Feeling Better In The Fog
It was really funny yesterday in that in the foggy air, I felt a bit better. Could it be that the damp air was getting into my lungs and doing me good?
Am I Finally Solving My Childhood Health Problems?
I wasn’t the healthiest of children. We lived in a very cold part of London a few hundred metres from Oakwood station and to say our house was cold would be an understatement.
I seemed to spend at least one term of each school year off sick with a problem that my doctor had no idea about. I’m not particularly sure which term I had off, but I do know in my first year at Minchenden it was the Spring term, as no-one could understand why after a good first term, I deteriorated in the next.
Other memories of the time, are saucepans of cotton handkerchiefs boiling on the gas stove. As after all there weren’t any tissues in those days.
I can also remember panicking at times and having fights with my mother as she struggled to clean my ears out, as they were rather full of wax.
But it all seemed to disappear, when I was thirteen or so, and I can’t remember any problems after my first year at Minchenden. Perhaps that was after, my grandmother died and I got to have the big sunny room at the back of the house, which was much warmer. This death may be more significant than I think, as it finally gave my father control of the business and finances in the family were much better and we started to have longer and more holidays. Soon after we bought the house in Felixstowe, where of course the air was fresher and it wasn’t quite as cold.
Going to Liverpool was probably a good move, as it faces to the west and for a city in the 1960s, the air was probably pretty good.
I met C in 1966 and really since then I didn’t have too many health problems until after she died in 2007. When I was diagnosed with coeliac disease in 2003, i thought that would be the explanation of my my childhood health problems.
I should also say that I’ve always said that I liked being at altitude and seemed to feel better in places like Denver. I also flew light aircraft a lot and loved going up high.
But it wasn’t as after C died, the runny nose started to return and I put it down to hay fever. But tests have shown it is nothing of the case, but just rhinitis and a very runny nose.
So are there any other factors that might come into it.
My grandfather died of asthma and pneumonia in his forties and I suspect he carried the coeliac gene, like my father probably did. I have no proof of that except that none of the women in that line of my family have ever given birth and undiagnosed coeliac disease is a cause of failing to conceive. My father definitely had breathing problems and suffered badly from catarrh He was always taking menthol tablets and he used to give them to me, but they made little difference to my problems. So perhaps, what my father and I had were different, but the older I get, the more I think our problems were similar. But of course, he was never diagnosed with coeliac disease and he smoked a pipe.
When I met C I was just 19, so for forty years of my life I lived with her and it was if she warded off the rhinitis. That is really a silly idea to even think it. But last week my GP suggested I get a Sinus Rinse to wash the muck out of my nose.
It got me thinking. C was a great lover of deep hot baths and usually had one every day. To save hot water, she’d always leave it for me afterwards and I would get in and often wash my hair. Now she laid back into the water to wash hers, but I knelt and put my head forward under the water. Afer she dued one of my first actions was to put a proper shower into the bedroom.
So did this daily bath to keep my sinuses clear? And did the shower make it all worse?
I don’t know, but I have certainly felt a bit better since I’ve had a morning bath.
The bath seems to have helped another of my childhood problems that has returned. As a child I used to suffer badly from cramp, when I was asleep. I used to get out of bed and put my foot on the cold lino. This symptom started again, when I moved here.
This post is very much a ramble, but underneath everything there seems to be a pattern emerging.
But at least nothing seems to be life-threatening. And of course I grew out of it once.
When Did We First Test For Horse DNA In Beef?
This may seem to be an obvious question, but I can’t seem to be able to find the answer on the Internet.
There is also the related question of when were we able to test for equine DNA in beef?
After all, if we’ve been able to do this for some years, could we have detected the fact that crooks were putting horse in beef earlier? And then there’s how long has it all been going on?
Perhaps, we should ask people if they find a Findus beef lasagne or any of the other suspect products in the freezer with a date of last year, they should take it to get tested.
A Squamous Cell Carcinoma Of The Heart
Perhaps because yesterday was St. Valentine’s Day and it was my sixth without her, I think I should say more about the cancer that killed C.
Not to elicit sympathy for myself, as I’ve had enough of that in the past few years, but to put the true record on the Internet, so that it can be found.
It’s not pleasant reading, and there may be a cure by now, but typing “squamous cell carcinoma of the heart” into Google, just gives a couple of references other than the few in this blog or where I have posted in other forums.
C started to become short of breath in about July and in September, she went into Papworth Hospital to find out the cause, as it looked like it was something wrong with her heart.
In late October, they found the problem which was a squamous cell carcinoma actually growing inside the heart. So it was actually behaving like a valve shutting off the blood flow around the rest of her body.
They did try an experimental chemotherapy using a drug called Tarceva, but all this did was destroy her gut and make her mouth incredibly sore. It had no effect on the cancer.
The pain was so bad, she refused to see any of her friends and effectively withdrew into herself, just seeing her carers, and the immediate family. The pain was so bad at one point, that she asked me to take her to Switzerland, but by then, she would probably have found it impossible to travel. When I said no, she realised she hadn’t got long to live.
She died on December 11th, 2007, just a couple of months after the terrible diagnosis.
I said earlier, that I hope treatment is now possible. However do bear in mind, that C’s cancer was the only one of its type in 2011 in the UK and she was a very fit, non-smoker and light drinker, who’d hardly been ill in her near sixty years. She had had breast cancer, which was unrelated to the one that killed her, and had made a complete recovery.
A squamous cell carcinoma of the heart, must be one of the worst cancers you can get.
Someone’s Feeding the McFoxes
I took this picture at the scruffy end of Oxford Street, whilst waiting for the bus home.
Someone’s Feeding the McFoxes
No wonder we have foxes everywhere, with customers of McDonalds putting their litter everywhere!
Call To Scrap Gluten-Free Food Prescriptions
This article on the BBC’s web site, talks about a call in a learned journal for gluten-free prescriptions to be stopped on the NHS.
I have had gluten-free prescriptions in the past, but quite frankly, living where I do now, to take them would be a waste of my time and the NHS’s money.
So what specific gluten-free foods do I buy?
1. A few ginger cakes from Waitrose, as I find they help my dry throat. I can’t make cakes any more and to be fair, I haven’t got any cake tins.
2. I usually have one loaf of Genius bread a week, which I can buy from any number of outlets locally, like Waitrose, Sainsbury or the Co-op.
3. I’m not much of a biscuit person, but I probably eat one pack a fortnight. I actually prefer genius toast with Benecol and jam.
4. As you see from this blog, I do buy the odd ready-meal like the venison from Marks and Spencer. But these are the standard product.
5. I buy some of the EatNatural gluten-free breakfast cereal. I get through about a packet a week.
6. I do buy a specialist gluten-free beer called Celia over the Internet.
If I take out the beers, which are £2.10 each, I probably spend under ten pounds a week on specific gluten-free food. Although of course, I do spend quite a bit more on quality fish, meat, vegetables and fruit.
If I had to get gluten free food on prescription, it would mean going to the surgery and back. Probably I’d walk, which would be good for me, but I have better things to do with my time. I’d then have to go to the pharmacy to collect it.
So for people like me, this would be no inconvenience at all.
Obviously, for those on a very limited income, it might be more of a problem.
But the real key to a successful gluten-free diet is to eat lots of natural foods like meat, fish, fruit and vegetables. None of these cost more if you are a coeliac, as they’re all naturally gluten free.
The expensive gluten-free items to buy are bread, biscuits, cakes, sandwiches and beer. But it could be argued that most people eat too much of these anyway.
If gluten-free food was stopped on the NHS, the only people who would complain, would be the chattering classes, who are probably allergic to nuclear power, HS2, fracking, the Supersewer, the Congestion Charge and using public transport. Many though, like me, will probably have their lunches in upmarket cafes like Carluccio’s.
I would apply the money saved in the NHS, by using it to subsidise the cost of quality gluten-free bread, pasta and perhaps some cakes and biscuits. So for example a gluten-free loaf would then cost very much the same as a quality gluten-rich one.
That way all coeliacs would benefit.
It would also create jobs. Just think of the quality sandwich shop, where the owner makes his own sandwiches to order. So you want gluten-free bread? – No problem!
We don’t have a coeliac health problem over diet in this country. We have a health problem over diet. So let’s solve them all together with a proper integrated policy to get everybody eating well.
You won’t get everyone to eat better, but at least you’ll get some avoiding the problems of a bad diet.
Some Stupid Smokers
It was too wet to get my camera out, with it raining terribly badly an hour or so ago.
However, two women, were huddling under an umbrella outside the pub on the corner, trying to have a fag.
If the fags don’t give them cancer, the weather will give them pneumonia!
You can only die one way, but these two stupid women will certainly manage to do it before their time.
Following The Horsemeat
The horsemeat in food saga goes on and on, with Findus lasagne, the latest product to be cheval-rich, according to this article on the BBC.
In all of the problems reported, there doesn’t seem to have been one, which has occurred with a gluten-free product.
It is also reported that a drug called bute is found in some of the meat. This led to some wag on the radio, saying that these products will be good for your gout.
It will be interesting to see, if we’ve changed our eating habits in a couple of months.
I haven’t! But then, I never knowingly buy or eat food from the bottom of the pile and I doubt most of the restaurants I visit, source their meat in that area too!
Paracetamol Deaths Fall
According to this article on the BBC, smaller pack sizes for paracetamol has led to fewer deaths, many of which are suicides.. However the number of suicides on the railways continues to grow to such a level, that special measures had to be taken.
And yesterday, it would appear that someone jumped off the roof of Eastfield. Accident? I doubt it!
The trouble with suicides, is that we try to stop them, by limiting the methods, when it would be better to stop the reasons people feel they might take their own life.
As to pain-killers, I rarely take them! A couple of years ago, I did have some severe pain after the stroke and had to resort to paracetamol, codeine and later amitriptyline. But I haven’t had a pain-killer since late 2010, although I may have had a small glass of the Scottish all-purpose remedy.
The Anonymous Widower 