A Cool Pillow

 Terminal Agitation can be a common symptom of the dying process. 

It can start a couple of weeks before death and can be characterised as being behaviours that are restless, unsettled and anxious in nature. Some patients are fidgety, others distressed, sometimes angry, sometimes confused. And the causes can be complicated and multifaceted.

Often patients are hypoxic, or have deranged blood work.

Their primary disease may be affecting their bodies adversely with pain, and sepsis, infection and organ failure being other important factors.

Hospice care is often all about managing these conditions.

Medication has its role and is a big factor

Communication and the simple but practical dealing with issues such as dehydration, constipation and retention of urine are others .

It’s a complicated issue.

This morning, in the wee small hours when nothing feels right 

Medications and communication and pain relief and positioning all had a role to play in the quietening of terminal agitation. 

But the final straw that helped the most, at 5.30 am when the patient was most forlorn ?

A cool, almost cold pillow against a cheek

A pillow that had been left next to a slightly open window 

A pillow smelling “ Vaguely of the Irish sea”

Titivation

 While the CBM continues to lick the bathroom into shape.

I thought about titivation 

Now the essentials have already been bought.( Black accessories to set against the plain subway white tiles) but I wanted one little burst of colour to lift the room

I trolled on line and found a Japanese inspired cotton linen of koi Carp which I thought would look nice framed with a white border in a plain black frame

Loo Tales

You need to read the previous blog post first 

I had been asleep no more than 35 minutes when my phone went.

It was the CBM 

And he was suitably upbeat 

“ Can you come home?  “ he asked with an embarrassed laugh  “ Ive locked myself in the outside loo”

Silence

 The CBM sings loudly and badly. 

It’s fun to listen to , but what with the banging and hammering in the claustrophobia of a 17th Century cottage it feels amplified and overwhelming.

My morning dog walk wasn’t restful as Dorothy was in one of her yappy moods and fearing more tree felling activities when I returned to the village , I dropped the girls off at Trendy Carol’s and took myself off for a quiet coffee.

Y Shed was packed with walkers with their dogs when I got there and there was a loud snarling fight between a poodle and a sheepdog just as I raised my americano to my lips.

I took myself off to my sister Ann’s house and let myself in.

It’s a large family house, full of antiques and paintings and memories 

And it was silent , save for a ticking clock and the odd creak Edwardian houses always seem to encourage when floorboards contract during the heat of the day.

No chainsaws.

No bulldog snores

No singing of power ballads 

No coffee chatter

Nothing.

The shower was hot and the sheets crisp 

And the silence of the old house was the best time I’ve had all week

Too Much Activity

 I knew I needed to get out of the village today.

The council tree fellers have started on the dead and dying ash trees that border the old grave yard and the village is buzzing with the sound of chainsaws and wood cutters.

I had to stop for a moment to say goodbye to one particular tree which used to house Alf,Hughie and Ivy, my spirited trio of guinea fowl in years gone by.

It’s devastating to see the demise and destruction of the Ash Trees and I hope the conservation group may be able to replant some of the losses. 

At least my laburnum looks robust and healthy.

The noise from the field and the cheerful banging from the CBM was all too much so I joined a friend in Liverpool for a sunny lunch outside an Italian restaurant in Liverpool One. 

It seemed calmer than Trelawnyd.

Over a very nice chicken salad and a small Pinot  the CBM called to say that there had been a “bit of a leak” and there was now a hole in the kitchen ceiling 

I refused to get stressed by it . I’m sure it will all get sorted

After lunch I bought a glass shelf from John Lewis.

I got home after four and went to vote. It’s our local elections as well as our community council election and I’m one of 6 new prospective community councillors putting themselves forward in a bit to ensure some balance on the council .

The cottage looks a bit rough when I got home.

Hey ho

Toilet news, Towels, The Northman and Chewbacca saves the day

 There seems to be a bit of interest in the location and origin of my second loo! It’s located in the shed outside and was, as far as we were told, non functioning and not plumbed in .

The shed has been the repository for my bike and dog crates for years so I’m delighted to see it resurrected  back into a working, if basic bog! 

Bless the CBM, he got it working and cleaned it up and left some toilet paper inside for me.

That’s going beyond his remit.

I’ve been out for the day, as the rest of the bathroom was ripped out, the new bathroom was delivered and all of the electrics were put in for the shower. I met a friend for breakfast then , not being far from work , I called into the hospice for a long shower, before popping into TK Max to buy some impractical but delightfully fluffy white towels for my new heated towel rail.

After that I went to see the dire Viking “ epic” The Northman which was an hour I’m never going to get back again. I walked out early, tired of the mud and gore . It wasn’t a total waste of time as I popped into the new  flash Marks for some tahini paste and practiced with my news at nav on the journey home.

My nephew texted about our forthcoming visit to comic con. Apparently some of my heroes from Tbe Walking Dead will be there! How exciting….

I’m reminded of this incredibly moving clip of “ chewbacca” meeting one of his fans

Now that comic con character has class

A 2 Toilet Household

 

CBM was a miracle worker yesterday.  

Not only did he remove a cast iron bath single handedly but managed to get it down the stairs and into the garden without any help.

A phone call to village elder Islwyn was all it took to have his brother, who lives on High Street to come and collect it for scrap. 

Bish Bash Bosh 

All done and dusted. 

CBM also found out that I have a small outhouse that has an old non working toilet in it. In minutes he had repaired the loo thus providing me with a spare ! 

I am now an official 2 toilet household! 

My mother would have been very proud indeed.

Up early today as I’m not getting caught with my pants down again . 

I’m going out for the day after walking the dogs 

Garlic eye level

I’ve just watched Van De Valk on sky 

And remembered that  I actually bought this single in 1973

Meanwhile earlier

 This is the view of the wild garlic groves just north of Trelawnyd at Dyserth this evening 

The scent is almost overwhelming 

A Poo In Sainsburys

 I'm in Sainsburys 

Feeling a bit shell-shocked. 

I set the alarm for 8.15 and slept the deep jet lagged sleep of the night nurse until there was a merry bang on the door just before 8am. 

Cheerful Bathroom man (CBM) was ripping the bath out minutes later.

I gathered the girls up and took them to Trendy Carol's. Booked a skip then made CBM a coffee before I realised I needed to "go" 

My routine is often down to the minute! 

That's what I like

A nice long "sit" and a read of the news.

Bliss.

Anyhow the bathroom already looked like Coventry during the Blitz so

I came to sainsburys for an anonymous poo.

I've only just "come round" and that was after a rather robust cooked breakfast and two large Americanos.

My head is still on nights.

YooHoo

 

Mary was in-fact asleep sat up in the photo

There is something really satisfying when big jobs are completed at home.

After a sleep , I’ve  prepared the cottage for the workman tomorrow.jobs which included clearing the bathroom and filling the log store so that the workman can park his van in the cleared driveway. 

It’s overcast but warm so the lane has been busy which has been nice as it’s refreshing to see non hospice people .

Affable Despot Jason and his girls stopped to chat and Eve ( above) grabbed the opportunity to cuddle Mary.

And as I watered the flower beds I caught Pippa from the Rectory having a long conversation with Sailor John from next door. 

Mrs Trellis walked past too and waved calling “ You hooo” like old ladies often do

She was eating an ice cream bought from the ice cream van that still visits the village in an afternoon and which plays just one cornetto on its speakers 

Bluebells

 

I’ve always loved Bluebells.

This is the best time of year for them.

That and wild garlic which now fills the senses with smells of France and Italy as it carpets the woodlands around Trelawnyd in white

Those woodlands now fly the colours of Greece and Argentina or even Finland depending on the intensity of the bluebell’s blue.

My garden bluebells are robust and dark. I stole a few bulbs from Bodnant Gardens over a decade ago and the tiny plants have repaid me by filling the cottage borders in early May 

I have a day off before the bathroom man arrives. 

So after a sleep , I will clear the decks ready

But will also cut a few bluebells for the front room. 

In a tiny Art Deco vase and against the gentle yellow paintwork , the flowers seem, at their best

Spam

 Blogger has been playing up. 

Thanks to Rachel, who put out the word, it’s been diverting many of your comments into my spam folder without any justification. It seems to be a regular problem with many bloggs

So apologies for that . I will endeavour to check my folders more regularly in future 

Thank You Covid

 

We are almost out of it !

The pandemic I mean.

Ok I can’t book any Airbnb’s in Rome in the middle of the night because the owners have to physically assess you covid wise and The Archers still hasn’t returned to it’s Friday night spot, but things have almost gotten back to normal.

Almost

How quickly have we forgotten the lockdown eh ? Quite quickly is my response , but having said that I’ve noticed that many of us are now wanting happy endings in our films and tv and social media….just look at the burst of popularity of the sweet Heartstopper and the fact ( note spoiler) that Miss Baxter and Mr Mosley finally get it together in Downton.

They say air travel will be more difficult given the numbers flying versus the airport staff in place. For me this is yet to be seen. 

I’ve booked a ferry over to Ireland in Bluebell later in the year and will meet up for a family party at Nu’s cottage in the far west of Ireland . This seemed simple enough to book  and cheaper than I expected. 

I’ve got an apartment of my own in a farmhouse in Kenmare . 

Theresa, the farmer’s wife has already told me that she’ll have some homemade scones ready for me on my arrival.

There was no talk of swabs or covid passports .

Again, it will be seen if things are as straightforward as I hope.

I’ve bought a sat nav too…..one who copes with Irish roads.

Like I said, for some the pandemic will be forgotten quickly. 

For me…less so.

Now, I think,  I’m taking from it a more proactive stance on things because of covid

I am grateful for the lessons it’s taught me.

It was a lonely and sad time to have been living in a single person household and I don’t want to venture back there again. 

And so I’ve stopped saying no to things, when no was the easy go to.

I’m pushing myself  out of my comfort zone with travel and events and with people and new experiences.

It’s a work in progress…like we all are.

But thank you covid 

You’ve taught me a lesson 

Now BBC  Please bring back The Archers on a Friday.

Do I shit In The Woods?

I’m pricing up skips ( dumpsters to you Americans) 

The smallest is 75£ which I think is an Ok price.

I need to ask Trefor if I can park it in his drive for when the Bathroom guy comes on Tuesday but that may not be a wise move . Unattended skips tend to be filled by all and sundry especially when they are located somewhere you can’t keep an eye on them.

I do enough for charity me thinks.

The one question I’ve not asked Bathroom Man yet, is how long am I going to be without a toilet.

Now unlike most dwellings nowadays I have only one functioning toilet. Now if this was the 1970s this would be a perfectly reasonable state of affairs but in the glorious 2020s , there is an expectation on many levels which expects that one will have at least one en suite in your property.

I haven’t ……

So I threw the quandary  out to my fellow night workers

“Shit in a bucket” Steve suggested

“ And how does someone my size even sit on a bucket let alone shit in one ?” I said 

“You could hover ?” Diane offered

I looked sceptical 

“ With my hips?”

“True” she agreed without laughing.

“ Borrow a commode from work? “ she added

“ I couldn’t get the legs in the car” I told her ( I had already measured them)

We bandied around various ideas from knocking on neighbours’ doors to squatting in my old field.

Suffice to say, I am very much a product of my time and the thought of not having a good sit down poo fills me with dread. 

I’ve even priced up a “ robust” camping toilet on Amazon. Which is a doable 28£ ! ( with toilet paper hanger) or the cheaper kamper Khazi which surprisingly doesn’t seem to have a weight limit

And one of the things on my bucket list is to go camping 

I must be mad 

Blognaling

Some people don’t get that Going Gently is a journal as well as being a blog.  

A Jourog or Blognal 

Call it what you wish.

As a journal I often share personal feelings and thoughts predominantly ( but not always) about my own life. Something that often elicits comments of support and sympathy but also of advice and criticism. 

This, is perhaps to be expected I guess, even if questions are seldom put out for the audience to give their thruppenny bits at.

What most people don’t get is that Blognals are cathartic  pieces really. They are there purely to process feelings and thoughts and events and are not really there to illicit comments

This is certainly true when it comes to sympathy

As it may seem to some that blogging is really about.

Attention seeking.

Now I’m going to shoot myself in the foot here , as of course blognaling is all about attention seeking. But it really is about attention seeking in the right way. 

I don’t want to hear that I’m a lovely person, or a saint or fucking Mother Theresa without the tea towel but I do like to hear that I’ve written something interesting , or well , or which has moved someone or made them laugh. 

I want one without the other 

And that isn’t how the internet works.

I get that.

I know of bloggers who are more economical with self disclosure for the very reasons I’ve outlined above.

Others have always been careful with what they post.

I am not. If I feel it, or I need to process it, I write it and obviously do from one perspective

Who knows if there is a right or wrong way of doing things.

The internet allows for people to react to the written word in a way that they would never do to anyone’s spoken ones face to face.

It also allows people to withhold sympathy (when it is perhaps needed) in the perception that you’ve had too much on line…..this is intriguing, as it would never happen in real life 

…..but that, as they say, is another story

Froth On Your Hot Chocolate

Velvet voiced Linda had told me there was a woodpecker present in the trees around the village pond last week but I only got to hear him hammer today. 

I think my early morning dawn chorus sojourn has turned me into everything birds 

I’m on nights until Monday morning. 

And so we all went to bed for an hour at 1pm and wasted the afternoon by sleeping in until 5.30. 

I cooked a prawn stir fry and walked the girls 

And I’m writing this , in my uniform , coffee in hand.

The nice bit of the day has been a trio of communications .

A friend’s carefully written and honest email; a message from a faraway friend suggesting lunch and a kind mega early birthday card with a gift of a crisp ten pound note in it.

Contacts from friends are always nice but when you are single they can be the real froth on your hot chocolate so to speak.

Flintshire county council sent me a 150 £ rebate too, to help with my fuel bills 

That was a nice gesture too

I can hear the woodpecker again, as I get ready to leave.

A Day In Two Halves

 It’s been a day of two halves . 

The dawn chorus 

Then The Play That Went Wrong at Theatr Clwyd.

Both enjoyable for completely different reasons .

I said to my sister Janet, on the way home tonight , that in this my 60th year 

I’m going to do all the things I’ve never done before as well as all of the things I like to do too

If that makes sense .

Still on my bucket list for this year

Go camping in a tent

Go to a European city  mini break with my old girlfriend Jane,

Driving through Ireland to Nu’s cottage,

A holiday break abroad totally alone,

Dance in public

Start my counselling course

Learn a totally new skill 

Walk up Snowdon 

I’ve booked five already…..

Hey ho

Birdsong

 I went on a dawn walk this morning. 

A first for me.

I saw it advertised in Holywell when I popped into Tesco

“ Dawn Walk With A Twitcher - birdsong explained”

The meeting place was in Caerwys before 5 am 

I was the last to arrive.

There was ten of us, all told, led by a quietly spoken man in his sixties called Eifion.

We were led down a bridle path by torch light and from time we’d stop to have a brief lecture 

It was an interesting and somewhat cold early morning

But an invigorating one

The robins and blackbirds and the more rare thrush, were the first on the performance with other birds such as wrens, wood pigeons  and warblers joining in.

The likes of the tits and the finches usually only start to sing when dawn has broken.

Apparently it is usually the male birds that call and at times the sound was amazingly loud

One woman in the group had a good cry at the experience and kept apologising for it.

I liked the feeling of being anonymous in the pre dawn gloom

And felt a little exposed when the day finally  lifted the dark to a translucent blue.

I’m off to meet a friend for lunch shortly.

They are going into hospital soon and are in need of a bit of calm

It’s sunny but still cool and I can see Islwyn pottering around the pony field fixing the gates

He’s like me. 

He likes to be needed.

Gay Wizards

 I disliked the Harry Potter film franchise finding it all somewhat tiresome  but I liked the first Fantastic Beasts movie , which is a prequel of sorts.

I didn’t enjoy or understand the second film in the Beast trilogy but sort of got to grips with the third-  tonight’s movie fantastic Beasts The Secrets Of Dumbledore 

I say sort of ……

The action bits were exciting , I like the Queenie and Jacob characters too but over all it is 

Jude Law who made it for me as he makes for a rather tasty gay bear dad wizard, what with his lovely beard and wide selection of hand knitted tank tops. 

“ John Gray!!!!”

I bought a nice fish dish yesterday. I’ve put my smaller money plants and cactus in it

Albert has recently amused himself by knocking the plants onto the floor

I think it’s a case of transference because Mary is chasing him a little more over mistaken jealousy over the rubber chicken

I photographed the dish 

Preempting my post of today, 

yes it’s been a slow week

 I’ve been sat in a waiting room for 28 minutes.

I’m precise because there is one of those digital clocks on the receptionist’s desk

And this is the third waiting room I’ve been in this morning and it’s only 11.23

The hospital has WiFi thank god , but not enough to stream The Walking Dead

That’s probably a godsend as zombies can be noisy when you’ve forgotten your headphones.

I’ve not seen a doctor yet, just a series of technicians . 

The ultrasound woman was a bit of a pig, so much so, I asked her if she was having a bad day

“ Staffing is dire “ she moaned behind her mask.

The phlebotomist was more sanguine she told me she was off at one and was going to Sainsbury’s to buy her daughter a birthday gift. 

Tu’s range of girls dresses are lovely and very reasonable apparently 

It took her four goes and two arms to get a sample.

I don’t want to be here