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

a friend

Yesterday I was given a new small chicken coop with its own run.. it was a kind of providence!

Today two Hens were "cornered " by a particularly aggressive guinea fowl and battered within an inch of their lives

I found my only Rhode island red ( Shirley) somewhat bruised and bloody behind the feed bins..so I placed her in her own run with the continually bullied Phyllis! ( below) and they sat there together like two old pals that had met through friends reunited, content, happy and "un stressed"

Phylis (right) has never been liked by the bog standard welsh hens

 Everyone needs a friend......don't  they?

Monday Morning

Jean Dujardin...lovely news that he won the Oscar

Violent patients on intensive care are rare. In Accident and Emergency staff are assaulted on a daily basis, an unfortunate and...oh so common reflection of the drug and alcohol saturated life in modern Britain.

Last night we had to deal with a patient that was hypoxic ( low Oxygen levels) and violent.

The aggression we saw was unavoidable and uncontrollable( from the patient's perspective), so I suppose it was slightly easier to deal with than the pissed up yob who has an abundance of testosterone on a Saturday night but in the fracas that occurred before that patent was safely sedated and oxygenated one nurse was injured and another left bruised and a "little ragged around the edges"

I am lucky, as I have never really been fazed when faced with physically aggressive patients. My psychiatric training, I am sure is responsible for this ability to cope as very early on in my career, I was taught to work effectively in a team in the control and physical handing of unpredictable people.

Being calm is vital in these situations. Having a sense of humour often helps too....... But what I realised last night was the fact that general nurses often have not had the experiential training in dealing with the increasing problem of violence in general hospitals, that psychiatric nurses  have in abundance.
Nowadays... I think that just has to change.......

 

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Weight watchers weigh in 14 stone 8 lbs

Weight Loss Last week 2 lbs

Total weight loss since Jan 2nd 1 stone 6 lbs

I can't believe that.. after all I had a lovely tussle with a whole box of jaffa cakes on Saturday night!!!

On a lighter note... good news about Streep and Dujardin winning at the Oscars

The Banking Of Good Deeds

I am working tonight.

I should have been working last night too, what with this bloody awful computerised off duty that quite stupidly thinks that Sunday is in fact the first day of the week.... who would have heard of it? Sunday not being part of the "week -END"..... Its just a crafty way of getting part timers to work all weekend.
As it turned out I managed to swap last night's shift to one a little more conducive to good marital relations, and it is the kindness of people like the nurse who swapped this shift, that I shall discuss today children!

I know Chris as a regular church goer would say, that we should all do kind deeds without any expectation of getting repaid in any way. Now while I agree that we should all try to be better people, I do pragmatically believe in that good old fashioned phrase "one good deed deserves another".

Now does that make me unchristian?
Perhaps?, but I do think it makes me a realist.
The nurse that swapped my shift, was the nurse who I did a favour for last month. I kept her happy by swapping my holiday rota around so she could go to her daughter's graduation and in turn she felt happy at doing me a little kindness this month.

"Kindness oils the cogs of the real world"

The RFWF helped me take the pigs to slaughter and has given me a load of sawdust for the poultry coops, I give him eggs and pork for his freezer.
Auntie Gladys was left a bloody pigs liver last month and again a reciprocal bag of scones was carefully placed on the cottage doorknob.
Spare bantam eggs are left with a certain slipper maker in the village and hey presto an extra pair of handcrafted slippers appeared, all shiny and new.

The important thing to remember about favours is not to expect one to be returned.
The law of averages will mean that in all probability that they will, but this is not always the case but at least, if they are not,  you can bask in the warm glow that deep down, you are a lovely person.
.. yeah right.....
If you are on the receiving end of an unsolicited  kindness, then  it is prudent that something thoughtful is done in return.....a kind note, a few eggs, a token of politeness is sometimes the order of the day. It takes little to organise and is vital lubrication for "smooth living"

A few minutes ago a couple from nearby Prestatyn called around. They had been bitten by the "chicken bug" a while back and have attended our "open allotment days" for the past two years with some enthusiasm.
Their reason for visiting? well they had a chicken coop and run spare and thought I could use it.
It was a kind gesture, for the whole thing was almost brand new and could have been sold off privately, but they rather sweetly thought that I ( and more importantly the blind Rooster Cogburn) could benefit more from it...
I shall think of a way to repay the ladies in the spring. I thought a couple of robust chicks may be gratefully received or even a turkey poult.........they have a thing for turkeys!

A good deed is nothing really special. It is  really just a show of good manners.
Didn't your mother ever teach you that?

Oh I am about to hitch up my wimple to run amok over the Welsh Hills...........

Korsakoff’s Dementia

 Reading an entertaining entry on a fellow blogger's blog reminded me of a lady I "nursed" while I was  on student placement to The Merseyside alcohol dependency unit  at The West Cheshire Psychiatric Hospital in the 1980s.
Sylvia was one of those ex colonial types, with a cut glass accent, a weather beaten face and  the kind of spirit that made Britain what it was during the 1930s and 1940s, an arrogant world power.
She was, opinionated and racist, in that old fashioned sort of way that made you smile at her rather than it provoking an angry response towards her, and she had spent her life of privilege in colonial Malaya , for 40 years pickled in pink gin.

God knows just why she had been admitted to the unit. She was far too long in the tooth at 83 to successfully give up alcohol, even I as a student realised that fact, but I suspect that she had been "encouraged " to enter rehab for a formal assessment, as it was suspected that she was suffering from the start of Korsakoff’s dementia.
People suffering from Korsakoff's dementia lack vitamin B 1 due to their alcoholism, and treatment , as I recall is a combination of vitamin supplements, good nutrition and plenty of rest in addition to the "talking therapies" which aim to explore the cause of their drinking behaviour.
"Talking Therapy" was not something that Sylvia took too seriously as I recall

People that have Korsakoff's, often have great gaps in their memory which they cover up with confabulating history accounts.
In one morning group session I remember one Liverpudlian patient asking her just how much she drank before her admission
In her best Maggie Smith delivery Sylvia announced loudly and with some conviction to the group
"If you must know ......I only ever had a few little drinkies after meals!"
The Liverpudlian, missed nothing from her vague reply
"and how many meals a day did you actually have?" he asked with a smile
"34!" Sylvia called out  with a triumphant cackle

The Artist

Dujardin and Bejo

A silent film's  homage to Hollywood's silent age...that's what the much lauded movie The Artist  is essentially about, and I must admit the Star is Born story of the career demise of  the silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin)  took a bit of getting used to as the story cracked on a pace backed only by a jaunty orchestral score by composer Ludovic Bource.

But I did get use to it, and was, in fact, won over completely by the wonderfully engaging central performance by Dujardin ( who amazingly resembles a swaggering Gene Kelly) He charms the pants off the audience and does so effortlessly without really saying a word!

The film's pivotal scene seals the deal when Valentin meets  spunky starlet Peppy Miller ( an equally engaging Bérénice Bejo) As they film take after take of a seemingly innocuous on screen dance sequence, the two characters start to fall in love, and it is this rather sweet and incredibly moving and powerful sequence that gives the movie it's heart, for as well as being a clever homage to the visual tricks of Hollywood, it is, in fact a simple and beguiling love story, that is well worth watching

9/10

Janet & John

This morning on his early morning blog Monsieur Cro introduced us all to his daughter who possesses the spunky and rather original name of Tenpin.

This got me to thinking just why we name the things dear to us, the way we do.

The naming of a child is a significant and huge responsibility.

Get it wrong and that kid may harbour psychological issues all of it's life ( One of my old patients from my psychiatric nursing days comes to mind here ....for his traumatic childhood was thought to be a direct result of severe bullying in school.......an unfortunate product of being christened "Adolph" in 1933 North Yorkshire!)

Most names can date the person who owns it .This is certainly the case of my name as for most of my life I have been referred to as just one part of a double act.

As twins born in 1962, my sister and I were named after the icons of  those 1950's Children's reading books everyone over a certain age will remember with some affection.... for we  were called Janet AND John.

Janet and John aged 26 and 1/2

Sexy Hal (centre)

As a kid, I disliked the reference. I thought it was just that little bit boring and a tad babyish, given the fact that Janet and John didn't do anything of interest apart from chasing big red balls in a suburban garden like a couple of dated middle class bores. I longed to have the ability to change my name and always had the secret desire to possess the more "exotic" Christian name of Roger!.....

Now this was only because I used to be a avid reader of the

Willard Price adventure novels where fourteen year old Roger Hunt and his older brother Hal captured animals from the four corners of the globe ( like you do!)

I also think I had a secret crush on Hal....you can't blame me given his clean cut 1960s looks can you?

Do kids of today have paperback book heroes anymore?....Perhaps the Jake's, the Ben's and the little Jaimie's of today prefer their x box heroes just that little bit more? 

Bloody hell now I do sound like a sad old John don't I?

"I am a lady"

Meg enjoying the sun, in her usual spot in the bedroom window

Yesterday I was moaning about the weather and how it has the ability to shrink Trelawnyd into some sort of ghost village.

Well today, when I got home after night shift, the weather has blossomed into spring and almost early summer, as the wind dropped, the sun came out and the village suddenly burst into life again.

I opened up every window in the cottage, and before cleaning and vacuuming the winter dust away ,I left a large bowl of eggs on the outside wall, so that people out for a walk could help themselves and not bother me.

But of course I was bothered now and then by neighbours and egg customers, but I didn't really mind... it was nice just to see people out and about.

The Good "Ladies" of Trelawnyd circa 1952

One villager chatted about the Jubilee "carnival" which is still in the embryo planning stages .I told him I had a few old photos of locals at the 1952 village carnival where local men all dressed up as society "ladies"

"Oh you can't do that anymore" he told me and he sited an article he had read in the Daily Mail 

which outlined that bigwigs at Exeter University have banned Male students dressing up in drag because it believes that trans gender groups may be offended by the mainly pissed up rugby players parading around in ill fitting mini skirts and sling backs on their male bonding nights out

(interestingly I note that Nick over at http://nickhereandnow.blogspot.com/  has brought up the same subject on his blog) and has dealt with it with his usual dry humour

Micro managers with their bloody nanny-ish ways and worries  seem to make life just that little bit harder to enjoy in our "let's be so careful" modern world. Potential Offence has to be seen at every turn and in every activity,

and generally, ( I would like to think) that in this particular case, trans gender men and women  wouldn't give a flying fuck that some alcohol fuelled 18 year old psychology student is wearing a pair of ripped stockings, a knackered old wig and  some cheap Ann Summer's suspenders.

Then again.... I could be.... oh so very .....wrong!

Ash Wednesday

Trelawnyd sheltering against the gales

The Church bell started to ring fairly early this morning which threw me slightly as I couldn't quite work out why it was doing so. The penny dropped that it was Ash Wednesday when I left the cottage to deliver eggs, as tiny knots of the village congregation braved the high winds and battled their way down to the Church.

The village looks deserted today.

It always does when the weather is bad. The daytime population of Trelawnyd is probably confined to a hundred  or so over 65s, forty schoolchildren , and a few odds and sods like me who either work odd shifts or do not work at all.

Mrs Trellis hurrying home

Apart from a few home carers, the village's elderly warden, the school's staff and a handful of guys based in the industrial units just outside the village, the village offers no employment . The employed population getting into their cars earlier today to weave their way to nearby towns, or across the Welsh border in order to work.

This was always the case, even in times gone by... but then the workers caught buses down to the likes of Rhyl, ambled down to work in the three village shops, bakery, pubs and numerous local farms or made their way, sometimes on foot, to the Coal mine at Point Of Ayr, a few miles to the North...

In , say, 1940s the village population was higher than it is today, and the daytime population was much more visual, with housewives going about their daily business .

Today, apart from a few cars, and the diminutive Mrs Trellis hurrying home , there was absolutely no one to see...oh I am so looking forward to the nicer weather.....the warmth brings the village to life
off to work later

Boxing GOOD behaviour for a change

With all of this embarrassing shenanigans with British Boxers' bad behaviour recently I was amused by these two who professionally and somewhat sweetly saw the funny side in all the seriousness!!!!

Hey Ho

I thought I would try it

It felt a bit naughty though because

I have not been able to do it for such a long, long time

But being alone in the cottage has just given me the opportunity

to give it a go

It proved to be a little bit of a  tussle

But after a couple of years

of elasticated waists

I have just managed to get into a 34 inch pair of pants!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorrel

I have posted this older video, because it does feature a brief appearance from Sorrel, the buff Orpington who had an impacted crop.
I took her to the vets today as I have been unable to clear the blockage so to speak, and the 12 year old vet who I suspect had never handled a hen before was "allocated" to us ( I was hoping that the sex-on-legs George Clooney lookalike was on duty but unfortunately he was "in surgery")
Doogie Howser seemed very nervous and was a little unsure of exactly what to do .He kept nipping out to discuss the case with the George ( who I was hoping would have popped out to give us a second opinion!) and left the consulting room no less than three times.
After weighing up the fact that this practice only performs this kind of procedure under a general anaesthetic and the fact that Sorrel was so frail, we decided that putting the hen down was the best bet and the kindest thing to do.
I couldn't help noticing that when the Wunderkind started to administer the final injection his hand shook, so much, he missed the blood vessel in the hen's wing
As a nurse that has supervised so many Junior doctors over the years I knew exactly the best thing to do.
"They are really difficult to get aren't they? I couldn't do it....... you're doing fine" I said with an encouraging smile.and I spread the wing out wider so he could see a little better.
He tried again
and a couple of minutes later the hen had died peacefully.
Ebb and Flow...
Ebb and Flow...
and Doogie Howser euthinized his first chicken at a cost of £18.70p

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Weight Watcher's weigh in 14 stone 10 lbs
Weight Loss last week 1 lb
Total weight loss since 2nd Jan 1 stone 4 lbs

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The Meter Reader

I was just about to start a blog about the merits of modern day phenomenon of "The Bromance" ( alongside the obligatory steaming cup of coffee) when the electricity meter reader turned to, interrupting me for the third time before 9 am !

I am trying to fit in a few jobs this morning, The buff Orpington who had the impacted crop, still has not shifted the blockage, so is presently sat quietly in a black bucket on the kitchen table waiting to go to her vet's appointment at 10am, I have a load of eggs to hand deliver and I have promised to give a friend a lift to the doctors before midday.

The meter reading guy is a morose kind of character who never stays long when on his rounds.He runs the gauntlet of dogs with his usual dead-pan expression, takes his readings then leaves with his usual comment of " see you next time".

Today he walked into the kitchen, and after giving the forlorn buff  a glance without saying anything, he side stepped Mabel who was waggling her bottom rather energetically into George's face and went into the lounge to read the meter, followed by William and Meg

On his return he pointed to Mabel and uncharacteristically asked

 " what's up with her?"

"She's desperate for a shag" I answered as Mabel slow danced backwards yet againwith a hopeful smile on her face.

The meter reading man's expression of gloom never changed

"I know exactly how she feels" he said sadly and left without further comment.

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I'll blog about the buff and my weightwatchers weigh in later when I have time