Putting It Straight
I liked this sign at the KC Stadium in Hull.
Putting It Straight
No-one was smoking, so the message must be getting through.
Smoking In The Car Isn’t Good For You
Any sensible person knows that smoking anywhere is not a good idea, but now scientists have shown that you can exceed toxic limits in a car. It’s all here on the BBC.
As I rarely go in a car and certainly not one that ever gets smoked in, if smoking was banned in cars, I wouldn’t bother personally. Although, I believe if smoking stopped in this country, we’d all have a better standard of living and the NHS would see less cancer.
According to this article, we raise about £12.1 million from taxes related to tobacco, so we might have a budget hole to fill.
But then every action has an equal and opposite reaction. How many people have changed their evening habits because now all pubs and restaurants are smoke free? And how many jobs has that created.
Politicians interfere Too Much In Health Care
Not me that said that, but the view of Dame Ruth Carnall in this article about stroke care in London. This is an extract.
She went on to criticise politicians for interfering too much in health changes.
She said: “Politicians too often reduce complex medical arguments to soundbites.
“Compromise is a mistake but is hard to resist. There is a political aversion to major changes as we’ve seen with the debate over A&Es.”
But then politicians love to interfere and the sooner we get more politicians who are caring people first and politicians second, the better.
The trouble with healthcare is that for serious problems, there just isn’t the money to have super-duper unit for that problem at every hospital. So especially in places like London, cutting the number of units for each speciality is a good thing.
I would also say do we want to go back to the 1950s and 1960s, where there were loads of local general hospitals, which did everything and usually did it in a less than perfect way. I can’t remember anyone in those days, who was totally pleased with the service they got from the local hospitals in Barnet and Enfield. I, myself, have a gammy arm, which may well have been caused by substandard treatment when it was broken by the school bully.
Surely, the wonderful outcome of the Fabrice Muamba case, should be a lesson to everybody. He was probably saved by the absolutely top-class emergency treatment he revived on the pitch by a cardiologist who happened to be in the crowd and a swift removal to a cardiac hospital.
According to Dame Ruth, London now has eight major stroke units and the political delays cost seven hundred lives.
Two Parcels From Roche
I thought the Softclix device had failed so Roche sent me a new one. I also needed some lancets, so Roche sent me some of those.
They both arrived the same day as expected, but one was by courier and the other by Royal Mail.
You’d think they’d use one company!
Marie Stopes
Marie Stopes are rather having a problem with opening a branch in Northern Ireland.
I once met a senior guy from the organisation. He told me, that they do a lot of work in the field of sexual health that doesn’t get talked about for good political reasons. It’s probably wise, as some of the work they do is not at all controversial here, but in some parts of the world where they work, their workers would probably be attacked.
Back To The Fleet Street Clinic
C and myself used to go here, for our annual flu jabs.
About three years ago, I was unhappy about my cholesterol and went to a private dietician in Ipswich to see if they could help me. They could and did, but sadly they no longer practice at that address.
As a coeliac, I do like to see if I’m doing things right, and as I’d found that the Fleet Street clinic had a dietician, I arranged an appointment for this morning with their private dietician; Ruth Kander.
As I suspected on past experience of the clinic and dieticians in general, I received the quality of professional advice, that I expected.
Testing My Own INR
I’ve now been testing my own INR for a couple of weeks now.
Except for my problems with the manual, my biggest problem has been pricking my finger with the Softclix device, to get a drop of blood to put on the machine.
In the end today, I resorted to taking the top off the device and just stabbing the tip of my finger with the lancet. I got a perfect drop of blood, which gave me a good reading with no errors.
I told Roche and they’re sending a new Softclix device.
On the other hand, I’ve had no problems with the Coaguchek device itself.
What’s Happened To Me?
This is not a bad post, but I’ve changed over the last few weeks.
I think it is actually that I have got much more confident. Why I don’t know, but my confidence seemed to improve greatly, when I changed my doctor. Perhaps, it was the decisive act of changing or it could be that the new doctor has actually fixed a couple of my problems. I don’t know and I don’t care why!
But take today! I went for a lunchtime drink with my financial advisor and normally, I just have a drink and go. But today for some reason, I made the decision to stay behind and have the kedgeree. It was almost, as if I’ve got some sort of fear of the unknown and generally only eat in the same places.
Before and after lunch, I also found it easy to post to my blog and I wrote several complicated e-mails to people. It was almost as though something had unlocked in my brain. Strangely, this has happened before and also it happened before I had any stroke. I remember coming home after a glorious holiday in Malaysia and virtually vegetating for several months.
And then this afternoon, I felt I ought to see a show of some sort this evening. So I went up to the Angel to get a paper and checked what was on at the cinemas there. I noticed that Untouchable was on at 20:10 at the Vue. I didn’t expect I would go, so I bought myself a supper in Waitrose.
But I did go in the end and bought a Senior ticket for £7.10. It was in a new screen and a lot better than last time, I went to that cinema.
I thoroughly enjoyed the film.
Coming out I also solved my friend’s dress problem. Or at least in my mind, I got a plan of action! She will hate my solution, but it has to be tried.
In some ways this extreme decisiveness started on Saturday, when my son told me to go down to John Lewis and check out carpets. But I’d already gone to Primrose Hill to sort out bathroom suites, as requested by my builder.
I might have a theory that works.
I think by nature I’m a man who likes to be ordered around and people have always used that to get the best of my brain. There’s nothing more I like, than to be presented with a problem and told to go and solve it. Living alone, I don’t get that stimulus!
C didn’t take advantage of me, but would get into a flap all the time, knowing that I’d rescue her from her predicament, often with an unusual solution. I remember one day, she was in a very sour mood, as she was doing a very difficult and disturbing case for the local County Council, where the other side was represented by a QC. What made her angry as well, was that she had the difficult side and the QC was getting three or four times she was. So I asked, what would happen if they got a QC on their side? She said that the Council wouldn’t pay. I said why not and all her barrister’s insecurities kicked in and she said they were mean and wouldn’t. But I said you had a good argument as the other side had a big gun and surely fairness should prevail, so I told her to ask. The Council capitulated and she was led by a real gentleman of a QC, who used all the work she had done and eventually won the case. Her clerk put in for the largest fee she ever earned and we had two weeks holiday on the result.
My problem now, if I have one, is to sustain this mood, which is not unlike the one I had that night in the Star at Lidgate, as we trawled through her problem.
It’s now just after midnight and I’m not tired. I’ve also only had one drink of half of cider all day, other than tea, coffee, milk and orange juice.
So it’s not the alcohol talking, as that’s long gone from my system.
We Mustn’t Forget Old Techniques
As someone, who grew up in a letterpress printing works in Wood Green, I welcome stories like this.
Abelardo Gonzalez has developed a font for those who suffer from dyslexia and it seems to work.
I don’t suffer from dyslexia, but I do have slightly sub-standard eyesight and know that reading some fonts is easier than others.
Transport for London would also agree, as years ago they developed a special clear typeface for travellers called New Johnston. It’s even on the destination boards of buses.
I also think that I do better in eye tests than I should, because of all that time I spent setting up type and especially the very small ones like 6 pt. I think sometimes my father gave me those pieces to do, as my eyes and dexterity as a child were very good.
Coeliacs With West African Roots
One of the big differences about London, after coming back to live after forty years, is that now everybody tends to talk to each other a lot more. A black lady and myself had a big laugh about it, after we’d walked up the road talking about our ailments and remarking that twenty years before we’d have been on opposite sides of the road.
One thing that has surprised me is the number of coeliacs, I’ve come across with West African roots. I have written about the chef in my local pub from Sierra Leone, who is a coeliac, but several times, I’ve been asked in the supermarket about the gluten-free food in my basket, by shop staff and others, who are coeliac and have some roots in West Africa.
If it was just once or twice, I’d put it down to a random chance, but it is more common than that! Remember though that gluten has little part in the traditional West African diet, which is based on sorghum.
Hopefully the diagnosis of Michael Obiora; the actor, who was born to Nigerian parents, with coeliac disease, will help spread awareness of the disease.
The Anonymous Widower 