Coping

The sad suicide of policeman David Rathband two years after he was blinded by gunman Raoul Moat, once again has brought into the spotlight the subject of self determination, particularly when it is related to ending one's own life.

In my time dealing with people that have been paralysed by sudden trauma, I have only come across two people that have decided that suicide was an option open to them.

One suffered from a severe mental disorder prior to their accident and subsequent disability, and would have, I am sure, committed suicide "whatever the weather" while the other, a man who had been paralysed from the neck down for over 18 years took his own life as a result of the death of a relative and carer.

Having said this, many patients talked about suicide during their time on rehabilitation, whilst more , I am sure, contemplated the idea silently when they experienced their darker moments post injury, whether it be in hospital or at home when life was said to have "normalised".

I have a strong stance on this subject.

As long as a person is not clinically depressed and as long as they know the full facts about their abilities after the intensive rehabilitation process is completed then if they feel suicide is what they decide for themselves..then "so be it"

And this in precis form would be what I would say to patients who ventured suicidal ideas.

People who are deeply depressed cannot be objective.......

People who don't know the full facts cannot be objective either

( and before anyone shouts I know non of us can be truly objective, but we can, I think be more balanced and clear in our thinking)

Listening and accepting what people are experiencing is vital too, as just being able to say the words without  experiencing a reaction of horror, shock or fear can be part of the healing process in itself.

Sometimes the acknowledgement of just how bad someone feels is just enough to allow that person to soldier on.

and "Soldier on," is what the majority of people do in fact .

Faced with huge challenges and massive changes to all parts of their daily lives, in my experience people just get on with things... they find a way of coping,

As it turns out for most of us, living is more important than the alternative.

But it's not always the case.........

Trapped in An Elevator

Yesterday I got trapped in an elevator.

Now before I get inundated with sympathetic blog comments from concerned bloggers, I must tell you that the elevator in question was in fact a disabled lady's wheelchair lift that is in her garden, and which allows her to "go up" the 6 feet or so from bungalow to road.
It wasn't the Scenic elevator out of The Towering Inferno

It all started when I walked past the pensioner bungalows with the dogs.

The lady who owns the aforementioned "elevator" is someone I have met only a couple of times before. She is a large, elderly, very breathless and seriously cheerful woman who seldom is well enough to be seen out of her home, so I was surprised to see her standing by the base of her lift with a key in her hand.

"Can you help?" she gasped "I can't get my lift to come down!"

I walked over to the glass doored contraption and asked what I could do.

"Get into the lift and push the button down- here use the key!" she called out reaching up and offering me the key

I opened the door and walked in with the dogs and shut the door behind me which locked.

Then I placed the key in the key slot and pushed the down button

Nothing happened

I tried again

Nothing happened

I tried to open the door

Nothing happened

The old lady didn't seem concerned

"It does this sometimes" she shouted up cheerfully " can you jump up and down a bit?"

I looked at her! Didn't she notice that I was standing there with three terriers  and a  worried 25 kilo bulldog?

"You want me to jump up and down?" I asked , I couldn't quite believe my ears

" Yes !" she chuckled " Pat the warden does it all the time!"

I swore under my breath......this was not going to do much for what was left of my credibility
I noticed that curtains had already started to twitch across the road!

So....trapped in a wheelchair lift , in a garden of an asthmatic old welsh lady in downtown Trelawnyd

I start Jumping up and down...

Thank goodness she was right........after a minute or so....I was back on terra firma!

A Day's Digging

Good Weather at this time of year means just one thing........digging......

So apologies for the boring post........It is just a case of making hay while the sun shines....

The Veg Patch regaining it's shape

One of the rescue hens waiting for worms

George sending the geese packing

old Stanley basking in the sun

Trelawnyd Male Voice Choir - Highland Cathedral (Teyrngar a Ffyddlon)

The" latest" Village Choir Video with local scenes! 0.02 to 0.50 filmed in Trelawnyd!

School Boy

Well I must apologise for my outburst of gay schoolboy humour last night when referring to Gerard Butler's  wonderful arse!

I fear it was just a reaction to all of the seriousness of the Ralph Fiennes' Shakespeare fest last night......

It was a case of to much

"Nature teaches beasts to know their friends."

Today I am facing the mind numbing reality of a Health and Safety moving and Handling study day.

I used to teach and assess all of my ward staff in this thrilling subject matter every year, so 7.5 hours of it today has filled me with dread

so can you blame me of thinking about......

Have a nice day

and Happy St David's Day.... I am wearing my daffodil!

It is a Marie Curie Nurse daffodil......they looked after my brother very well before he died

There's not enough of them!

I'll Give You Anus

On reflection I think the sucess of the enjoyment of seeing the live performance of As You Like It at Theatre Clwyd went to my head...so much so, that I actually thought that the heavyweight tragedy Coriolanus 

would be a good idea for a night out 

Hummm..... WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shakespeare's comedies have a lightness that for "dunces" like me makes the somewhat difficult prose understandable 

The more serious plays, are just too heavy for me..I should know that by now.....for I get lost within the language and lose track of what was said by whom and why....

Obviously I am more low brow that I think I am!

Vanessa Redgrave's Volumnia  was well worth watching  and so was Gerard Butler......however I spent most of his screen time drooling over his Paisley accent and pretty face rather than listen to his earnest Aufidius' soliloquies

Faced again with the prospect of 2 hours of Shakespeare drama......I think I will prefer to see Gerard Butler's Coriol ANUS...........

Hair Cutting

 

The dogs have just been groomed .

They line up on the kitchen sofa with that sad air of resignation of men awaiting a firing squad, and stand with  a certain amount of shame on the fold-a-way table as Jackie, the ever cheerful groomer does her thing.

Welsh terriers should ideally be hand stripped, but it is a procedure that can irritate dogs with sensitive skin. It is also a bit of a dying art and is more expensive than clipping, especially when there is more than one dog involved.

The large bag of unwanted dog hair , I recycle on the field.

A while back one of the farmers told me to place it in gaps in the hedges where foxes might venture through, so if you look carefully at the field borders, you can make out vague clumps of ginger fur dotted here and there amongst the hawthorn.

I don't know if it actually deters foxes.

But it can't hurt

When I walked the dogs down the lane this morning ,I noticed several members of a troupe of field sparrows  sitting on the barbed wire fencing with ginger hair in their beaks.....recycling again, I thought,......it's almost nesting time.

Americans In The Village!

Did you know that Abraham Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, Bette Davies,Tom Cruise,Harriet Beecher-Stowe, Bob Hope and Susan Sarandon all have documented and verified Welsh roots?

Well neither did I until this morning,

I had just dispatched poor Beatrice ( her previous stroke had noticeably extended overnight so it was best that I put her out of her misery) ( see previous blog entry) and I was carrying her body out of the field when a middle aged man with a stunning pair of sky blue slacks called down a hello from on top of the Churchyard wall.

In an American Accent he introduced himself as Howard Jones  from Jackson County in Ohio and he was searching the Churchyard for the grave of his great great great great grandmother who lived in Trelawnyd in the early 19th Century.

Apparantly Her son had emigrated to the US, and had settled in Jackson, which interestingly had become known as ""Little Cardiganshire"" because such a large number of Welsh that settled there.

I found it all rather interesting as I already knew that a significant number of Mormon emigrants led by

John Parry left the village in 1949 to set up new lives in the state of Utah, and when I visited the Spinal Injury Units In Pittsburgh I remember that many streets and landmarks possessed Welsh Names, underlining their Welsh roots but I had no idea that such a historically famous Welsh area was situated in the American Mid West.

Howard apparently was a member of his local "Welsh History group" and had been researching his family tree for a while. The stop in Trelawnyd and another in the nearby village of Ysceifiog were the final places for his investigations.

I wished him well, for I knew that in the 1980s many of the "unwanted" gravestones had been removed from the graveyard, but he seemed to know more than I did about where to find the information that he needed to know.

"I want to get a sense of the village" he said and I suggested he took himself up the Gop so he could view the village as a whole so to speak. He said that he and his wife, who I noted was scanning the gravestones nearby, would give it a go.

It was then he told me of the numerous famous Americans that were descended from Welsh stock.....He asked me where Flint was , as Tom Cruise's grandfather apparently hailed from there.....

I told him that it was around ten miles or so away and was a bit of a "bog hole"

The term "Bog Hole" intrigued him somewhat......"what a quaint phrase" he said....

I did invite him over for a cup of tea, but he declined saying that he had promised his wife a nice tea in Bodysgallen Hall where they were staying.....

I think he might have thought that the Trelawnyd locals were just that little bit strange

After all I was still holding the dead hen by its feet, and had been doing so throughout our long conversation