When Things Go Wrong

 This post is an example of " everything went wrong that could have gone wrong".

Yesterday, at work , I recalled the story of Sue a patient who needed and received some excellent nursing care from a curly haired, potty mouthed and naturally funny staff nurse called Ruth, who I have been dear friends with for over 35 years.
The story, had a somewhat sad ending for after four months or so on the rehab ward, Sue suddenly suffered a major physical complication and died unexpectedly on intensive care . She was only 26 years old.
We had become very close with Sue during her admission, and so it was natural for us to want to attend her funeral, which was across the Pennines in her home city of Manchester, and so early on the morning of the service three spinal injury nurses and three spinal injury patients left Sheffield in two cars to show their support.
Now Ruth and I travelled in one car and with us was a young man called Nick who had been paralysed from the waist down in a car accident and Marie, a young woman injured from the neck down following a fall. Both were wheelchair bound and both had developed a special bond with Sue during their admission.
The other car was driven by a nurse called Paula and with her was another patient called Pete, who was able to walk very shakily on two sticks.
Things didn't bode well after we stopped at traffic lights in rural Derbyshire  for as Ruth muttered her signature oath of " Hell's Teeth!"  her car stalled and refused to start. It was only then when I realised that we were totally responsible for three patients, each one with their own individual care needs.
It was a sobering thought.
Anyhow we eventually arrived at Sue's family home in a back street of Manchester just as the hearse left for the Church, then everything went tits up.

• Ruth's car finally died, leaving us stranded with no knowledge of where we were going
• Ruth started to flag down passing cars in a desperate effort to elicit help as Paula and I managed to lift Nick and Marie into her car so that at least we could get them to the service
• Ruth then incredibly stopped a cheerful plumber called Mick who agreed to transport me, her and the patients' wheelchairs across the city as a favour. Never was a stranger so helpful
• After getting to the Church we unloaded both van and car, set the patients up in their chairs then bolted to the service which was just finishing. By this time Ruth was literally inconsolable 
• The " wake" we were then told was located in a working men's club back across the city and Sue's family insisted that we all attend, so after organising more spaces in more stranger's cars we eventually arrived fraught, sweaty, and extremely stressed at one of the grottiest  council estate clubs I have ever seen.
• Then everything REALLY took a turn for the worse. 
• As we were setting up the wheelchairs ( brought for us by a couple of pensioners driving a nissan micra), Marie suddenly complained of a pounding headache. She looked flushed and unwell and couldn't quite focus  and we all suddenly knew that she was suffering from autonomic dysreflexia, a condition that is a medical emergency in high spinal cord injury patients. The condition can occur when a urinary catheter is blocked and if the cause is not rectified patients can have a pathological rise in blood pressure which can effectively kill them. The only treatment is to immediately change the patient's catheter.
• " Get her into the club" Ruth yelled and between three of us , we lifted Marie out of the car and raced THROUGH the wake where a few hundred people were drinking beer  and eating sandwiches) 
• Luckily a white faced club official saw us coming and pointed to the " ladies snug" which was deserted and on an unused billiard table  , Ruth and Paula managed to change the blocked catheter which immediately reversed Marie's symptoms. 
• While we were busy, several red faced drinkers had helped Nick and Pete into the club and were plying them with bottles of beer. This was just after 1pm
• By seven pm, the AA had got Ruth's car started and we were on our way home. Nick and Pete were much the worse for wear and Ruth was beside herself with the stress. " I'm going to get sooo drunk tonight " she promised as we eventually got back to the spinal injury unit and after having to explain ourselves to the matron for our late return, she did exactly that, after talking a bottle of rum from another friendly rehabing patient!

The last thing I remembered of the evening was when I opened the taxi door  outside Ruth's house in

the wee small hours and she fell out onto the road drunk as a skunk. " HELL's TEETH" she slurred cheerfully "'I think I've just broken me finger.........hey ho" ......and I am afraid to say that she indeed had...but it wasn't diagnosed until the following afternoon....

Now you all know where " hey ho" comes from!

Bun

 Night shifts are like black holes, they engulf everything . 

I’m reading before I go to bed. The day is damp and cold and murky and the fire is uncharacteristically lit and has been since 10 am.

I have Ramen noodle broth for tea.

It’s quiet 

Wet days dampen the sounds from outside.

Bun is a gentle soul. She’s affectionate and calm and already motherly despite her young age .

She’s warm too, and has stationed herself behind my neck, claws sheathed and eyes wide open .

Her expression is benign. 

Whereas her sister Weaver is almost paralysed with uncertainty, Bun has conviction and a sense of character. 

Gladiator II

 

Said simply, Gladiator II is the movie Ridley Scott would have liked to have made twenty four years ago, if CGI would have been cheaper. 

It’s more or less a remake of the original but set 18 years in the future when Maximus’ son Lucius ( by Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla ) is a grown man. Hidden in Namibia, Lucius ( Paul Mescal) is taken prisoner by a tatty haired General ( Pedro Pascal) and conscripted into gladiator school where he finds out his history and decides to become his father’s son.

Unlike the original this version bounces along at a cracking rate. The set pieces are impressive, the baddie ( an ever smiling Denzel Washington ) is fit for purpose and Mescal makes for a handsome and more charming Russel Crowe character in the lead role.

Alas impressive as he is , Crowe had a on screen masculinity and a certain beauty in his original role of Maximus that Mescal lacks, and sex on legs Pedro Pascal is underused too, and looks more of a bomb site than I can after working night shifts. (Didn’t the Romans invent hair brushes?)

The film pays homage to the original’s mighty score by Hans Zimmer and to the vocals by Lisa Gerrard

But it’s still the film Ridley Scott would have made in 2000 but couldn’t.

Nuff Said

 

Blitz

Blitz is Steve McQueen’s homage to wartime Black culture and he has produced a meticulously recreated WW2 nightmare of a simple Lassie Come Home ish boytime adventure piece, crossed with something that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Dickens novel .

The story isn’t complicated.

Saoirse Ronan is Rita, a warm hearted mum of mixed race eight year old George ( a plucky Eliot Heffernan) They live in London’s east end with grandad ( Paul Weller) until George is evacuated . 

and it is here that the boy’s own adventure story starts when the boy jumps his train and in an effort to find his way home, fights his way through one of the worst blitz raids of the war.

Even in let’s-pull-together wartime Britain McQueen shows London as a racist melting pot, where white officialdom and villainy conspire to prevent George’s reunion with his family. And where the main hero is  kindly Nigerian Ife ( Benjamin Clementine ) who suddenly becomes George’s surrogate air warden father figure. He has the heart of McQueen’s drama, and shines in one pivotal scene when , in front of the admiring George he sorts out a nasty racist incident in a crowded shelter with incredible emotional dignity.

 

In a matter of a day or two George is kidnapped by  a looting gang headed by a grotesque looking Kathy Burke. Is trapped, 1970s disaster film style , in a flooded underground station and is nearly killed in the flaming dockyards near Tower Bridge as his poor mother waits at home with bated breath .

The amazing Kathy Burke

Like I said it a simple tale, told well. I loved it

Life on a Winter Wednesday

 Lazy day today.

Long hot shower where I scrubbed everything that needed scrubbing. 

Clean clothes

Clinique Happy

Coffee and paperwork in the Storyhouse library 

Followed by a film The Blitz

The library has some lovely original features mashed together with modern design

The ceiling above my head

I was quoted in the Trelawnyd Community Association newsletter yesterday too

What fun

lol

Forgive the coffee stains , as usual I had a major dribbling moment down my front .

I’ve just got time to update you all,on Bun & Weaver

Weaver, is a funny little soul. She’s quiet and aloof and just keeps herself away from me and the dogs and life it would seem. Perhaps she’s just self contained , 

Perhaps not. 

She’s happiest with her sister and sits for long periods watching the ponies in their field.

Bun however has suddenly become affectionate and loving, cuddling up,to me on the couch when Mary is absent and falling asleep on my hip when im in bed.

EOL

 The hospice acronym for someone who is actively dying is EOL 

END OF LIFE

It signifies that the full force of hospice care is in progress 

I’m listening with interest, discussions around the Assisted Dying Bill which will debated in Parliament on the 29th of November. 

The bill, in its many forms is presently working in parts of Australia, Canada, The Netherlands and  Spain and the British legislation will be little different as the patient involved has to be actively dying within a sixth month period, a time limit which may cause disagreement between the two doctor referees. 

In my view a number of patients who want the  chance of self determination will essentially not be given it. The MND patients, the  MS and the head and Spinally injured. 

Many of these conditions are not life limiting of six months and therefore will not qualify.

I remember my brother who had motor neurone disease reviewing his chances of dignitas

It was all too much for him

It overfaces many.

Good EOL and palliative care should be a priority 

Everyone should have access to hospice care

And hospices should be financially supported to take all appropriate referral's

Assisted dying , if it arrives will help a few

But it will fail many others who want it but don’t qualify its strict criteria. 

I am saddened by their losses.

 

Home Front

I know I had a great uncle who served in Burma during the war. 

I forget his name , but he was a good looking man with a killer moustache.

I think he survived the war,

My father was an airman in the RAF and navigated Lancasters. 

I’m still not sure if his war record

My family , from their own oral histories, fought the war more on the home front.

My Grandmother , mother and Uncle Jim were bombed out of their house on Louisa Street, Everton in the Blitz and were sheltering under an upturned sofa as the windows blew in and an unexplored flying torpedo lodged itself under the kitchen floor. 

During the May Blitz my great grandfather was killed when their family shelter took a direct hit. A shelter my Grandmother and Mother was running for before the bombs proceeded them.

During all of this horrendous time my Grandfather was a fireman in the Auxiliary Fire Service, who spent days and days fighting the fires in dockland Liverpool.

You can understand just why my family moved to the quiet and prejudice of North Wales.

Tonight I was late for work. Bun was up the bookcase waving paws at Roger who was fed up with the excitement. Suddenly a black shape the side on an envelope fell from the shelves onto the floor 

It was my Grandfather’s Fire Badge which he saved from his wartime uniform nearly 80 years ago. It is the only physical memory I have of my Grandfather

Funny how it turned up today,

 

Christmas

 I have from the 21st of December to the 28th off.

This is unheard of to have all of Christmas off work.

A modern day miracle. 

When I was a ward manager invariably I would do the late shift on Christmas Day

But then extra shifts would creep in, holes would appear to be plugged and before you knew it, I might have Boxing Day off after working Christmas Eve and Christmas night .

Last year I did a long day Christmas Day and said rather vociferously that that was it, no more Christmas Shifts for me.

7 days over Christmas how wonderful

My octernagerian counsellor , in her sing song voice asked me what I had planned. 

My supervisor promptly gave her opinion that I enjoy it with people,

So far I am spending Christmas Day with family 

So the first time in years I have a dilemma 

What am I going to do the rest of the time?

You sound like a fucked up 63 year old gay Bridget Jones! 

Was one of my friend’s responses when I asked him,

So I brought this helpful comment up at my counselling session 

Who is Bridget Jones?  she asked 

 A Neurotic weight obsessed unlucky in love 30 something I explained 

My counsellor kept quiet.

So what am I going to do over Christmas ? When the love lorned swap jumpers with holes in them?

Answers on a postcard please 

Burrito

The clay family regard the kitchen with disdain

It’s a mess

I’m sat contemplating what to do about it,

Hiding behind my blog….at the kitchen table

Since the twins arrived the cottage resembles a war zone

I saw my friend Polly for brunch

She was a doctor at the hospice and we see each other every few months for a chat and a catch up

She is bright and intelligent and warm.

We ate a dry brunch fry up at Bryn Williams whch needed some sauce to it, like it always does but still I said nothing to the waiter.

It suddenly felt like Christmas , after she had gone and I walked the dogs down Colwyn Bay Promenade like people do so much on Boxing Day. 

Diverting from the talk in hand I’ve been stalking one of the lisping choir members , he’s a delightfully animated  character ( see  1.58 into the video)

I’ve been wasting time watching his hips roll, he looks a Happy soul

Ok the washing up needs doing!!!!

My clay family frown at my frivolity and they glare

I stop stalking Geraldo and contemplate the cat nip stuffed toy my sister ann gave the twins only yesterday.

It lies in at least 14 tufts on the kitchen floor.

Geraldo rolls his hands and sings lustily about a Spanish donkey in my mind

But alas, the cottage needs a clean 

Hey ho

 

Oil over water

 I’m a sucker for a kind word.

They go a long way with people and oil the choppy waters of everyday life.

They cost nothing either.

I had a discussion about examining the motivations in people with my supervisor yesterday.

And the conclusion stood

Some people can be nasty arseholes at times

Period

Others can have motivations so hidden and ingrained that a wizard couldn’t unearth them 

People are complex and chaotic 

Seldom are we linear

 

Frame of Reference

 In supervision I am always being reminded to see things from my clients frame of reference, ie from their unique perspective. 

It’s a hard skill to develop and to learn as we all analyse and unpick people on the hoof so to speak. I’m trying to view Trump’s apparent victory from the American voters point of view.

Most want more money in their pay checks, cheaper prices in the shops and a life free of the anxiety of illegal migration 

Not that much different to the aspirations of the voters in the UK Brexit vote of 2016 me thinks.

I’m sad that Trump got in again. 

He’s a liar, and a buffoon. 

And America wanted you

Sing For Water - Ise Oluwa.mov

Five years ago exactly I was going through the worst time of my divorce life

And five years ago I had joined a choir 

This song was one we were being taught my Jamie and his 1940s RAF moustache 

And the choir couldn’t quite catch the power or the harmony

So Jamie told us to sing it one last time , in the cold village hall in Gwaenysgor , and as we did  

He turned the lights off in the hall

Devoid of self consciousness, our choir sang beautifully 

And when the lights flickered on most of the choir was crying 

I will always remember that moment  as it pulled me through the worst time in my life 

And it’s a time that should be celebrated like Christmas 

Trelawnyd @ Night

 

I have slept most of the day 

The virus’ worst day 

I took the Welsh out for a proper walk late on

It was well after 9 pm 

This never happens now.

But they needed the outing.

Every house I knew had a light on, curtains drawn  . Mrs Trellis the only exception, as she was playing her piano at the window, her tongue out of the side of her mouth in concentration .

The Randa’s cottage had flowers in the windows as always and the Hoose’s, Smith’s, Richard’s, Ackroyds, ,Velvet voiced Linda’s cottages were little pools of colour and light in the dark and the cold . 

I saw no living person , not one apart from Trellis 

But I felt their lives behind glowing windows and solar light in the garden. 

Even the pub looked quiet and closing and no one except me and Mary ( Roger typically missed it) saw a large vixen totter up High Street , her head held high 

We walked home and the Turpin house and Margaret’s bungalow on London Road looked cheerful, and welcoming as did the the little semicircle of houses on Rhodfa Arthur. 

Someone has hung solar fairy lights around the lytchgate of the Church 

( Islwyn?) 

And the walk home was gently illuminated by Christmas lights 

How sweet

Anger

 

King Filipe and Queen Letizia were pelted with mud by some of the frustrated and angry residents of Valencia today. I was saddened by the footage today, saddened for the people and saddened for the royal family, whose intentions were sincere.

As a nurse, and now a trainee therapist, I’ve always known that anger, is the easiest emotion to mobilise when things goes tits up

It’s the most irrational emotional  and hardest to deal with, and from what I could tell Filipe and Letizia did their very best against incredible odds. 

I remember as a staff nurse on intensive care being wing man to a consultant who was giving bad news to a family. I remember so clearly the Blind fury of the father as he raised his fist to strike the doctor as I stood between them and “ shushed” him as a mother would do to crying child. 

The shushing worked, it diffused the anger, but not the pain

Thank goodness 

I’m still feeling rough, and I write this in bed, with the kittens purring like aircraft 

Mac n Cheese

 The virus is worse today, apparantly that’s how it’s presenting itself

I had a lemsip and filled up at the Spanish reaction to the flooding.

Mostly young people

A credit to their country.

I was going to have Yorkshire puddings filled with Mac’n cheese for lunch but Roger ate them in the back of Bluebell.

I’ve lost my appetite

And lost it even more when I caught these two with their heads in the macaroni cheese

 

 

Kid, You’re On Your Own!

 I’ve got that virus that comes back with a vengeance . Several of the older members of the hospice have it and this morning we were comparing health notes like old ladies do at a bus stop.

If you are a singleton and poorly, you only have your dogs to lick your feet better. Ok Diane the  support worker I worked with last night, who has a heart the size of a fridge, gave me her curry supper to eat as well as furnishing me with copious amounts of sweet tea, but generally kid , you’re on your own.

Hence the lucozade. 

Now when I was a child, Lucozade was classed as a medical drink. A gloriously golden sweet fizzy drink wrapped up in yellow selophane, that could only be bought at the chemists. 

It was expensive

It was wonderful and it was a treat.

Your mother really loved you when she bought you a bottle, and you had to drink it quick sticks before anyone well got there nasty little mits on it.

It was the ambrosia of the 1970s

So I bought myself a bottle today

From Tescos

There was a whole section filled with lucozade

Lucozade light, lucozade sport, lucozade high energy

All in common plastic bottles

No cellophane

No tradition.

I bought a bottle of lucozade original

And drank it in the car park

I could have wept

Ok I got a sense of the real taste of childhood

But the drink was just a fizz

A shadow of its former self

And no panacea to a snotty, painful head.

 

Videos

 The lisping choir was quiet for this piece and I remember how gentle the Metropolitan Orchestra was.

Tik tok made the following video without me hardly doing anything , how scary is AI .

I will leave it to your imagination why the third video popped up

I’ve seen clients today then went to bed.just getting up for a night shift

Falling Asleep at the cinema

 

The Room Next Door is my kind of film . 

Typically lush and heavy with its colours andwith a heavy orchestral score this quiet melodrama about euthanasia on the surface is more Almodòvar than Almodòvar .

I went to Chester Picturehouse to see it. With its plush seats and warm interiors, I sat my coffee down on my little armrest, and took,in the first arty meeting between old friends Tilda Swindon and Julianne Moore  before falling fast asleep with , what I was presuming to be a snore that could out do the average warthog

.

I knew nothing except Tilda was found dead in full battle makeup and Moore was being all soft spoken to the police. 

The credits- the end.

I was mortified 

Not for me but for the half dozen other patrons who would have had to coped with an hours plus of my night noises. 

At the end of the credits. I apologised to a couple two seats behind, who gallantly waved me away with a smile

Perhaps it was the seats, perhaps I need that blood test to check just why I’m so tired, or perhaps  my psychi just doesn’t want to deal with another story of preparation for death and a story of the dying

Who knows.? 

Answers on a postcard please

Emilia Pèrez

 I need a deep breath to explain this one.

Ok, here goes….French director Jacques Audiard has directed a Spanish language Almodóvar-esque musical about the violent drug cartel in urban Mexico.

Violent killer drug Barron Manitas has to disappear, so stages his own death and pays a bright lawyer Rita ( Zoe Saldana ) to spirit his trashy wife Jessi (Selina Gomez) and his children to Switzerland. In the meantime Manitas is transformed into Emilia at a Swiss clinic and after years transforming re enters Mexican society as Manitas sister ( The extraordinary Karla Sofia Gascon)

Are you still with me?  

Now Rita reenters the story by bringing the clueless  Jessi and her boys to live with their aunt back in Mexico and the story complicates even more by Jessie’s new relationship ,Rita and Emilia’s new found work locating the remains of thousands of drug crime victims in Mexico and the tender new relationship between Emilia and poor housewife Epifania ( Adriana Paz)

Bloody Hell

gascon as Emilia

Audiard ( a non Spanish speaker ) adds to the melodrama by some wonderfully bonkers musical set pieces and trans actress Gascon totally steals the show as the throaty, suddenly big hearted and transformed Emilia, Statuesque, Broad shouldered, sexy and at times an incredibly vulnerable former killer she dominates every scene

It’s bonkers , but I loved it