A Visit To The World’s Best Therapist
I had a bit of a shock this morning, as the news said that somebody I might know had died in tragic circumstances.
So I decided that I needed to explore some parts of the London Underground. I intended to have breakfast at Leon in Kings Cross station and then I intended to see if I could find the Underground maps in Lego.
I then visited all the maps before I finished up at Stratford, from where I took the Overground home.
As I often do, I met some interesting people, including a young lady accompanied by her charming baby, who with her partner had taken a train all the way back from Istanbul and soon were going to Denmark overland. Where do I find a lady of a compatible age to myself, who likes trains, architecture and football? Especially, to accompany me to Odessa to see the Potemkin Steps, watch England in Kiev and then come home via Warsaw and Berlin.
i certainly felt a lot better, as I say down to watch the cricket. But I still don’t know if I knew the person, who died.
My Health Goes Up And Down
This has been a rather up and down week for how I feel.
On Monday, I had an echo-cardiogram and I think it went pretty well. At least I was told it was better than the last one.
But then yesterday, I went to Brighton for lunch and coming back, the weather had broken and I was choking and wheezing, like I did as a child.
I was feeling bad in the the evening and I texted a friend, who has suffered similarly this winter. She texted back “Not cough but catarrh and intermittent headache.”
That could sum me up too and in some funny ways, I’m almost worse indoors.
I’m looking at how all this relates to my INR, which I’m now taking daily.
At least my INR is within its prescribed range and for the last few days it has been spot on 2.5, as measured by my CoaguChek device.
Just going to have a bath and put my head under the water. Temporarily I should add!
Have I Shortened My Life By Moving?
Accotrding to the new Longer Lives web site, I have moved from a healthy area, St. Edmundsbury to an unhealthy one, Hackney.
But then my lifestyle has hardly changed!
I did end up in hospital last year, but then the heating system in this house had something to do with it.
A Restaurant I Won’t Visit
As they seem to encourage smoking dollies to parade outside, I don’t think I’ll visit this restaurant.
A Restaurant I Won’t Visit
She put me off so much, I didn’t even look at the menu, but just walked by out of the smoke.
Can Food Help Us Cope With Grief?
This article on the BBC web site, asks the question, posed in the title of this post.
Cooking and food has certainly helped me, in that when my late wife died, it was either learn to cook, eat out every night or starve.
So as I already had the basic skills from my mother’s training, I chose the first and now find that I can cook pretty well. Or at least those who have eaten one of my meals, haven’t complained! Or gone to A & E!
The article also has some links to some nice meals, I might try, like this cottage pie.
Sequins On My Balcony
I went to see this entertainment at the Rosemary Branch last night.
To say it was uplifting would be an understatement, but to anybody who’s been affected by breast cancer either personally or through a family member or friend’s suffering, Yvette Cowles got it absolutely right in my view. I have never had any cancer, that I know of, but what Yvette said about fighting breast cancer, could have applied so much to C and her successful fight against her lump.
Nothing though, helped in C’s unsuccessful fight against the cancer that killed her.
Why Was This Idiot Allowed To Drive?
When I had my stroke, I was not allowed to drive until I’d proved I was safe. As my eyesight never returned to 20/20, I decided that it was probably best to give up trying to drive again. I suspect now, that I might be able to drive without any problems, but I couldn’t live with perhaps knocking someone over, even if it was impossible for it to have been my fault.
On the other hand, the idiot driver of the van shown in this report from the BBC, was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, who went on to kill a young mother and injure thirteen others. In other words he was a worse killer than the two who are accused of murdering Lee Rigby.
What doctor allowed him to drive after the diagnosis? He should be struck off at the least.
Advice For Expectant Mothers
There is a widely trailed story today about what expectant mothers should avoid. It’s here on the BBC. This is the main advice.
- Use fresh organic food rather than processed
- Avoid food and drink in cans and plastic containers
- Minimise use of moisturisers, cosmetics, shower gel and fragrances
- Avoid buying new furniture, fabrics, non-stick frying pans and cars when pregnant or nursing
When C was pregnant with our first child, she was a student in her last year at Liverpool University. She actually did her exams at nearly seven months pregnant. She got a II-2, so she couldn’t have done badly.
She didn’t purposedly avoid any chemicals, but as the nice flat we lived in didn’t have a shower, she did at least avoid shower gel, which is on the list of products to avoid. As to the last point, we couldn’t afford new furniture or cars. our frying pan had been borrowed from her mother and was a well-used steel one, complete with a bit of added rust. Did it put iron into the food?
Neither of us smoked, although throughout her pregnancy, she had to endure the Capstan Full Strength cigarettes of her tutor; Robert Kilroy Silk.
But advice was different in those days. We went to stay with a family in Hingham in Norfolk, where C had been a mother’s help during University holidays. The mother, who incidentally was the daughter of a doctor, asked if she’d like a brandy before going to bed, as it would make the baby sleep better. She declined, but only because she was pretty abstemious with alcohol.
We also moved south just a week or so before the expected birth date and then in London, she didn’t have a hospital. I told that story in a post called Waiting for Apollo 11. Theses are the links to Part 2 and Part 3 of the story. We didn’t do boring, even in 1969.
We all survived and the only question, that sometimes comes to mind, is was the cancer that killed her caused by all of those smoky tutorials forty years before she died?
I do know that if she was here today, she’d be laughing like a drain!
The Sun And INR
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been testing my INR daily. These are the early results taken daily on my Coagucheck.
Tuesday, June 4th – 3.0
Monday, June 3rd – 2.9
Sunday, June 2nd – 2.8
Saturday, June 1st – 3.0
Friday, May 31st – 2.9
Thursday, May 30th – 2.3
Wednesday, May 29th – 2.7
Tuesday, May 28th – 2.5
Monday, May 27th – 2.4
Sunday, May 26th – 2.2
Saturday, May 25th – 2.2
Thursday, May 23rd – 2.4
Wednesday, May 22nd – 2.2
Tuesday, May 21st – 2.2
Monday, May 20th – 2.1
Sunday, May 19th – 2.5
Saturday, May 18th – 2.3
I’m not having any medical problems, but to a certain extent I’m scientifically curious, and feel that the INR swings up and down a bit. As I’m paying for the strips, no-one can say, I’m wasting NHS money. A cardiologist once said to me, that if I got my INR right, I wouldn’t have another stroke.
I have to keep my INR between 2 and 3, with a target value of 2.5. As I’m a trained Control Engineer, I’m using a simple algorithm to make sure I’m in range and to try and nudge the INR to 2.5.
What is interesting, is that when this sunny spell of weather started on the 31st May, the INR has increased and despite reducing the dose to a sensible minimum of 3 mg., it remains at the high end of the target range.
Obviously, a few days don’t prove it conclusively, but there are other reports on the Internet of the sun affecting the INR. There a thread here.
Note that I now keep the results in a single post here and also with other data like the weather and how I feel in an Excel spreadsheet.
Angelina Jolie’s Example
I’ve never had breast cancer, but my late wife, C did, in her late fifties. She caught the cancer early and luckily only had a lump and lymph nodes removed, followed by a course of radiotherapy. She made a complete recovery and the cancer never returned. Sadly she died of a totally unrelated cancer a few years later.
I think Angelina Jolie’s upfront approach to her double mastectomy is to be praised. It’s reported here on the BBC. I know that Angelina has a lot more money than all of us and probably had the best surgeon, that money could buy, and C had a surgeon, who works extensively in the NHS, although she went privately. But her outcome was good and provided she was careful about what she wore, no-one knew that she’d had an operation. She was still able to wear a bikini, as I reported here. She also had to be reasonably careful about the bra she wore.
One thing that worried her, was that from professional experience, breast cancer operations, were quite a large cause of divorce, and I think she worried about my attitude to her body, after the operation. So I would also praise Brad Pitt for his support of his wife. Too often, in C’s experience, men often went looking for a perfect model.
I think my advice to anybody going through cancer or any other serious medical treatment, is to make sure you get a doctor, who you can trust and get yourself as fit as you can both before and after the treatment. And don’t rush things! Even with my stroke, the best advice I had was from a man, I bumped into on a train. He turned out to be a retired professor of medicine, who’d worked a lot with stroke patients. He said that time will be the biggest healer. I think now, three years later that has been very true.
I also wonder if those going through serious operations, in a stable relationship have a better chance of recovery.
The Anonymous Widower 