It’s All Dropping Into Place
If I look at my father, he had breathing problems and I suspect so did his father as he suffered from asthma and died of pneumonia and other complications in his forties. Both were pretty heavy smokers and my grandfather was a heavy drinker too. My father used to tell stories of picking his father up late at night from various clubs in a very bad state and that’s probably why my father was a sensible drinker and why he brought me up to be the same. I never for instance ever saw my father drunk. My father’s only addiction other than his pipe, was industrial strength menthol catarrh tablets, which he consumed virtually all day, to try to get his throat clear.
As a child, I suffered similarly with my breathing and throat at times, but then we lived in a cold house, heated by electric fires, which must have made the air exceptionally dry. From about the age of eight, I had a south-facing room with big picture windows, which was very warm at times. I regularly, lost a term, usually the spring one, in my schooling. My doctor had no idea, about what was the problem, so they took my tonsils out, which was an all-purpose remedy in those days.
Things improved when I got to about twelve or so, and my parents just felt, I’d grown out of it. It could be that we were spending increasing time at Felixstowe, where my parents had bought a house to retire to, or it could be that I spent more and more time at my father’s print works in Wood Green. Who knows why? I don’t even have any medical records from that period, as my medical records restarted some time about 1969. So you can see why I’m all in favour of computerised medical records, which the patient can access when and where they want through the Internet!
I can remember my late teens very well and can’t ever remember going to the doctor or feeling unwell, especially at University in Liverpool, whilst working at Enfield Rolling Mills or in The Merryhills, or generally riding about on my bicycle.
I certainly didn’t feel ill, either in the early years of my marriage to C, either in Liverpool or in Melbourn near Cambridge. The first entry on my medical record, is a visit to the doctor in Melbourn about excessive diarrhoea, which looks like a classic glutening.
However things got a lot worse, when we moved to Shannon Place in St. John’s Wood. The flat was damp and cold and I can remember going to the doctor with lots of knee and arm pains. He recommended knee surgery, which I didn’t accept.
But then when we moved to the eleventh floor in Cromwell Tower, everything got better and in the three or four years we lived there, I never saw the doctor on my own behalf. But the flat was comfortably warm and the air was very fresh.
We then lived in Suffolk for forty years and only at odd occasions did my breathing problems come back.
That is until Celia died and I think in certain ways I reverted to my childhood habits; like wrapping myself in the bedclothes, keeping the house as warm as I could and avoiding going out. I started getting what looked like hay fever soon after C died in 2007.
Since my stroke and also since moving to London it has got a lot worse, but I’m now in a particularly airless house with little ventilation.
It might need to have heat recovery ventilation. Wikipedia says these are the benefits.
As building efficiency is improved with insulation and weather stripping, buildings are intentionally made more airtight, and consequently less well ventilated. Since all buildings require a source of fresh air, the need for HRVs has become obvious. While opening a window does provide ventilation, the building’s heat and humidity will then be lost in the winter and gained in the summer, both of which are undesirable for the indoor climate and for energy efficiency, since the building’s HVAC systems must compensate. HRV introduces fresh air to a building and improves climate control, whilst promoting efficient energy use.
Certainly, a proper system will be better than I’ve got now.
Ivy Bank
I saw this sign in Shanklin and it reminded me of the worst hotel I ever stayed in.
Ivy Bank
It was in Monmouth in Wales and my father used to tell the tale with gusto. My parents, my sister and myself, had arrived late in the afternoon in the town and as ever, my father hadn’t booked a hotel, so he went searching and found this hotel called Ivy Bank. It had an air about it like a house, where someone has just died and everybody except for the maiden aunt has moved out. I can’t remember who slept where, but I can remember going down for breakfast and we sat like dummies waiting for the other guests or some staff to turn up. In the end the lady, turned up dressed like some stereotype out of films where doors creek and virgins scream. But she was carrying an enormous tray covered in every sort of food to make up the largest English or more truthfully Welsh, breakfast I’ve ever seen.
It was good and we ate well, before my father paid for the rooms and food and we left.
It later transpired that my mother hadn’t slept, as she could hear, what she thought were rats running all over the place.
Since that date, I have vowed never to set food in any house, pub, restaurant or hotel called Ivy Bank.
Not One Of My Problems!
This story about treatment for varicose veins shows how a lot of medical treatments are going to get more hi-tech. This is the first bit.
People with varicose veins should be offered laser or heat treatment, say new guidelines for England and Wales.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) says, in most cases, surgery should be a last resort.
Both my parents had bad varicose veins, with my mother’s being particularly bad. She had them operated on at the old Highlands Hospital in Winchmore Hill in the mid-1950s. The strange thing about that operation was that the surgeon was an Indian lady, who did her ward rounds in a sari. I don’t think, I actually saw the surgeon, as eleven-year-old children weren’t allowed to visit their parents in hospital in those days, but my father would recall if her surgery was as as good as her looks, then my mother would be fine.
It’s strange, but you don’t seem to see the awful varicose veins you did fifty years ago!
I certainly don’t seem to have inherited them from my parents!
Off To Broadstairs Today
In a moment, I leave for St. Pancras to get the fast train to Broadstairs, ostensibly to have lunch and a few sherbets with an old mate.
I have memories of the town, where we used to go to visit my father’s brother. I always thought that he never fathered any children, until I met one of his grandsons, who traced back to a wartime bigamous marriage. Every family has skeletons and mine has more than most.
The strangest thing now, is that when I go on a trip like this, I now make sure the house is tidy before I leave.
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.
Is There A Teetotal Gene?
Thinking about the last post about the about of fluids I’m drinking, I do wonder about the drinking habits of my family.
My father wasn’t a heavy drinker and he probably got through about four small bottles of Guinness or cans of Long Life in a week or so. There was a time, when I used to walk round to The Merryhills in Oakwood to pick it up from their off licence. But that was all stopped, when they said you had to be sixteen (?) to buy alcohol. He would probably be classed these days as a light social drinker.
I am probably that now, as I like a glass of wine or a bottle of beer with a meal. I can’t think the last time, I drunk a pint of anything.
But it hasn’t always been thus. At University, I drunk fairly heavily and I probably did too in my late teens, when I served in The Merryhills. I remember one night, I had thirteen small bottles of Guinness.
C had a similar drinking pattern, in that she got very drunk once just before I met her and probably twice or so, when we were together. She only drunk wine and the occasional whisky. Even as she was dying, she didn’t turn to the bottle, but partly because the drugs she was on had ruined her mouth.
What about my children? By twenty, none of them were drinking and only one ever drunk heavily.
So there seems to be this pattern in the male in my family, where drinking is responsible. I was also introduced to alcohol at an early age of about eight, by my father and I did the same to our children.
But where did this responsible drinking come from.
My paternal grandfather, who I never met, as he died before the Second World War, was a serious drinker and a heavy smoker. He died of pneumonia and asthma, but my father used to tell tales of picking him up at the Conservative Club every night of the week, when he was very much the worse for wear.
My father would always talk about the terrors of alcohol, with reference to his father. I suppose it hit home because I’d never met him and he had died in his forties.
There may or may not be a teetotal gene in my male line, but it’s more down to parental behaviour.
Not Getting Pregnant
It is reported today, that the Government is changing the IVF rules. But they should also change a few other things, based on my experience.
I have recently traced my family tree back to the 1820s. What is rare, is that in my father’s line, few of the women have given birth. My sister didn’t for a start.
Ten years ago, I was diagnosed as a coeliac, which showed itself in a severe lack of B12. I now moderate a list on the Internet for coeliacs and have come across several examples of female coeliacs, who have been unable to conceive, because of this lack of B12. A few were diagnosed early enough and after going on a gluten-free diet, they conceived and gave birth successfully.
Remember that coeliacs make up one in a hundred of the population. The incidence is higher in the Irish, Askenazi Jews, Italians and some from West Africa. Some have said that coeliac disease is linked genetically to sickle cell anaemia.
My Allergies and Me
I seem to be getting no relief from the hay fever at all this summer. Just as it seems the pollen level gets to a low level for a day, it then rises back up again. I had lunch with a friend yesterday and he never suffers, but he is this year. It’s a story that I’ve heard so many times in the last few months from others. No-one seems to have any idea about it either.
I don’t get any luck with it either. On Friday I was to see a consultant about it, but for administrative reasons the appointment was put back for a few days. Any sane person, would think that the Devil has it in for them, if they had suffered the last three years I have. To make matters worse, the sale of my house in Suffolk, seems to be moving slowly and Ipswich lost by seven goals to one last night. But I’m still here, which is more than can be said for my wife and youngest son.
I also had a good lunch yesterday with friends, essentially to celebrate my birthday on Tuesday. Even Ipswich contrived to lose six two that night.
I know it’s only a small thing, but I slept well last night and got up feeling fresh. So I thought, it might be a good idea to go to perhaps Brighton or Southend and get a bit of sea air. But after checking the pollen levels, I decided against it as levels were moderate in all the places I checked. And the excellent Met Office web site, says that it’ll be Tuesday before the levels get better.
So I think I’ll go and see my therapist today. I’m not sure where I’ll explore, but because it is so easy and fairly close, I think I might go to Bruce Castle Museum this afternoon.
What I will do is reflect on my life and especially this dreaded hay fever.
I will start with my ancestors. I’m certain that it’s my father’s line that has the really bad genes and has brought me the allergies. From what I know now, I’m certain that he was a coeliac like me. He certainly had more wind than the Outer Hebrides. He was always choked up with catarrh and ate menthol catarrh tablets like others eat sweets. He was also a heavy pipe smoker and that couldn’t have helped. His father had died young of pneumonia and my father had told me, that my grandfather was a heavy drinker and smoker, who suffered from asthma. My father told me graphic stories about how he would pick him up in a terrible state from places like Wood Green Conservative Club. One of the strange things about my father’s family, is that there is very few women, who have ever given birth. Could this be the coeliac gene, which doesn’t help women carrying a viable foetus to full term.
Unfortunately, I don’t have my school records, but it would make interesting reading, as I can remember taking endless time off because I just wasn’t up to it. I seemed to be coughing all the time and spent many nights with my head over a jug of Friar’s Balsam. At one time I supposedly got a case of scarlet fever. How I ever got to a Grammar School I don’t know! Luckily, we had television and I had my Meccano to amuse myself with. And that is what I did, when I was at home. Most weekends I would be off to my father’s print works, where I did useful things. To say, I was an indoor child would not be an understatement. And we worry about kids spending too much time on their computers.
So what was it that made me so ill? Unfortunately, my medical records are incomplete and start in 1970. If only they were on a central database, that I could access!
My GP, one Dr. Egerton White, thought I was allergic to eggs, and so I was rationed to one a week. Did it help? Not at all. My father thought it might be the paint in our house, which he thought contained lead and I can remember him stripping it all off and using modern lead-free paints. It could also have been his smoking or the coal fires we had in those days, but I didn’t really improve much. I suppose it might have got better, when my parents bought a house in Felixstowe, but we only went for the odd weekends. But at least I used to walk a lot by the sea.
I think in some ways, I just grew out of the worst times and what finally killed it in some ways was going to Liverpool, where I spent the next three years at the University on top of a hill with the wind in the west.
So perhaps it was just hay fever of a particularly persistent form, as from what I can remember, I don’t feel much different now. The only difference, is that now I’m on a strict gluten-free diet after having been diagnosed as a coeliac ten years ago. That cured a lot of my problems, like chronic dandruff.
All of my levels like B12 are spot on, so it’s not as if I lack anything.
Since C died, I’ve started to get a few problems, like tight shins, difficulty in breathing and spots on my chest, back and legs. I scratch them a lot, when I’m alone.
I have been told on good authority by an academic I respect, that widows can suffer high cortisol levels and the Internet indicates there may be a link.
So has all the stress I’ve suffered in the previous three years, brought the hay fever back?
I sometimes think, that my mind learned how to control it and the stroke knocked out that knowledge, but that is just a feeling not based on any fact. I have been told by a serious doctor, that stroke patients sometimes have pain return from previous injuries. He did find problems in my neck, which are improving through physiotherapy.
An Objective in Life!
Last night, I was writing to a friend about the pubs near to my new house. I said the following.
My local is just four doors away, but it needs educating. All it serves is crap upside-down lager and chemical cider. But there are a few Adnams pubs within a few minutes walk. And most Adnams pubs serve the best cider in the world, Aspall, which has been crafted in Suffolk since 1728.
Perhaps my first objective in life is to celebrate their tri-centenary. I’ll only be 81!
I used to worry that because my father and his father died so young, that I might suffer the same fate. But now I’m more optimistic, especially as I’e found out that most of my grandfather’s brothers and my mother and both grandmothers, lived either well into their eighth decade or even into their ninth.
So perhaps, it’s an objective I stand a chance of fulfilling. I’m certainly going to give it a good shot!
Mixed Messages on Cancer
A new and authoritative report says that eating five portions of vegetables a day does not protect you from cancer, as much as was thought.
Eating more fruit and vegetables has only a modest effect on protecting against cancer, a study into the link between diet and disease has found.
The study of 500,000 Europeans joins a growing body of evidence undermining the high hopes that pushing “five-a-day” might slash Western cancer rates.
The international team of researchers estimates only around 2.5% of cancers could be averted by increasing intake.
It two and a half percent benefit is worth having, but it’s not great.
Now what is interesting in these findings is that some research has shown that diagnosed coeliacs have a lower risk of cancer than normal. It could be argued that this was due to the fact that coeliacs tend to eat well and generally eat lots of unprocessed meat, fish, fruit and vegetables.
But perhaps we should all adhere to the last two paragraphs of the article.
Yinka Ebo of Cancer Research UK said: “It’s still a good idea to eat your five-a-day but remember that fruits and vegetables are pieces in a much larger lifestyle jigsaw.
“There are many things we can do to lower our chances of developing cancer such as not smoking, keeping a healthy weight, cutting down on alcohol, eating a healthy balanced diet, being physically active and staying safe in the sun.”
I do all of those things. They also supposedly protect you from strokes.
I blame the genes. After all my father and grandfather died before their time and my wife and son both died from cancer at early ages.
The Anonymous Widower 