Deaths, Public and Private
Every death is a tragedy for someone. Even the most noxious individual, had a mother, even if they didn’t know their father, or have any children.
Years ago, I was phoned by Haringey Council, because my great uncle had died in their care. He’d returned from Australia to find his family and after failing had ended up in an old peoples’ home in the borough. But a guy in the Legal Department of the council had taken the trouble to trace those few remaining relative after his death. He felt it was more than a pity, that he hadn’t been able to find us before my great uncle had died.
We’ve recently had a lot of coverage about Lockerbie, where unlike my great uncle, 270 died in a very public and violent way.
Over the years, I’ve met many who like myself, have lost someone very near and dear to them. But all of these, like my great uncle have been very private and the most public they have got would have been a notice in the paper. And usually only the local one.
But is the grief felt by those left behind any different?
When my wife died of an aggressive and incurable cancer of the heart, I felt totally powerless. It just gripped her body and drained the life out of her. But at least we said good-bye properly and if I can keep my dignity like she did in her last days, I will be surprised, as I don’t think I have it in me. I do want to get even, but it will be by helping those in the fight against cancer and other life-threatening diseases.
Others I know lost their partners, parents and children to accidents and heart attacks, where they didn’t have my luxury of a slow parting. They seem to take much longer to come to terms with their new circumstances. After all, they were not told to get on with their life. Or fixed up with a blind date! Many too, don’t have the financial circumstances that I have, to carry on in the same way as before.
Is the public death of a loved one any different?
In a way it is not. You still have the same grief and personal problems, although interestingly in some cases, you may well have received much more financial help and counselling.
But surely the real problem is that whereas I have been able to restart my life, the endless publicity and digging up of the issues, by newspapers and often well-meaning politicians, doesn’t help.
My heart goes out to those who can’t be left alone to suffer their grief in private with friends, family and any professionals they need, so that they can be left to rebuild the rest of their life.
An interesting aside to this is that because my wife was a barrister, we often discussed various legal issues and cases in the courts. She could not understand, why if someone was murdered, increasingly relatives seem to spend every day of the trial of the accused in Court. I agreed and if she had been murdered, I would have quietly withdrew and had nothing to do with case. She would have done the same if it had happened to me. How can you get any satisfaction from watching justice unfold, so close to home?
So to return to Lockerbie. I can’t understand the mentality of those who keep pushing themselves through all the grief again and again, by appearing on the radio and demanding more and more vengeance.
But then I think all deaths are generally a private affair, for those that are involved.
I like to think that by now, I would have moved on and built a new life that was a credit to the memory of those that I had lost.
Cooked Meats and Cancer
The World Cancer Research Fund are now saying that cooked meats, such as ham and salami and bacon, can cause cancer and should be banned from lunch boxes.
They have form in this area and have been warning for some time. Do I eat much cooked meats? Not really, as I possibly eat them once or twice a month. I did eat a bit more at the weekend, but it was my party.
They also provoked this blast from the Daily Mail. I’ve read that and that perhaps says one important thing and that is moderation in all things.
But what is missing from all of this research and rants is any degree of statistical sense.
We could take a silly example, which states that if you spend all your time on a computer, playing computer games as a child that this is bad for your health. Other research could also say that playing on railway tracks is also bad. They both probably are, but the second is many times more dangerous than the first and people these days tend to lump everything as equally bad.
Now my worry about this “ham sandwich is bad for you” scare is that I’ve never seen any relative risk information compared to say cigarettes, obesity, excessive drinking or spending eight hours a day on a sunbed. So you get the obese smoker giving up cooked meats as his bit towards better health.
So what are the relative risks?
The best book on the subject is The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg. He analyses the risks and prints them in detail. Everyone should read his book. You may not agree with everything he says, but it will certainly make you think.
But bear in mind one thing; if you want to live a long time, you can increase your chances by not smoking, eating a good diet, exercising and maintaining a healthy weight. I do all four. But then so did my late wife and she died at fifty-nine!
One point about diet is that diagnosed coeliacs on a gluten-free diet have a twenty-five percent less chance of cancer. That more than mitigates the bad affects of a ham sandwich in gluten-free bread.
The Power of Twitter
It would appear that Twitter has been having a hard time, as a war of words goes on about the NHS between Britain and the United States. Or at least between some people with axes to grind.
I am quite a regular user of NHS services in that I am a coeliac and have a B12 injection every three months, free prescriptions for bread mixes, ongoing issues with cholesterol, my left foot, which got injured on a beach by a shell and my left humerus, which got broken by a bully at school. Nothing is that serious and I suspect, I’m quite a way below average in my consumption of services. I never have a problem and I can always get an appointment when I want with my GP.
If I look at the last few weeks of my late wife’s life, I can’t fault the services she got from both the hospital and from the GP. She eventually died at home in her own bed, which is surely the way we’d all like to go. If we have to go at all!
But I’m not saying the NHS is perfect, but on the whole in mine and my many of my friends’ experience it works pretty well. I think we’re also lucky here in West Suffolk, in that we have two hospitals within reach; Addenbrookes and Bury St. Edmunds. For specialist problems, Papworth and London are not too far away. So if I have a problem, I’d make sure I get the right consultant from a choice of several.
I have never used the US healthcare system so I can’t comment directly, but whereas none of my friends in the UK would put healthcare to the top of their list of worries, many of my American friends do. I worry about living alone and perhaps having a heart attack by myself, but I don’t worry about the care I would get.
Recently, I’ve had experience off two other health systems in Europe; Italy and Holland. So in the latter it’s only indirectly, but the episode in Naples was only the second time, I’d had a ride in an ambulance. The ambulance was rudimentary, the hospital was very tired, but the care was good and there were lots of doctors and nurses. Compared to the UK, the buildings are a lot worse, the staff seem to work a lot harder, but the result is probably about the same.
Holland is interesting in that everyone has to take out insurance, even if you’re unemployed. If you don’t then you don’t get treated. So take your European Health Insurance Card with you! One guy in Holland got charged 740 Euros to remove a tick!
So we can find holes in every health system and these are going to get publicised all of the time. But they actually stop real debate about the way we’re going to have to manage health care in the future.
When I had my last B12 injection, the nurse told me that increasingly her time is taken up by the problems of the obese. It would appear that what the US and the UK do, that they can’t get to grips with this problem. I suspect it may be solved in the US, by the health insurance companies charging a lot more and people will either have to diet or take the consequences. So perhaps, their system has this control and that because the NHS is free at the point of delivery for all, the system will overload here in a big way in the next few years.
And then there is smoking! And excessive drinking, that leads to all sorts of problems. And don’t forget illegal drugs.
So to me the key to getting health costs under control, is to take action against obesity, smoking, excessive drinking and drug abuse. Do this and I suspect that the money will be there in the NHS for all the exotic drugs coming on stream.
According to this article in the Telegraph, in 2007, the NHS spent £750 million on drugs to combat unhealthy lifestyles. That is about 9% of the total drug spend of £8.37 billion.
But I do wonder about some of these drugs. And also the effects of the drug companies.
I am a coeliac and although it has been shown to affect about one-in-a-hundred of the population, there is very little research into the subject. Why? Because, everyone knows that the cure is to keep to that gluten-free diet and that if a drug came, that allowed you to eat gluten, most coeliacs wouldn’t trust it and would leave it in the pharmacy. You could argue too, that if we tested everybody for coeliac disease, this would save quite a bit of the drug bill, as many undiagnosed coeliacs suffer all sorts of problems like arthritis.
I wasn’t on any drugs before diagnosis, but I nearly had a couple of serious operations on my knees. Luckily I didn’t!
So better and earlier diagnosis would probably cut the drug bill.
I should also say, that many patients think that for every disease they need a magic pill. We are prescribing Tamiflu to all and sundry, when many commentators, think that bed, whisky and paracetamol might well be better for the run-of-the-mill cases.
I’m not taking it for a start, unless I get a serious dose of flu.
My late wife had a horrific cancer and they tried to use a drug to prolong her life. It failed and made her life worse. So on another point, I would never take a drug unless I had all of the facts. We must not judge success by an extra day of life, but by the quality of that life as well. The number of people in favour of assisted suicide shows that the general public rate the quality of life pretty high.
But we must also remember that over half the costs of the NHS are staff costs, whereas the total cost of drugs is a lot less than that. I can’t find accurate up-to-date figures, but the drug cost is probably between ten and fifteen percent.
So to get a better health service, we need to cut out those bad lifestyles and provide the tools for the NHS, so that we get more greater value for the large amount we pay staff.
I’ll give one personal example here.
To be diagnosed for coeliac disease, you need to have a full endoscopy. I’ve had two and they’re not that bad, but they cost the NHS a lot of money. On the other hand, before I had the first endoscopy, I was diagnosed as a very likely coeliac by just a simple blood test. I went on a gluten-free diet, my chronic dandruff disappeared immediately and I felt a lot better. In other words why bother with the endoscopy?
NHS rules say you can’t get gluten-free goods on prescription unless you are diagnosed by endoscopy.
There are several things wrong with this policy.
- Some coeliacs have a negative diagnosis by endoscopy, despite losing all symptoms on a gluten-free diet.
- My wife said that it could be construed as child-abuse to use a gluten challenge and endoscopy on a child.
- A lot of coeliacs get little on prescription, as much better offerings are available in the supermarket. I only get a bread mix.
How many other areas could better and more scientific procedures make the NHS more efficient?
Whoever wins the next General Election in the UK has a lot of scope for efficiency improvements in the NHS, but the entrenched views of those who work there will make it difficult.
What am I going to do?
Keep slim and fit! And not stand on any more razor shells on Holkham Beach.
And also use Twitter to publicise all the waste. It has a lot more power than anything else.
Shower and Exercise
My morning regime has changed now that I live alone.
Our/my bedroom used to have a two large wardrobes and since I only need one now, I removed the wardrobe, extended the bathroom and put a walk-in shower in the extra space. It has no door and is electronically controlled so that I just switch it on and never bother about the temperature. It has been completely reliable.
After my shower, I perform a set of exercises for my shoulder. As I said in Bullying, this has almost completely cured the problem, so it is very much worth doing.
But it does set me up for the day.
The Oldham Solution to Binge Drinking
Oldham has brought in fairly draconian proposals to stop binge drinking.
You have to queue “Post Office” style for your drinks, there seem to be masses of extra staff and even police paid for by the bars. Panorama is doing a program tonight. But one landlord feels he is being tarred with same brush and has successfully appealed against the council.
I am all for cutting down the binge drinking, but feel that if only Oldham does this, then those that just want to drink to oblivion will go elsewhere. This may put the problem into other towns and also cause problems on the roads and public transport.
I always remember in the 1960s, that Ipswich closed the pubs at 10:30 and Suffolk at 11:00, so there was always problems as drinkers finished in Ipswich and continued in Suffolk. When the two authorities brought things into line, everything was much calmer and there was a lot less drinking and driving.
We actually need a law, which says that alcohol must be sold at a minimum price per unit in every outlet. But even this needs to be applied very carefully, as otherwise alcohol will be bootlegged and organised crime will get involved. Perhaps, the value per unit would not be fixed in law, but applied so as to minimise illegal alcohol sales.
But we will only get a solution to the binge drinking problem, when people wake up to the fact that there are better things to do.
I also think of “Education, education, education!”
Where have I heard that before?
Will I be visiting Olham for a drink? I don’t think so, as it would appear that the town is not to my liking. I’ve also checked the guides and there isn’t a decent restaurant in the place! And I suspect no-one has heard of gluten! After all, if you can’t drink beer, you can’t be a real man!
Female Fertility and Coeliac Disease
BBC Breakfast this morning is carrying a report saying that all women at thirty should have a fertility test. I sent them this e-mail.
I am a coeliac, which means I have low B12 and folate levels unless I’m on a gluten-free diet. In a man this does not matter with regards fertility, but with some women undiagnosed low B12 levels means that they don’t conceive or carry to full term. I know personally of three women diagnosed at coeliacs in their earlier thirties, who cut out gluten and then very easily had the children they wanted.
I doubt they’ll read it out.
But if I trace my family back a couple of generations to where I think I’ve enherited my coeliac gene, I can’t find any woman who has given birth. Was that due to low B12, due to that gene.
Urine Cures Athlete’s Foot
As I drove back from Dover last night, someone brought this up on Radio 5.
It might be even be true! But I suspect, it’s one you don’t try at home!
I think though that late night radio is sometimes very weird. But then how many listeners at that time are both sane and fully awake?
There’s Always Hope
I just had to post a link to this heartwarming tale.
A professional footballer, Robert Hughes, was left paralysed after an attack in Crete in June 2008. It was felt he was unlikely to walk again and he had no recollection of the last ten years. But now, he is playing football again and has just signed a contract with Welling United.
Well done to all concerned. And of course best wishes to Robert and his friends and family.
The Corby Scandal
The word scandal is rather mild for the issues surrounding the cleaning up of the steelworks in Corby.
With echoes of Thalidomide and the toxin problems in California exposed by Erin Brockovich, the Borough Council has fought every inch of the way and they have now lost a battle in the Court of Appeal. Incidentally, the News page on the Corby web site is blank. Could this be because they are still in denial over their role in the scandal.
I’ll now put my statistical hat on.
The geographic cluster of the birth defects would appear to be obvious. So why did the council try and find what the problem is, rather than bring up a whole battery of legal defences?
If I lived in the town, I’d make sure that all the councillors responsible would be voted out.
I’ve also worked on chemical works for a company, ICI, that cared a lot about health and safety. From what I’ve read, the precautions taken as the works was dismantled were not of the highest standard. Why? And have the workers suffered any ill effects?
I suspect that we will hear a lot more in all sorts of directions about this scandal.
Organic Food?
There has been a report that says that organic food is no better than non-organic. I probably agree, but then I use it in most of my cooking.
So why?
Take my chilli con carne, that I cooked last night. I use lean organic beef as that is better for me because of its leanness. I also feel strongly that animals should be kept well and that some sort of mark like Organic, means that higher levels of husbandry are used. In fact, I think that near-organic beef is better, as farmers who grow quality beef say that the organic rules are not always to the animals best health and make the product too expensive.
Anyway, the chilli con carne was great!
The Anonymous Widower 