Plans

 My GP was thorough and respectful. He had also done his homework and asked me outright if I was concerned that my arm weakness was related to a motor Neurone Cause. Somewhere in my notes must have been documented with the fact that my brother Andrew had died from the disease.

He told me that it was unlikely.

Another batch of tests and referrals were made, as I sat there and he told me that he wanted me to rest, and signed me off work for two weeks . 

Mentally I have already filled the time constructively, with paperwork, books and sleep

The morning shot by. 

I walked the dogs, picked up a prescription , saw my sisters and had supervision

The afternoon shot by

I bought a steak from Marks & Spencers as a treat, and lit the fire just before 5pm 

I feel better because I have a plan of action. I always teach worried patients and their families this simple initiative. 

Find out the facts and formulate a plan

This processes the problem from problem to solution 

It’s a simple and effective way of reducing stress

I can’t brush my teeth with my right hand without moving my head my muscle weakness is fickle and irritatingly particular.

The Kindness of Strangers

 It won’t surprise you that I’ve been a bit stressed and sad recently

But I have been buoyed by kindnesses, messages and emails and concern which is touching

Today a watercolour of Winnie was delivered

I was just leaving the house to go for a diabetic eye test ( harrumph) 

And it truly made my day

Thank you Donna

Thank you all

La verbena de la Paloma / Preludio - Grupo Talía

No lisping choir in this charming piece by the Metropolitan Orchestra called La Verbena de La Palo

If I look hard in the audience I can almost see myself  to the left of the delightful Silvia Sanz Torres.

Little to report today. The weather has changed and it feels cold again.

I’m seeing the doctor on Wednesday  and let him make the call if I am fit enough for work. A consultant from the hospital chased me up also, which was reassuring and right, she was happier that I will get reviewed by my own doctor and bless her, apologised for my bad experience in A&E. 

I had a letter from college today too, outlying when our graduation will take place and where to get my cap and gown…..Im gutted as my graduation day is the day I go and see the lisping Choir in Madrid

So I won’t be seen getting my certificate ! Janet and Ann had planned to come too

Heyho

I will contact the hire company and will see if I can get another chance to at least get photographed in my college colours……im vain enough to make every photo into Christmas Cards

Wonderful

 I posted a link to this video the other night, but here is the video

It’s a pure delight and lightens the mood wonderfully

Affable Despot Jason said today it reminded him of my field when his girls were little .

I loved that

Hey ho

 Well, what a palava,

As a spinal Nurse I know my neurology, so I knew I had a deficit in my right arm. I had trouble raising it against resistance. After a talk to fellow ex nurse and calming influence Nigel, I went to A&E.

I’ve never been a patient in casualty before.

I hope I’m never there again.

As soon as I arrived a confused elderly lady in a hospital gown, net knickers and a plaster cast tried and succeeded to get out of her hospital wheelchair. She was alone and unsupervised, and would have fallen if I hadn’t intervened. I got her sat down and went to find a nurse. 

The nurse said nothing but did move her into the emergency room proper.

I sat down, next to two patients and their families. One was a 93 year old lady who had been in the department 24 hours. Another was a confused elderly man with his harassed wife. They had been in the department since 7 pm the day before.

This was 1 pm

I settled down with a game on my phone.

The confused man kept trying to poke a lady in front with his walking stick, so I engaged him in conversation, he told me he used to breed Bull mastiffs and this introduction cemented us together for the next nine hours where I helped supervise him, toilet him and allowed his wife to stand outside to stop herself from screaming.

I have seldom seen so many vulnerable people in one place before and it was an eye opener

The system is on its knees.

The staff were efficient , my doctor quite lovely, and very apologetic when I challenged the fact my consultation wasn’t confidential as another patient had been sat in the room, but the department looked and felt like a war zone rather than a semi rural Welsh district hospital.

I was called in for head CT whilst my band of brothers in the waiting room held crossed fingers up and waved. They were both waiting for a medical bed when I left the department at nine pm.

My CT was clear, and my bloods were taken.

The doctor still had no idea what the cause of my weakness was so wanted to admit me. I looked at the support worker, who looked tired but valiant at reception, and said what are the chances of a bed on a Saturday night? 

She nodded sadly

So I took my leave, nothing realistically would be done I knew that, not over the weekend, so I will refer myself back via my GP on Wednesday. At least the scan is done and It’s unlikely I’ve had a stroke?

The low point of all this? 

Apart from seeing a wonderful system stretched to breaking point ?

It was when the cheerful ward clerk popped over to me and amid the carnage of waiting patients asked “I forgot to check is Dr Burton still your next of kin?” 

Hey ho

ER

 I will blog about this tomorrow,

I’ve spent 10 hours  in A&E with a right sided neuro deficit 

What a first adventure for me

And one I don’t want to repeat

Violas

 I planted up violas on the kitchen wall at teatime yesterday watched by Roger who finds everything I do fascinating . 

I love standing by the lane because in good weather it’s a place for people to promenade 

Villagers ambling past to say hello.

I’m a sucker for occasional company 

Animal Helper Pat, well into her 80s can out walk me anyday

Islwyn with a complaint about my recycling ( don’t ask)

Great Dane Hudson looking every inch an old fellow with his mistress

Mrs Trellis , loving the spring weather

Polish Monika and her delightful French Bulldog who made a point of stucking his nose up Mary’s arse! 

And Glyn and his sing song Welsh accent praising the weather, before he sees to the sheep field.

Many and varied

I’m working nights until Monday 

 

Church

The Church as seen from my garden today

I’m not religious.

I’m agnostic I suppose but I’m a humanist by nature who believes for the most part that there is good in most of us. 

I envy the certain nature of someone who has a strong faith

It lends a particular inner peace that at times seems very simple and very serene

Perhaps things seem more black and white to them

Less ambivalent

I miss sitting in our little stone built church

It’s locked and empty now. 

Only a few years ago I used to clean it. 

I Polished the pews until they smelled of lemons and shone in the light filtering from the south facing windows

And I hoovered the red carpet until the plug was pulled from the wall.

After that I would sit 

And think and drift off from thinking into a meditative fugue

I miss that

I miss the silence, the true silence forced by two foot walls and windows of lead.

No faint buzz of traffic

No chirps of sparrows

Just silence. 

Grateful

 A day at the kitchen table.

Sorting out the record of my counselling experience 

Times,session numbers, progress made.

Lines and lines of facts and figures

Watched by my own 9 Gormley figures and Roger of course

I was reminded of a client who once showed me her gratitude diary 

It was homework given to her by the mental health team 

And it was empty

She had nothing to fill the pages with

I wrote my own in my head today as I listed my clients and their histories

Old people eating Ice Cream,

No one in the cinema in an afternoon,

A thunder storm, 

Tiramisu,

A blood sugar of 5.9

Praise,

My best Walking Dead T shirt that now fits!

Bun cuddles,

Fresh flowers on the lane window ledge ,

My first A grade at University,

Friends,

Walking into La Sagrada Familia for the first time,and crying

Scented candles

Roger being dim Roger,

Realising I am content,and more self aware than ever I was

A flirt with an attractive man ,

Thinking an attractive man is flirting even when he isn’t ! !!!!

Lemon curd

A cracking movie, standing in an ovation in the theatre,

Miso soup,

The Lisping Spanish Choir.

A hot shower,

The people in my village,

The Storyhouse cinema,

Being respected. 

My family time

A memory of a scotch egg

I’m also grateful for little films like this one 

If you have a minute watch it 

It’s delightful 

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdNy6TrL/

Post Presentation Ice Cream

Ive given two presentations today and due to the nervous energy in the air Iso need a break. so im in Parisellas cafe on the beach and like one crazy mad bitch im having a scoop of ice cream fuck diabetes for 4 minutes.

Balloons In The Kitchen

The kitchen is filled with helium filled balloons, all tied to the kitchen cabinet knobs.They are part of my presentation tomorrow ,a Gestalt view on grief treatment. you may remember the latest Bridget Jones movie where she and her children send messages to the deceased Mr Darcy in an attempt to resove the pain of their grief. All heavy handed but you get the gist.

Tomorrow afternoon, I have another presentation to give, this time a case study. My presentation will be recorded and graded by two tutorial staff. message to self wear my jumper without the gravy stains! psRoger has burst three balloons already

Holiday.

 Last night, on my break, I made sure all of the Madrid trip was sorted. 

Flights tick

Lisping Choir Tickets tick

Airbnb tick! 

I’ve booked a two bedroom apartment which three balconies overlooking a cafe filled square

If that isn’t Spanish enough then I’ll eat my sombrero 

You always take a chance with Airbnb, who knows what horrors lie under the bed

Painting

 The yappy dogs from next door woke me around three. I gave the Welsh a wee and fed the twins who were annoyed that the dogs were upstairs. The sunshine is glorious ( a bastard of a thing to happen for night workers) so I’ve eaten spicy bean soup out of the slow cooker followed by houmous and celery.

I checked my emails to see if Yorkshire Pudding had received my message ( 😟 he hadn’t) but did open an email from Donna in Tennessee who enclosed this copy of her painting of Winnie 

It’s so captured the essence of that bulldog, who spent her life acting like a gay man in a fat suit.

It’s wonderful, and it made my day

Rattle , Emails and waiting for the Binmen

 It’s sunny with a cool wind.

On our morning walk I picked yellow Rattle which fills the gateways of the fields down the felin . It looks cheerful in a vase on the table and will look better in the lounge after coffee. 

The twins still have not left the cottage after dawn, and sit by the open door by the stairs blinking in the strong daylight. 

It’s Saturday and Roger is waiting for the bin lorry to arrive.

The bin men make a fuss of him which he adores

I’m going to have a long shower and a shave before work tonight. I may go in early if Yorkshire Pudding emails me. He’s on a short break in Llandudno and according to his blog, emailed me to, in order to hopefully meet up. He’s emailed me on my old hotmail account which has now effectively locked me out after a bout of difficult log ins so I’m effectively cut off from an email which I’ve had since the Dawn of the internet. My new email is similar but strangely quiet 

jgsheffield@icloud.com.

I’ve left him a message on his blog, I hope he reads it, or reads it here.

I will leave you with the lisping choir whose first chorister to be seen is my very favourite . The piece rises to a crescendo of sound, much more effective when heard live like I experienced last year. 

It’s one of my favourite pieces

Death By Rubber Chicken

 

It’s been a bit of a death filled week all told 

I’m working the weekend which will no doubt be death centred, so today I’m rolling with the punches so to speak

Apparently my  father died telling a joke at the breakfast table. 

I’m not sure this is true as my father seldom told jokes at home, and certainly didn’t exhibit a sense of humour early in the morning. 

My mother died in hospital, it was peaceful, but she was post respiratory arrest so there was no way back.

I took her oxygen mask off which was belting out 15 litres of useless oxygen only to be told off by an officious support worker to replace it.

I didnt 

My brother died peacefully minutes after I had looked after him on one of my “babysitting” Thursdays in December. The car slid on black ice when I came home.

Funny what you remember.

We would all like a Hollywood death me thinks ….

A clean bed, next to an open window, overlooking a perfect garden

Your significant other running their fingers through your hair as you gently fade

The dog by your side,

As the neighbours lower their heads and remove their hats

Life is fickle and seldom helpful when that sort of death is concerned

People die on the toilet, or fall behind the dinner table at ungainly positions 

People collapse at the theatre and stop the show, 

That’s not a bad way of going I suppose…

To die laughing.

Winifred, my second to last bulldog had the best death ever

One cold night after a mad half hour trying to disembowel her rubber chicken, 

She quietly collapsed against the kitchen door and lay her huge head on her bear like paws

Like Shelley Winters did in The Poseidon Adventure 

( the collapse part not the rubber chicken part) 

I never cried over Winnie, ( unlike Gene Hackman who sobbed over Shelley’s face until he spat on her) 

Her death was valiant and brave and right, I just sat down next to her and gently rested my head on hers

It was during lockdown too, as I remember .

I still have that rubber chicken, it was going to be framed but my requests for a pink frame with the epitaph 

Queen Salote Tupou III 200?-2020 overfaced the picture framer somewhat so I never felt I could nag him to complete my order.

The chicken still lives in my heart  and my bedroom

Until it is flung away, 

It’s significance unknown, 

After I pass away, hopefully,  after telling a joke 

Or made blissfully unaware by a syringe pump filled with opiates.

Or even bouncing around the kitchen with Winnie’s rubber chicken in my mouth

Now wouldn’t that be something?

Stand up

 

Chic Eleanor and fellow theatre lover Del and I went to see the stand up comic Mark Steel tonight. 

Known for his left wing humour, Steel concentrated his set on his recent experience of having throat cancer. 

Humble, honest, incredibly funny and poignant it was refreshing to hear a man celebrate his friendships which saw him through the darkest of times. But real life took an even darker turn when after he noted the demographic of the audience and told a story of how one member collapsed during his show , as he was almost finished , an audience member in the Gods suddenly collapsed and I think died 

We left after the stage cleared and the house lights were turned on.

Are You Free?

 I caught up with The last Of Us tonight

Moving as fuck ….

I’m drifting today, and am overly reflective

Someone I know committed suicide on Monday, 

Not a friend 

But someone I met professionally 

I’m drifting and am out of sorts 

and then Chic Eleanor rang out of the blue

Did I want to go to the theatre tomorrow?

Darling I hope you are free she gushed

I said yes immediately 

Grateful, oh so grateful 

That

Someone remembered me 

Unidos por un sueño, Alejandro Vivas - Grupo Talía

This gentle little piece was performed by the lisping choirs and the Metropolitan Orchestra on line during covid, and is more of a hymn or a lullaby than anything else.

In light of some more information I have received I have edited this entry today

The music was written as an on line performed piece during covid 

Turandot

 It’s been on my bucket list ( the back burner one) for years, Puccini’s  Turandot

But tonight a friend asked me to go with them to see it as they had been let down at the last minute .

I’m not asked very often so I jumped at the live showing of the Royal Opera House production .

Operas are often overlong, ( and this is no different ) but I loved Seok Jong Baek as the tubby Prince and

Sondra Radvanosky as Turandot and the 1980s staging was wonderfully impressive

Weaver & Roger’s Little Game

 

The game started on Saturday when I started nights 

I went to bed in the afternoon with Mary and Bun then joining us, frightened to be left out.

Weaver stood guard at the top of the stairs with narrow eyes

Roger was sat on the kitchen table watching the comings and goings in the lane

I almost fell asleep

But then Roger started his usual gallop up the stairs in a clumsy effort to join in.

Roger hasn’t quite mastered staircases, even at the robust age of 5 

He still sorts of runs at one full pelt and hopes for the best

And this time as he almost reached the top, legs spinning wildly, tongue lolloping out of the side of his mouth , when…

Weaver jumped out at him and chased him back down the staircase with a manical yowl and a paw swipe.

This pattern started to repeat itself again and again 

Dog versus cat

With cat winning every time

I had no sleep

They had the very best of times, and gasped like tired children at a garden party by the time I left for work

Like Roobarb and Custard on a repeat time frame.