One of the Worst Days of my Life?
Today, my youngest son, George, would have been forty, which we always think is an important milestone in a person’s life. We tried to arrange a party or even a drink, but gradually everyone has cried off, so I shall celebrate this all by myself. I understand more and more the fortitude with which Aung San Suu Kyi endured her isolation. All of those birthdays and important milestones, that I’ve missed. And I will miss in the future.
But hey, at least I’m still here, despite the efforts of the Devil.
Luckily, by chance, I was given an overdose of survival gene at conception and that keeps pulling me through.
All I can say, to others now, is make sure your children don’t ever start smoking. George’s smoking probably led to his pancreatic cancer, especially if he was an undiagnosed coeliac and thus had a compromised immune system because of his gluten-rich junk food diet.
Aung San Suu Kyi and the DJ
Years ago, I can remember Dave Lee Travis on Radio 1 on Sunday mornings, whilst I was writing Artemis. I suspect as a young mother in Oxford, Ms Suu Kyi was listening to the same program.
Aung San Suu Kyi then went back to Burma to care for her dying mother and for twenty four years she couldn’t return to the UK, as she feared any return to her family would mean the Generals wouldn’t let go back to Burma. She couldn’t even return for the death of her husband, Michael Aris.
But during those years of isolation in Burma, she did at least have the BBC World Service, which kept her in touch and she listened to the shows of Dave Lee Travis, who briefly met her yesterday.
In some ways I can understand her isolation, although I’ve never suffered like she has. When I had my stroke in Hong Kong, there was only CNN, that I could understand on the television. But at least, I could get BBC Radio 5 at most times through the Internet. Never has a broadcasting channel been so important to my sanity.
Today, Aung San Suu Kyi is praised in the first leader of The Times. The last sentence is something we should all remember.
She not only represents a better future for Burma, but testifies to the resilience of the human spirit in extreme adversity.
I very much agree with that. She has also been an extreme example to me, as to how to cope with the worst that life can throw at you. But then I’m not alone and thousands of miles from my friends and family.
In
And Now It’s Super Obesity!
The BBC has two health stories today. One is about the fact that the NHS is in crisis and the other about super-obesity.
Are they by any chance related?
I recently had a visit to a hospital, where under pressure of clinic space, we had the consultation in a consulting room fitted out for the super obese.
It was extremely threatening. I was sitting in a chair, where three of me could have sat and the couch was like the bench, you’d get in a garage, where heavy trucks would be serviced.
I was surprised that the BBC didn’t put a warning before the obesity report, like they do for flash photography.
Jenny Hill has just said obesity will cost up £60billion a year in a few years. I hope that figure is wrong, as the total NHS budget for 2011-2012 is £120billion a year.
Silly Pill Packaging
These bisoprolol fumarate pills have the most infuriating packaging in that some of the bubbles don’t have a pill in them.
Silly Pill Packaging
But from the other side you wouldn’t know, which bubbles have pills in them.
In Search of Small Waists
The BBC’s web site today is verging into dangerous territory this morning, with a serious article called the re-re-re-rise of the corset. The article is in their magazine, so comments are not allowed, so we will not see the opinions of both fetishists and feminists.
The article does say that sales are on the rise.
But sales figures suggest ordinary people are turning to one of the greatest symbols of the Victorian era. Corsets are making a comeback.
Rigby & Peller, the Queen’s brassiere-maker, says sales of traditional corsets in May were 45% up on 2011.
Ebay has reported a 185% rise in the number of corsets being sold over the last three months, with 1,900 listed over the period. It says most corsets are bought in the UK (40%), the US (34%) and Australia (8.6%).
Many women aspire to Marilyn Monroe’s hourglass figureMarks & Spencer says it sells one item from its new corset-inspired Waist Sculpt lingerie line every three minutes.
The article then goes on to discuss why, which includes a comment by Liberty Sweet of the Folly Mixtures.
On a personal level, I always believed that C’s small waist was one of her physical characteristics, that attracted me to her. I could have probably made my hands touch round her waist, when we got married in 1968.
She never actually wore a corset, but she did wear a basque at times, especially after she had her brush with breast cancer, as she felt a proper fitting basque, gave her more support after the operation. In one instance, having a basque in her holiday suitcase, actually saved the day at a New Year’s Eve ball in Venice.
An MRi Scan in Harley Street
The doctors are trying to get to the bottom of why my heart doesn’t push as hard as it might.
So on Saturday lunchtime, I found myself in The Heart Hospital round the corner from Harley Street for an MRi scan. The hospital has an interesting history having been refurbished at one time as a private heart hospital. Some of the expensive fittings show this.
Now it is part of UCLH and it was a very efficient procedure, as a cardiologist checked my heart with the machine.
I think the whole story shows how only the NHS can afford really expensive machines, but they must make the assets sweat.
My only complaint was the usual NHS one, of magazines that were fairly out of date. But hey who cares? I waited with a man, who had brought his wife in for something much more serious than I am suffering from. He was much better company than last year’s Hello.
It was also a simple bus ride without any changes from the stop at the end of my road.
Professional Theft – PIP Breast Implants
It has been reported that Prof Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS medical director has looked in to the sub-standard breast implants supplied by French company PIP and has said that despite their double-than-normal failure rate, they did not appear to be linked with increased levels of cancer.
It would appear that where the NHS is concerned, the organisation has offered to remove any implants it made, but the problem in England lies with the 95 % of women, who had the operation done privately.
I’ll give an example here. Suppose I had taken my Jaguar to an approved dealer after the air-conditioning pump had failed and it had been replaced by a sub-standard import, non-approved part. If I’d have noticed this, I’d have asked the dealer to replace it with the approved part at no charge and I suspect that Jaguar would have backed up my demand.
The NHS seems to be fulfilling its similar obligations, but many private clinics seem to be washing their hands of the whole thing. Surely, to use a sub-standard part and probably charge for the kosher one is theft. I call this professional theft, where the customer is milked by a professional, who should know better.
And when the report from Professor Keogh doesn’t take a robust attitude to those of his profession, who didn’t put the best interest of the patients first and insist they replace the offending implants, some might think he is putting the doctors before the patients.
In my view these women should have their implants removed and replaced and those done outside the NHS, should be paid for by the skimping clinics and doctors involved.
Who’s Eating All The Pies?
And it would appear everything else!
Accordiung to a report on BBC Breakfast Time, a third of the obese people in the world, live in North America. But only six percent of the world’s population live there!
I think that the answer is a no brainer!
Doing Cancer Research
Was this lady doing cancer research, by having a quick cough and a drag outside Cancer Research UK?
Doing Cancer Research
I think smokers are one of the reasons why people prefer shopping malls.
Memories of Euro 2004
2004 is the only time since 1966, that I’ve been in a country that has won a major tournament. C and I were actually staying at a place called Sani at the top of the Haldikiki peninsular in Greece. It had just opened and I think C had got a very good deal through a travel magazine. It was very much worth it.
Everybody in the hotel, in addition to their own teams, were cheering on Greece and most were surprised when they won the tournament.
Perhaps one of the biggest memories of that holiday was a long walk down the coastal path for perhaps ten kilometres stopping at the various bars and hotels on the way. One turned out to be a holiday camp, that was very much a Teutonic version of Maplins from Hi de Hi! A bell would ring every twenty minutes or so for a strenuous keep fit session. Judging by the laughs from the bar we were in, the Germans found it funny too! We finally ended up in a fish restaurant on the beachside, before taking a bus home.
C was strangely uninhibited that holiday and did a lot of things she wouldn’t normally do. One was to sleep in very late in the morning, rather than get up early for her daily swim. She went down with breast cancer in October of that year from which she fully recovered. Perhaps her body was telling her something and trying to get her in the mood for the struggles to come. I will never know. The only other fsctor, was that she had just done a very harrowing child care case and perhaps she was wiping it out of her mind.
The Anonymous Widower 