Life in the straightjacket

Nelson

Why is it that when I feed Misty in the morning he is always hungry again 10 minutes later when Nelson arrives for his food? I fed Nelson in a different room this morning and gave Misty his second meal of the day at the same time. A few minutes later Misty's dish is empty and he is now polishing off Nelson's as well, Nelson having retreated under the table and looking longingly at his rapidly disappearing breakfast.

Seeing as this happens almost every day and at both meal times can anyone tell me why Misty is half Nelson's size?

I saw a locum consultant last week, my brilliant Arthritis one having returned to the country of his birth and a research post. Damn, I knew he was good. Seven months after my last appointment I had my 'early' review, with a stand in doctor at a different hospital 40 miles from home. Such a nice man I had been told, a real gentleman. Well he did stand up when I entered the room and he shook my hand but.... what a load of old cobblers.

He announced he was a retired consultant from Scotland, helping out, before asking me why I was there. I haven't had time to read your notes much. He certainly hadn't read the 5 page later the last chap wrote and had copied to me with his 'plan of action' regarding tests and treatment.

It's not worth the bother of relating much about this poor consultation for consultation read diatribe for the doctor about why I should weight. He gave me a cursory examination, apparently could find no evidence of psoriasis or indeed anything much and suggested he do a raft of the same tests the previous chap had ordered in December, just to check. Carry on taking the tablets. I asked about my skin problems, "I can't see any," he said from 6 feet away, "we'd have to refer you to a skin person,"

"For Psoriasis? That's why I am here, "

"Well I don't do skin."

I glumly asked him how long before I could get any treatment, "Well we could put you on a trial but I don't think it's worth it."

Not worth it when I have been like this for 9 months and am getting worse by the week. I burst into tears and sat back. Something about his God like manner and the demeaning way in which he spoke to me made me give up in an instant. I just wanted to be out of that room and I was angry that after being told last year and even having had it confirmed in writing that in the opinion of the last consultant no-one was looking at the whole picture and from the evidence he had found in my notes I had had psoriasis ignored since 1966 no less, yet again I was going away demoralised and with no hope of relief.

Thankfully I had taken WH with me. Usually I go to ALL his appointments, he rarely attends mine. WH began to get annoyed and questioned why I needed to go through the whole lot again after the last round when a treatment had been proposed but no one had wanted to prescribe it after the previous bloke left. "I am not he, was the reply I need to do these things for myself." WH asked him if he would be here in a month's time to review the results then. Er..... NO. He was only a stand in. WH told him the effect of the PA on me (and him) said I could lose weight if I could actually move a bit after all I had lost 40 pounds on my Lyme treatment. The eyebrows raised and he visibly shifted in his seat. I know that disbelieving look. WH told him every time I did lose weight I was put back on medication whose chief side effect is weight gain. I was fighting a losing battle. Why could I not start the original proposed treatment for a trial period and see if it helped. Eventually the chap agreed, I think mainly to get rid of an increasingly irate WH and a tearful me. Then he couldn't get us out of the room fast enough albeit clutching a note to the GP to prescribe and a note for a blood test.

I duly started methotrexate again on Saturday. I was not given the treatment card I had to carry last time and there was no mention of the weekly or fortnightly blood test I was supposed to be getting to monitor my liver. I made an appointment for myself and another to see my GP, the earliest of which was 20th July. Today I realise that the instructions on the bottle of pills are different from what he had written on the GP note and had told me verbally. I will have to check with the pharmacy (whilst I also check the dose of WH's meds which he suddenly discovered is double the usual strength, but that's a whole other story.)

I had a follow up appointment in the post on Saturday; this time another new doctor but at the same distant hospital in 3 months time. That looks like a good start anyway. Yesterday I felt a burning sensation on my scalp which was driving me nuts. I asked WH to investigate, after all you can't see the top of your own head. 2 seconds later he announced massive psoriasis spots all over. Funny that, 3 days before there was no sign whatsoever when the locum looked. He did shake my hand again when I left, what a gentleman.

Outside my window is a large bird-cherry tree. It's actually in my neighbour's garden but right now it's full of ripening cherries and a family of four baby blackbirds with their long suffering parents. The babies fledged last week after two days of the parent birds feeding them with cat food which I had put out in a bowl on the patio. Each time the dish emptied (helped along by our own grey twins) Father bird tapped the bowl so we would go out and refill it.

The current antics start about 6am just as the day is starting to warm up and few shafts of sunlight bathe the branches. The fluffy babies fly in awkwardly crash landing on the bendy branches knocking cherries to the floor, or more correctly onto my front driveway. Then the squawking starts. The babies peck anything, branch, leaves, twigs and the occasional cherry. They haven't quite yet got the hang of retrieving a whole fruit and time and time again their intended breakfast slips to the ground. The more they lose, the more they squawk until finally an anguished parent hops in and deftly pokes a whole cherry into the gaping beak. Sometimes baby doesn't know what to do with this, should he swallow it or not? Eyes bulging they finally gulp the cherry down. Then a sibling starts up, he wants one as well and the poor parents hop from branch to branch, clucking and whistling at their offspring and stuffing them full of the ripe fruit.

These babies are almost twice the size of the parents and sit uneasily on the branches and gingerly move along the stems in search of the fruit. They lose their balance and sometimes their grip, at times sliding down until a flapping, flurry of wings renders them airborne and they find another branch to start the whole thing again.

Later, tired and full of fruit the babies doze amongst the branches and drunk looking heads with rolling eyes peep out from between the leaves. The parent birds use this time to feed themselves and leave the tree for an unhindered trip round the district or for a bit of worm digging on the lawn. Finally they've had enough too and a loudly clucking chivvies up the fat little babies and they are shepherded back to their nest in the eucalyptus tree opposite for a long rest until they get hungry again.

Our holiday seems a lifetime away, almost 3 weeks since we returned now. This last weekend we were away in Southampton and visited the Hillier Gardens at Romsey. So many trees and so little energy to walk round them all. I did get a few photos of some of the stranger ones though.

Tomorrow I see my new (yet again) consultant. The lovely chap I saw in December has apparently left and I'm seeing a locum once again. I just hope he decides to go with the other chaps plan of action or else I'll be having another boat load of tests again. I just want to start some proper treatment, after all I've been waiting 7 months over which time I have put on weight after the steroid trial, have begun to seize up and and now can't walk very well. Additionally the excruciating skin itch is back with a vengeance. What started as a minor irritation when I was bitten on holiday has developed into a large red, raised patch on my arm which itches intensely. It wakes me up it's so bad. Surely a sign of galloping psoriasis if ever I saw one. Fingers crossed that matey tomorrow agrees and finally does something about it. Nothing I have tried works at all. I can't believe that last year I was so well (and so thin - for me anyway) and now I am almost back to square one, just the Lyme symptoms are still thankfully absent.

The last few weeks I have done what I can to help with Mother in Law, saw the death of a very old friend whom I shall miss intensely and provided bacon sandwiches and tea on tap to the other friend who is helping WH to build our porch. At least at home normality rules, it still looks like a building site!

We're back, we're brown and quite chilled out, already missing long lazy days by the sea, frappe in hand.

I see the political climate hasn't improved during our holiday, in fact it seems to be worse, TV news seems sadly all too similar to what it was almost 4 weeks ago.

This however sums it up for me:

Aging rockers they may be and the lip sync is crap but the words are brilliant. Watch it and weep.

It has been a frantic week mostly spent dealing with an elderly woman who is determined to starve herself to death. She neither wants to eat nor drink nor let anyone help her. It is sad. After discharge from hospital last week things got worse. Today it all came to a head and finally a patient, kind district nurse with the temperament and voice of a sergeant major finally got our lady moving again and mobilised the troops so from tomorrow the long suffering family will not have to cope alone. My sister in law is beyond words, barely able to speak after daily, in fact hourly battles of wills, unable to fathom how someone could let themself go in this manner. Serious illness has been ruled out. A perverse desire to be supremely awkward is the consistent diagnosis.

Meanwhile I have taken refuge in my genealogy, odd moments at the ends of the days where I can think about something else. I was researching some Romany family. Well what a surprise that turned out to be and no picnic either. It seems amid the depths of the message boards and history web sites, dark forces are lurking and nasty comments and messages lead to massive fallings-out, board wars and worse. Some sites have all but closed. People I thought were friendly are revealed in their full-blown nastiness. I can't believe the things that were said about squabbles several years old and obviously involving people who know each other away from the internet. I am sad, disillusioned and disheartened and began to wonder if it was all worth it. I had some of my work plagiarised in the past, in one instance several years ago a whole family tree I passed to someone for their perusal suddenly turned up all over the net. A couple of more recent things have turned up too but nothing on such a scale as then. Discussing this recently in general on a website I was astounded to be almost hounded to say who had done it. It seemed my interrogator had a guilty conscience but I desisted from getting involved. This then followed me to another website where I had seen none of the embattled for days and was gaily chatting about something completely different. Those who did get involved were followed all over the net by individuals who feel that they have an axe to grind and a point to make but their logic and grammar is so hard to follow, no-one can really tell what it's all about. I don't care, it was the principal that was at stake and in future I won't be sharing anything.

So genealogy hasn't given me any respite at all. One thing that will however begins tomorrow, we finally return to Greece and our lovely Kalamos. The weather there is 30 degrees and sun is forecast for weeks. I'll think of you on the beach on Wednesday. See you in June.

Mother in law is in hospital, admitted over a week ago for a blood pressure reading so much off the scale that the first doctor thought his machine had broken, we had really taken her in to have a suspcted fracture investigated. 4 days later a fracture in a bone in the wrist was reported along with the statement that they 'wouldn't be doing anything with it as it appears not to hurt her'. Meanwhile we waited 6 days for a 24hr heart monitor which we were told on admission would be required. On Saturday came the news that the heart test was fine but they couldn't do any other tests now because of the Bank Holiday, the doctor would probably order some more on his return on Tuesday. If pat experience tels us anything then it will be Friday before these tests are carried out. By then MIL will have been 'in' 2 whole weeks. No wonder they are short of beds. The whole NHS process grinds slowly on with no sense of urgency or even regard for the patient's well being. We have ben concerned about her lack of eating and drinking. No-one encourages her to do either outside of the family who have devised a rota to ensure there is someone present at the evening meal time. the main meal of that day is at lunchtime and visiting is not allowed. Daily she reports she 'ate nothing/ didn't like it/couldn't be bothered' or even on a couple of occassions 'didn't get any pudding/they forgot me/I didn't have a fork'. Add this catalogue to the day I discovered a jug of water out of arm's reach and no glass no wonder this lady is losing weight and de-hydrated.

A request to the ward sister to monitor her eating and drinking as we felt this to be a problem resulted in a lovely record sheet being pinned to the bottom of the bed first thing in the morning. There were columns for description of food/drink, amount given, amount eaten and overall comments. Trouble is at 5pm the whole sheet was blank, no one had bothered to use it.

If the NHS were school project the marks would be as follows:

OK, I joke but this is an elderly lady's life at stake here and from where I sit no one is very interested at all.