pointed out that you can still make your own paper chains if that's what you want to do and that I actually make my own cards^*2 every year,and I tried to explain how Christmas makes me feel.

I think in that little snip, hubby managed to alight on what makes Christmas so special for me. I'm not hugely religious ( I'm not a regular church goer) and so my main focus is not on the birth of Christ (in common with much of the population I guess) but for me its on my family and the people I care about. To me Christmas is a special time which gives us all one day of the year that is set aside for spending time together. It is the ideal excuse, this one day of the year, to give presents to people to tell them how much they mean to you. Every other day of the year seems to slip by in a blur of 'other stuff' - this is one day in which families have their own traditions like leaving stockings from Santa for grown up kids, the carrot by the hearth for the reindeer, presents before lunch (or after), silly hats over lunch (or tea) and playing board games that you wouldn't at any other time. These traditions are all individual to the families and as the generations go by they are adopted and altered by children and grandchildren and added to by the addition of new partners with their own traditions. Our family is no different from anyone else's but the one common theme to most people is that they all get together and just for once they think about each other rather than themselves. What we do, when we choose to start to decorate our house (early or late), how commercial we let it be to us (make your own paper chains or buy a new tinsel tree every year) or how spoiled the children are (spend a fortune or not a lot) - all these choices are ours to make. No one makes us spend too much or reserves our traditions simply for children - these are our choices and my choice is to spend time with my family and try just for once a year to let them know just how much they mean to me….

…well, after trying to explain this, I still don't know if the FIL understood what I was trying to get at but I hope you do!

Happy Christmas to you all!

^*1 I'm not certain if this is before or after they "licked road clean wit' tongue"
^*2I do this for 2 reasons, one, because I like to do so and two, because if I want to I can make something special for someone special.

Not the MOB!

So, I was away last week and we had a really funny time and it was mostly due to this guy that I know. I wanted to call him MOB (mad old bugger) in my blog, but he put his foot down (with his hand since his legs don't work!) and insisted that I call him daft pensioner - so DP it is….

Now its kind of odd that DP is part of our group at all, as being of pensionable age, he's quite a bit older than the rest of us. It's not even that he looks like a spry young thing, as he's a wheelchair user and if he only grew his beard a bit more he'd look just like Santa - in a tracksuit!

Anyway, there we were, having come out of dinner and faced with the usual trial of going down 3 steps to get to the door. It's true (to be fair) that there is a lift to get wheelchair users down the stairs, but it is the most grindingly slow piece of apparatus in the world. I wonder sometimes about that, I mean with slow wheelchair lifts and stair lifts - do they think the eyes of the disabled and the old will pop out if they move too fast? Don't laugh….it's a valid question you know! Anyway, more often than not people drop out their chairs, bum down the steps and drag their chairs after them since it is about 20 times faster than using the lift and we are all a supremely impatient bunch. More to the point, if we had to wait for everyone to use the lift we'd either:

• never get anything done

or

• we'd all get really fat because we just wouldn't bother leaving the dining hall

or

• we'd die of boredom

So there we were, coming out of the dining hall. I'd gone down first and was outside when SIAM comes past me looking extremely smug having gone down the steps backwards in his chair - speedy and required no grubby backside to his trousers! Now, DP took one look at this and decided it looked like a pretty neat thing to do and decided to follow suit. He turned around so his back was to the steps, edged his back wheels to the edge, grabbed the handrail on his right hand side and started to lower himself down. It was at this point that he forgot to move his hand down the handrail and his right side stayed at the top of the slope while his left side attempted to descend. Several things happened then in quick succession, but you so knew what was bound to happen next that it all seemed to take place in slow motion…

…first, his left wheel dropped down one step so he ended up diagonally across the slope, facing away from the handrail. He still maintained a death grip on the handrail but couldn't twist his body to keep it up so he raised his arms above his head - still hanging on. This had the effect of lifting his front casters up in the air and rolling him backwards.

So, there he was, feet in the air, hanging on to the handrail (which by this time was in front of his face) with one big wheel on one step and one on the step below and guffawing (there really is no other word for it) with laughter. I guess to start with we were all useless too, as we were all so convulsed with laughter ourselves we had no chance to help him - the only person who wasn't was some new guy (waiting for the lift) who I think was so horrified at our callous natures that we will never see him again!

To be fair…within a few seconds, we had all pitched in and everybody grabbing a bit managed to get him both upright and down the bottom. Now, I bet you're all asking if he's likely to try this again…well, I suspect not, but I wouldn't put anything past him!

Sometimes you can only wish...

I do like to take a trip on the train - I've always loved it, even when I was a child. I don't attribute this at all to the fact that my grandfather was a train driver, as he was retired for as long as I could remember, so I think it's just one of those things about trains. I mean, who doesn't love a train trip, all that clackety clack as the scenery rushes by outside; all that peering into people's back gardens as you slow down at the next station and the general excitement that you are doing something special and out of the ordinary. Of course, I am sure that the country is full of commuters and glass half empty people who wouldn't agree with me in the slightest, but for me, it fills me full of the excitement that I used to get, when as a child I read about the Famous Five heading away on their holidays...

Of course, these days, the other thing I like about the train is that since they are so hideously expensive, if you travel at a quiet time of day, they can be like an oasis of calm in the hustle and bustle of the world and when I knew I was going up to London, I was rather looking forward to the opportunity of just watching the world go by for a bit. I even packed a book and planned just to kick back and enjoy it. Of course, this didn't all quite go to plan - as to start with it was dark which I hadn't really counted on at 4pm (yes I know its winter and I shouldn't have been so stupid but I was...). Also, me being me, I didn't chill at all, because I decided to sort out my hotel details and then answer a text from a friend and then the train rushed so quickly towards it's destination that I was there before I knew it. It just turned out that I was busy all the way because the way didn't actually take that long!

Right at the moment I seem to feel busy all the time and I know that these feelings are always influenced by those 'late starts' that I seem to get. In reality life is quite normal for me, good days, bad days, quiet days and not so quiet days but I think right now that what makes all the difference is that there are a few things in my life I am worrying about at the moment and that these are things that are way out of my control. Now anyone who knows me will know that I don't really like anything being out of my control - not that I am a control freak or anything (!) but I do find it unsettling when I want to help and can't.

Talking to friends, we all seem to say the same thing at the moment, that there are people we care about going through stressful situations and because we care for them we care what happens to them. I find this hard (not the caring bit, but the being unable to help bit), because I am one of those people who in my own life, feels a need to meet problems head on, finding out all the facts and taking control of the situation as far as I can. Its how I handled my scoliosis surgery - I joined forums, read everything I could on the subject, asked every question I could of my surgeon and comprehensively planned for my recovery. In short, I did everything I felt I could to get a successful outcome from what I knew would be a pretty tough operation. I then find myself wanting to do something similar for all those people I care about. I find myself wanting to dive in and talk to their spouse, boss or doctor or any other person who I think might be able to help, even though I know in my heart of hearts that even if I could, it wouldn't help.

I guess in short, I feel rather like a fretful mother who wants to go down the school and make things right for their child when they find them going through a hard time with bullies or something similar. The big problem with this is that all too often, it doesn't help at all. I'm not saying that parents can't give children the support they need or that if their child comes home saying that they've been bullied that they should ignore them, but just that these situations need to be carefully handled. More to the point, this blog entry is not about bullies and how (or how not) to handle them but it's about how you can handle things badly by doing nothing more than being really well meaning and trying to be helpful. I guess we've all heard of kids who have ended up being picked on even more than before, because their mother went down the school trying to make things right. Sometimes, just like those times when you need to make your own mistakes^*1 you need to be left to try to stand up for yourself too.

So, in my extreme rambling way, what I am trying to say is that I know exactly what I have to do. I know that I have to let all these people make their own choices and where they need to , just stand up for themselves - all the same, it won't stop me worrying for them and wishing I could help...

^*1 This was the story of my teenage years when in answer to my question of "why?" (to anything my mother said) - she would respond "because I say so!". This didn't really work as a response to a typically moody teenager and would often result in one of those 'conversations' that teenage daughters and mothers have....one of those 'conversations' which almost always ended up in my mother getting exasperated with my lack of following orders - and ultimately resulted in her telling me that I would have to 'make my own mistakes...!'