tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19803282014616083492024-03-05T21:49:20.214+00:00Adventures In Prednisolone- Peter Finch's struggles with polymyalgia and the dark dark wonder drug prednisolonePeter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-16399149173996064202015-09-15T14:59:00.001+01:002015-09-16T17:25:19.350+01:00Urology - How The Whole Thing Has ChangedPrednisolone is at last and forever in the backseat. New joys arrive to take that wonder drug's place.<br />
<br />
Check <a href="http://urologyforreal.blogspot.co.uk/">urologyforreal.blogspot.co.uk</a> to keep upPeter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-19400665025670359942015-07-29T14:33:00.000+01:002015-07-30T08:40:28.096+01:00Oral Morphine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF8kSh5sfA_WoL_VQdZkEdBVK2o_YX0rJB-XCpWrpZfn9oCZ7QYGOTvXPq0YAWVMDxtTFs41NWWvM7KC04PNzVky98YZnoADcFbT_JPExzu1oKCHxQKpu3yjKdBBb87baFj-3OdiCsRks/s1600/prednisoloneboxes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF8kSh5sfA_WoL_VQdZkEdBVK2o_YX0rJB-XCpWrpZfn9oCZ7QYGOTvXPq0YAWVMDxtTFs41NWWvM7KC04PNzVky98YZnoADcFbT_JPExzu1oKCHxQKpu3yjKdBBb87baFj-3OdiCsRks/s320/prednisoloneboxes.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b> </b>In the big bottom drawer by my bed at home are the
boxes. These are my stacked supply of
prednisolone in 5 mgs and 1 mgs tabs, dozens, enough to de-polymyalgia a whole
street. The boxes are dated and
aging. I haven’t touched them since my
dose rate dropped to zero. They are the
reserve, held against the pains returning.
I should take them back to the pharmacy but they are my psychological
prop. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
In the drawer by my bed where I am now there is no
prednisolone. In fact there is not even
a drawer, just a mobile cabinet containing my clothes with a box of Kimberly-Clark Professional
Tissue sitting on its top. In style these
are hygienic regulation NHS. In reality they are little different from the
serviettes offered to me last week at Lobster & Burger in Hills
Street. No printed menu, three items
only served, same price for each, all of them containing lobster. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’m in an otherwise empty side ward at the back of the
being rebuilt Short Stay Surgical Unit.
The corridor outside is sealed with plastic sheeting held in place with gaffer tape. This is the University Hospital of Wales,
built in 1971 and now showing signs of wear.
I’ve taken oral morphine, given to me in a self-dosing syringe. It’s put a great bank of soft glory between
me and the pain. The catheter with its
bloody bag recedes into the clouds. The
ceiling glows.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’ve been under having samples taken from inside my
bladder and several tumours removed.
I’ve no idea how long I was in there.
One minute I’m talking to the anaesthetist who is administering dope
into the cannula inserted in my wrist and next I’m seeing two versions of everything
in post op. Now I’m languishing in that half world between
crisp reality and the safe haven of fog.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The night rolls. I
drift through it. At 3.00 am in the near distance an alarm
sounds and the winking equipment around me flickers off before coming back on. Fire alarm. I realise in the total dark that there’s not
much I can do about this, secured as I am to the bed by tubes and drips and
full with somnambulant drugs. I call but no one hears. I reach for my phone and try to check current
UHW status on the UHW web site. Nothing. There’s an emergency phone number. I ring that, at least I think I do. No one answers. I search for things like “what to do in hospital
when there’s a fire” and “large building evacuation procedures” and finally “how
to get down a corridor with a catheter inserted into your old man”. The results I pull up all suggest that help
will come. It doesn’t. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’m worried, I suppose I am but the dope takes off the
edge. The alarm which has rung for at
least half an hour suddenly silences.
They’ve put the fire out. The
alarm system itself has been consumed in a conflagration. I’m in heaven on the other side. One of those.
Eventually a nurse carrying a torch turns up to check on me. “You alright love? ” I nod.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The following day, which is not long in arriving, the staff
nurse reviews my case. The catheter is
removed. “There’ll be a bit of sensation
as this comes out.” Jeez and a half. The
deal is that so long as there is someone with me and so long as I can lie down
and be looked after for a few days I can go.
That and the fact that I am able to pee again. Sounds so easy doesn’t it? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Down at the SSSU latrines, one working, two out of
commission, one with a sign up showing that it is currently being cleaned, I
get into the queue. There are two blokes
in front of me both aged beyond, using the walls for support and generally looking
terrible. Once it’s my turn I stare at
myself in the mirror. I look pretty much
the same.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Pee is beyond me.
I return to my bed dispirited and depressed. The nurse advises drinking more. “That’s the answer.” I’ve already done two
jugs of water and four polystyrene cups of hospital tea.
“Why don’t you go down to the concourse and have one of their giant
coffees? The walk will help.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
In the real world of the concourse, such as it is,
everyone seems so business-like and aware.
I’m still full of fog. I do a Grande
something, hot brown liquid sold for an exorbitant price and then walk myself slowly
back to the ward. I join the latrine
queue and manage a miserable eighth of a cup.
Nurse says no. Not enough. Drink more.
Keep trying. She hands me another
tea. I can feel it, this flood of
liquid, swilling around inside me. I’m
filling up like a tanker.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Eventually after a
few more failures there’s relief, of sorts, a trickle that the medical staff declare
to be just about sufficient. They need the bed, after all. I’m clogging the system slowing the
flow of patients. So long as I can just
about cope I should go.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
It takes a good two days before proper flow returns and a
whole two weeks before the pain subsides.
It’ll happen again, I’m
told. These things, benign mostly, have
an 80% likelihood of regrowth. What causes them? Exposure to certain chemicals, being Caucasian,
getting older. Two out three then. Rock on. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">SSSU: Short Stay Surgical Unit</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-49144832476329862102015-01-07T11:36:00.000+00:002015-01-07T14:33:23.728+00:00Cardiff and the Vale Health Care as an Episode of Jules Holland’s Hootenanny<div class="MsoNormal">
Down at the practice the usual hootenanny is in
progress. The waiting room is full. There are queues from those nationalities who
do queuing and great seething mauls
among those who don’t. It’s hard to tell
if this is an international airport waiting lounge or a doctor’s surgery. Only the lack of plush carpeting and stores
selling luxury goods gives it away.
There are people here who are not registered, don’t know how to get
registered or who do not understand the concept of registration and imagine
swaying about in front of the reception counter will suffice. Many have language issues and get by with
hand signals. Some shout. Others have brought along younger family
members better at english than they are to try to help.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a line in front of the glass window are three aged, baggily
oversized pensioners, huddled in coats and scarves and wanting urgently to get
in there to present their back pains, swollen feet and chest aches. The
receptionist points to a flat TV screen on a side wall and yells something
along the lines of “it’s over there, say you are here on the screen” to which
she gets the uniform response of “doan work” and the shaking of pensioner heads. I
check it out. Press. Enter your date of birth. As if by magic the system knows who you
are. “Welcome Peter Finch. Your appointment is with Dr Williams at
10.45, You will be seen at 10.46.” It’s 10.40, 6 mins to wait. I go stand at the far side among a gaggle of
screaming children and mothers who are bent on covering the entire floor
surface with toys, prams, wet wipes, blankets and other child clinic attending paraphernalia. I am seen at 11.22.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I am seen.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Inside it’s slick.
There are machines that measure my pulse, and blood pressure. Screens that show my entire medical history
including MRI scans, X Rays and attendances at hospital clinics. The room is bright lit. Diagnosis is swift
and thorough. Smoking is forbidden. A sign tells me this. It is forbidden outside in the waiting area
too. Cardiff and the Vale Health have a
policy against. They train staff on how
to use appropriate body language when approaching recalcitrant smokers. They don’t actually impose fines or take the
lit fags off you. Instead they offer you
give it up leaflets and tell you where you can attend the nearest quit smoking
clinic. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At UHW Heath Hospital right next to the large sign which
announces that this is a smoke free zone, just where the smokers in bathrobes
and angel gowns usually cluster, they have now positioned a tabard-wearing
smoking warden. The one I saw last week
was reading a newspaper. Just round the
corner from him was an old woman in a wheel chair going full at it with a king
size Lambert and Butler<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I was young and the family doctor held his surgery in a
cramped room half way along Albany Road next to where the Fish Bar currently
stands everyone smoked. In winter you’d
enter the icy room heated with a single bar electric fire and lit with a 60
watt bulb to find lines of the aged huddled in their greatcoats all smoking
furiously. There’d be copies of the
Daily Sketch and last week’s Sunday Pictorial lying about among the fag butts. The air would be dense enough to hold in your
gloved hands. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When you got there, facing the actual doctor, smoking was
not allowed. Drinking, however, appeared
to be. The doctor kept a bottle on his
bookshelf badly hidden behind and edition of Grey’s Anatomy. My mother said she was disgusted. He always smells of drink, she’d complain. But still we kept going. The cure for whatever was wrong with me at
the time was always the same. Either a
tonic, a large NHS bottle of fishy-tasting cure all, one large spoonful to be
taken daily, or an ear syringing. This
was carried out with warm(ish) water and a steel bowl held near the bottom of
your ear. You went back out in the
winter cold for 30 seconds a new person after
which the side of your face froze.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
More effective, it turned out, than today’s cures. Today I get words of concern and
antibiotics. Out in the street the rain
is coming down like burst water tanks.
Passing cars are like speedboats.
I sail home. Despite the
privations, lack of computer records and the tobacco I’m sure the past was
easier. But then people of my age always
say that.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-29113988868630403402014-07-08T10:25:00.000+01:002014-07-08T10:26:12.432+01:00The Darkness Returns<div class="MsoNormal">
In the emergency dental clinic the air con is on sub-arctic
high. Patients clutch coats to their throats. Those with phones, which is almost everyone, sit
bent into their tiny screens. The bloke next to me is in deep conversation
with his solicitor. “Tell her no, I’m
not paying anything extra”. The wall-mounted patient’s television set to
channels the staff prefer shows a programme about house buying in
Andalusia. A blonde couple are rejecting
the polished marble floor of a magnificent and sun-filled villa as being not
what they were expecting. “If I were
here I’d have pale wood and scattered rugs,” says the blonde woman through red
lips half obscured by cascading blonde hair.
Her blue-eyed vacant looking blonde husband nods his blonde head.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My name is called, pretty quickly I thought, and I’m ushered into a side clinic. Here I am introduced to the three students on
call today. They spend half an hour taking my medical
history during which I list prednisolone as something I once took but now,
facing a wonderful side-effectless future, don’t. The
chair is reclined and they commence the examination. Somehow the lamp won’t turn on and then no
one can find any dental instruments. The
student dental nurse watches with interest.
She can’t find any instruments either.
The eventual diagnosis is that my heavily crowned upper teeth have worn
the enamel from their lower brothers.
The underlying dentine has become revealed and is allowing access to the
nerve-filled pulp below. Pain when I eat. Pain when I breathe. The easy fix is a layer of laminate. Won’t take long. But they can’t find the mixture. Then can’t find any instruments with which to
apply it. Drawers are opened. And closed.
One of the group is sent off to consult with their qualified
supervisor. There is a discussion, door
opening, cupboard hunting and finally the sound of a packet being opened and
something being mixed. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I slumber, drop within myself, stretched out as I am in the
sort of position I imagine astronauts would use when setting off for Mars. Deep in my lower back, down where the synovial
cyst slumbers I sense something shift. A
vague glimmer of pain. A portent. I ignore.
I shouldn’t.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The following day the whole raft of symptoms I’d forgotten through
these many PMR-free months return.
Proximate muscles are stiff.
There are aches in my hips, my thighs.
It’s hard, almost impossible, to bend down. And if I do get down then it’s equally as
impossible to get back up. This is a
polymyalgia relapse. A spike. A regression.
A return. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After a few days of failing to recognise what is actually
happening I eventually hunt out my supply of unused prednisolone. This is stored in a shoe box, unused packets unreturned to the pharmacy and
thank god for that. I take 5 mg and then
several hours later try another 5. Before bed I swallow another. Or do I?
I’m suddenly not sure how many I have taken. Fear of polymyalgia fog. I call the rheumatology help-line where a
recorded voice tells me that they’ll return my call between 1.00 and 5.00
pm. Today. They do.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In discussion with the nurse who certainly puts the time in
talking to me we eliminate the cyst acting up and settle for PMR as the lightly
cause. Relapse is common. I take 15 mg pred in one swallow. I’ll be called in for a consultation. Don’t worry.
Try not to. Ah prednisolone, the
wonder drug, would I be worried about you?
My faithful, mind churning, twisted friend. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In front of me stretch months of pharmacy calls, pill
swallowing, tests, waiting rooms, consultations, discussions, hunting of the
internet for answers, fumbling with the Heath hospital car park pay machines, careful
record keeping, nose bleeds, wretchedness, infections, weight gain, weirdness
and worry studded sleep. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the lounge stretch
out on the sofa and stare a bit at the wall.
Then I turn on the TV. On the
screen they are describing a Spanish villa’s open-plan living area. The polished marble is a strong selling
point. Apparently. I change channels and get a day-time rerun of
some DIY programme where builders rush to fix a disadvantaged person’s accommodation
in time for their birthday. They are installing a pale wood floor. It’ll have rugs scattered over it, the smiley-voiced
presenter assures us. The world is full
of circles.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-3838878005090311382014-04-11T10:28:00.000+01:002014-04-11T10:40:58.472+01:00Eight Weeks In<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s been that long since prednisolone crossed my lips. In general terms nothing but for me some sort
of eternity. Would the shoulder freezes
return? Would I need to get up and
shamble round the room again just to stop the leg from aching? Could I walk into town without the
requirement for stopping, leaning against walls or sitting in gutters? Could I cope with a visit to B&Q,
alone? Make it round past the shelves of
screws, racks of wood and lines of lamps, boilers and paint without feeling the
irresistible pull of the car where I could sit and let the pain drain into the
floor? They wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. And I could.
In fact I did. Ikea without
pain. Homebase with ease. Here to Penarth Head and back without
stopping. All experiences for the Polymyalgic
to relish.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In between times I’ve upped the writing. Prose is so slow. Unlike poetry which zips. I research afternoons. Read in the evening. And, in this new and ideal world, write in
the morning. The secret is to get up and
somehow slide to the desk without speaking to anyone about anything, not
hearing any radio, or neighbourhood chatter, or happy gardeners running their
power mowers in stripes. It is vital to do all this hearing no irritating drills, builders shouty conversation, nor disc cutters from
the permanently being rebuilt next door patio.
They finish it then turn round and build it again. Permanent renovation. So it seems.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But, of course, the world is not ideal, nothing like, so we have to compromise. Mine is to rise, walk round the block (well,
a few blocks) and the then, ignoring the world’s distractions as much as I can,
put the right music on the player, down a hot tea, and blow.
What music? Scratchy bluegrass, The
Bristol country sessions, Apache era Shadows, Booker T, early Dylan, Georgia
Ruth, sweet soul music. Does it
work? Mostly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is a post-prednisolone difficulty, however. The eczema has returned. There are patches on the ankles and the shins
and in the lower back. Flakes and
crusts. I’ve delved in the depth of cupboards
and dug out the creams I once had prescribed.
What remains of them. Apply
liberally. Scratch only with the soft
bristles of a hairbrush.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A decade or more back UHW tested me for allergies. I sat in the clinic while a whole grid of
irritants was applied to my back and labelled in permanent marker. The following day they called me back in to
check which had reacted. There’s only
one red spot, the consultant told me. He
was a man in his early sixties wearing a baggy suit and with a spatula in his
top packet. Printers ink. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Perfect. For someone
who’d been involved in print one way or another all his life what else could it
be? For forty years I’d been a writer,
editor, publisher, distributor, critic, bookseller
and was now a sort of literary agent.
All that time touching paper with ink on it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The consultant prescribed a topical steroid with instructions
about not applying too much for fear that I might thin my skin enough to allow
the blood to leak. These creams are sort
of T-Cut, he told me. They wear away the
reacting layer revealing the pure, unsullied skin beneath. A joy to behold. I was also given special liquid which would desensitise
my entire body. Stop me scratching it. You put it in the bath and lie there for a
quarter of an hour. You do this and after a while you feel like a fruit
blanching. Language is so imprecise
here. We need images. But I don’t have them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Did any of these procedures work? Not really.
The only thing that ever made a difference was the prednisolone. No sooner had I begun with my whacking 40 mg
daily than the eczema vanished. Totally.
It stayed vanished for the whole two
years this condition has lasted. And now
the pred has gone the allergy is back. But
sod that. Scratching is easy. Getting down the road with frozen proximate extremities,
rusted iron for feet and winter fogging the mind that’s what was difficult. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-64103281344488069002014-02-20T11:38:00.000+00:002014-02-20T11:39:36.205+00:00Zero<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Zero is never nothing as any scientist will tell you. It’s merely a point on a long and sliding
scale. The aim of anyone taking
Prednisolone is: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a) to get cured <br />
and<br />
b) get off the dreadful drug<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I thought I’d managed that.
My polymyalgia vanished into the sand and the steroid that fixed it
tapered from 40 right down to none. It
had been a long haul. Two years. 5 mgs a day this month, then 3 and then
finally one. I’d alternated between
nothing one day and 1 mg the next. I felt
fine.
Moving to zero was simple. Just
stop. I had. Perfect.
Bright skies, clean air, a sense that my head was my own again and nights
were filled with unencumbered non-fat face sleep. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Suddenly, however, there I was. Less than zero. Withdrawal symptoms sneaking out of the
bushes. Colds arriving and never
leaving. Small cut from my recently returned
Eczema so slow to heal. Great physical exhaustions plaguing me. Loads of sitting there staring out of the
window without the energy to even check my phone for email or flick the pages
of the newspaper. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I read. I managed
that. John Williams’ <i>Stoner. </i> Couldn’t put that down. It’s about someone who allows the vicissitudes
of life to dominate him and to dog him all the way from a promising lectureship
as a young man to that state of never having achieved anything worth remarking
about that faces so many at the times of their deaths. Does it matter, I wondered. Are we here to make a mark? Do we need to leave something behind beyond a
pile of old letters and a sack of worn out shoes? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the finality nothing matters is the standard
approach. Not mine, however. You have to
grasp at life. Put the Williams book
back on the shelf. Turn the Kindle
off. Get out there and write your
own. Don’t let life just fade to grey
and then to ore grey and finally to black.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What I’d discovered was that coming off prednisolone wasn’t
really just a matter of stopping. There
are withdraw symptoms. Withdrawal
difficulties. Things that keep you awake
at nights. Cold turkey wouldn’t hack
it. After a month of zero I returned and
took a few. Spent a week alternating
iron and vit c tablets with good old white prednisolone. Let the tiredness leave me. Told the cat it was all alright. Got up and turned the machine on. Wrote a few thousand words. Determined to write more. Decided to take another prednisolone. To spread the drop to zero over a slightly
longer period of time. To win ultimately
but to do it slowly. I put some
bluegrass on the player and got the banjo breakdowns running. Tea.
Another few hundred words.
Suddenly life looked better<i>. Love Minus Zero/No Limit</i> as Dylan has it. It’s the <i>No
Limit</i> part that’s important. Check
back, there never was a year zero. Nothing
is impossible. It’s always something.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m back on no prednisolone again now. The perpetual flu has lifted and the energy
once again flows. But I’ve those boxes
of the drug out back still. The ones I
was going to send back to the pharmacy.
Maybe I’ll hang on just a while longer yet.<o:p></o:p></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-22624675124557113012014-01-22T11:08:00.000+00:002014-01-22T11:08:59.446+00:00The Night Nurse Slumber<div class="MsoNormal">
Deep in the NightNurse slumber the wind blows. It’s a wind full of ghosts, fleeting memories
that skit across the mind’s surface and
then fade into the borders like the wraiths they are. When I surface, with a start, the real world
appears as full of apparition as the one I’ve just left. Motes,
glimmers, rattles, thumps, distortions that shift and blur. I tread water for a disorientating moment and
then it all clears like bubbles surfacing in a glass. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The noise outside is the men relaying the pipeline that
supplies gas to the street. I can see
it, a giant yellow coil like a children’s treat being unwound into a hole right
dead centre across a neighbour’s drive. It
sounds Industrial, just like Cardiff once would have. Everyone waking to the hammer and thump of
the steelworks, the rattle of the coal staithes, the trains steaming and
clanging, and the ships hooting as they reached the docks. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From up here on the hill I can see where it all would have
been, the whole post-industrial landscape laid out before me, now gentrified
with apartments and neat cul de sacs.
Places to house our rocketing population. How does that figure? When there was work aplenty Cardiff was half
the size it now is.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The thing with colds is that no matter what you actually do
they carry on just the same. Their durations are fixed. Work through them or give in and lie
down. Makes little difference. Pretty
much the only thing that works that I’ve found is drugging yourself up with
Lemsips and hoping for the best. I’ve
prepared a vacuum flask of these before now and carried it around with me all
day. Down the road they are advertising
Hopi Indian Underwater Nipple Massage (£35 a go) as sure insurance against
catching winter colds. Good luck, I say.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I reach for the Prednisolone, the morning routine of tablets
to keep the polymyalgia pains away. And
then I remember. I’m on zero now, been
here for a few weeks. The problem has
been dealt with, diagnosed, treated, lived with at its maximum intensity and then
lived with as it slowly oh ever so bloody slowly faded down the scale for 10 to none. Polymyalgia, the malfunctioning of the
proximate muscles, common among older women, apparently, and those who live like sloths. A disease of the body that rattles and
frightens you so much that you wonder if actually the whole thing is in the
mind. But it’s not. It’s as real as bone snapping or bladder
infection or thumps on the nose. You
take tablets to ward it off and it goes away. If you are lucky then it does that permanently.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Am I cured? Could be.
In a drawer I have a large supply of the drugs. NHS overprescription to ensure that I always
had enough on hand to save me. There is
nothing wrong with the drugs in these boxes but they won’t be recycled. They’ll be thrown
away. I’ll take them back to the
pharmacist from where they’ll be sent for some sort of secure disposal. I could try reselling them on the street, I
suppose. But then who would want a fat
moon face and night fears followed by nose bleeds and an inability to go out? I guess I’ll hang on a while, just in case
the leg pains shimmer again. Best be sure.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And this blog. What
do I do with it? I’ve still got the
spinal cyst and my dealings with the NHS
might have slowed just a bit but they’re still there. Maybe I’ll change the name and carry on. I’ll let you know. Watch this space.<o:p></o:p></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-66966764351811550862013-12-19T08:34:00.000+00:002013-12-24T09:22:12.962+00:00Prednisolone and Ajax - Conquering the World<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve taken just one tablet today. A single white milligram pill of
prednisolone, swallowed for old time’s sake, to keep the eczema off my skin or
as a bulwark against pain. I don’t
know. I used to take forty of these
things daily. It’s gone on for so long.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’m heading for UHW (University Hospital Wales) for what
is euphemistically called <i>a procedure</i>. This one is to insert a small camera on the end
of long flexible rod and look inside my bladder. Guess where they insert it. I’ve had it done before but the anticipation remains icy and
deadening. The joy of cystoscopy. Someone should write the book.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<i>Ambulatory Care</i>,
which is what it was when I began attending a decade ago, is now known as <i>The Short Stay Surgical Unit</i>. This, presumably, because attendees had no idea
what the word <i>ambulatory</i> meant. At
reception a woman asks me which of the two addresses shown on the
admission form is correct. I tell her
the latter and she looks at me blankly.
The second one, I explain, pointing.
Another word lost to English forever.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Reception was new at the start of the nineties. Back then hospital management were really keen on making clinical areas look homely and welcoming. The place was done out with wallpaper,
carpet, ashtrays, wooden-armed armchairs and a forest of potted plants. Filing cabinets were hidden . You were supposed to feel comfortable here
much in the way you were in rooms where funerals were arranged or rapes
reported. But twenty years on things
have changed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
To start with there are the notices which ban things:
food and drink, smoking, verbal abuse.
There’s also a new one that also bans electronic cigarettes. This was rushed into place to forestall
arguments at the desk made by those who insist this sort of smoking to be
totally different from the other sort and therefore okay. The notice they had showing a drawing of a
phone with a line through it, however, has disappeared. Around me the elderly (almost everyone here
is over sixty) fumble with their mobiles.
They carry them, they imagine, to fend off emergencies. Today they
are explaining to relatives, friends,
and mis-sold financial product compensation fixers that yes, it is a nice day
but no, not now, they’re in hospital. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The framed art works have also been added to. Ambulatory Care always went for prints of
flowers which are still largely in place.
Giant reproductions of ivy and maple leaves, huge red poppies in two
varieties. To them have been added Christmas
decorations, strings of tinsel stuck in place with cellotape, plus an
artificial tree. The sound system which
in the past has always played stuff by Manfred Mann and Gerry & The
Pacemakers is loudly knocking out Christmas songs from Bing Crosby. <i>Deck the
Halls, Jingle Bells, Let it Snow, Let It Snow</i> and the inevitable <i>White Christmas</i> which as far as I’m
concerned he can dream about for as much as he likes, I’m not joining him. The music has a nineteen-fifties austerity saccharine slush to it that gets inside your
ears and won’t leave. I’d put my iPod on
but then I wouldn’t be able to hear my name being called. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’m there for 40 minutes.
The tape rounds on itself and begins to repeat. The receptionists all hum along as they shift
files from one stack to another and then forget where they’ve put their pens. Eventually I get inside. This is after two further sessions of sitting
in line in different rooms, a blood pressure measure, an arm labelling, a questionnaire
completed, an authority to proceed signed, clothes into a plastic bag and
special pants put on. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
They find something.
There’s a dull sinking in my stomach.
With my agreement they then decide to remove it there and then. I’m strapped up and the growth is sliced and cauterised,
both sides. It takes around five minutes
although this feels like fifty. It's not without discomfort. By way of diversion the Muslim nurse tells me
she’s finished her Christmas shopping which is reassuring to hear. I haven’t even started mine. I then get my glasses returned to me and I’m
helped back to the post-op area. Seats,
trolleys, dumper bins. I get handed a
cup of tea. “You can go home once you’ve passed water”, the receptionist tells me. “Have a biscuit, they usually make you feel
better”. It's hard to resist but I manage it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
At the desk a cluster of ancillary staff and nurses are discussing
household cleaners and how you can’t get Ajax anymore. This is true.
Ajax, the wonder product, used to
be able to see off just about anything. If
you had a tin at home you were ready for the world. Just like prednisolone.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
I’m allowed to leave.
Taxi home, handful of discharge leaflets, anti-biotics and a letter for
the GP in my hand. Back again in the
spring by which time Bing Crosby will have been boxed and we’ll be back to The
Searchers and The Fourmost. Clean and clear. Something to look forward to.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-87983354791065685822013-11-11T09:48:00.002+00:002013-11-11T09:48:39.254+00:00Approaching Zero<div class="MsoNormal">
The dark wonder drug lies in the drawer. In there, behind the socks, are the massed
heaps of green and white boxes containing my collection of as yet untaken prednisolone. Open the drawer a crack and they sort of
shimmer. 5mg tabs. Full
of fatness, sleeplessness, reflux and fear.
Taking these back at the beginning the world was a desperately dark place. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Up at the clinic, once the diagnosis had been confirmed, and
the pain had magically lifted, they told me I might be on these things for a
time. There’ll be side effects, some
worse than others. You might get a moon
face, a fat neck and a humped back. Weight
could hang onto you like sliding lard. I
looked up photographs of sufferers and saw them. There was something defective and old about
the way they represented themselves. They
didn’t want themselves photographed. They
smiled painfully from somewhere deep in their disability. They were how the world was back in the 1950s
only this was now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I gave up eating, almost, and went to the gym as often as I
could. This weight won’t get me I told
myself and neither did it, miraculously. Instead I was overtaken by a sort of paranoia,
a fear of company, a dislike for being anywhere crowds were. Didn’t do readings, didn’t go out much, I stayed at home.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tapering was the buzz word.
The dose would slide down the scale in a sloping line. I began on 40 mg daily with a whole armful of
additional drugs to counteract the side effects of the first. Stuff to fix the calcium drain from my bones, to stop the stomach acids roaring up
my throat, to fix my blood. Might take
18 months, advised the GP, to get down to zero.
In the background was the vague suggestions that for some people zero
never actually came. I read about
it. Patients who’d become sufferers in
middle age and were still full of prednisolone fear when they were 80. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But as the taper sloped, ever so gradually, the fear began
to dissipate. The nose bleeds
stopped. The sleepless nights slowed
down. The pain which had taken over all
my major muscles never returned. I got down to 10 and then 5 and then 1. I stopped carrying boxes of the drug around
with me as a bulwark against missing a dose.
Now I’m in new territory, facing
days where prednisolone does not feature.
I’m through the sound barrier in a place where anything can happen. Yesterday I took nothing. Today a single tablet. Tomorrow I’ll take nothing again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Out there are prednisolone free skies. Ones where there is no polymyalgia and no
paranoia. It’s taken three years. What will I write about now? How shall I continue to observe medical
practise and report on the NHS? But,
given my age, I’m sure something will shortly be along.<o:p></o:p></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-53743119239189047392013-10-22T10:45:00.000+01:002013-10-24T09:42:44.351+01:00Sit For Relief<div class="MsoNormal">
In the surgery I’m on the long seat that’s never quite wide
enough. There are notices everywhere
around me warning against noise: coughing?
(join our cancer survey), flu (vaccinate now if you are over 60) and Bin It (if
you have a cold). No one I can hear is
making a sound. That’s not quite
true. There’s a mumble in Polish going
on between mother and child in the distant corner. You can hear the phone ringing in a back
office. But apart from that the whole
place is spookily quiet.<b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The over-weight guy with hair greased upright on his head
like this was still the 80s has been told to go outside to smoke. I can see him sitting on a low surgery wall. He’s encased in a great green parka with an
RAF roundel on the back lettered up with
the logo of The Who. He’s come back in once
waving something that looks like a hookah
and asked if it was okay to smoke electronically and has been told no. When they call his name he won’t hear. He stares into the distance, watching the
traffic, enjoying the NHS air.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why am I here, again, god the third time in two weeks? Because the cyst has again been doing its
stuff and making walking more or less untenable. Although I did manage it round at least a
dozen studios and open houses yesterday as part of the Made In Roath art extravaganza. I say managed it. Mostly what I did was sit on people’s stairs,
sofas, chairs and garden walls. Recover,
up, on to the next venue, sit for relief, try to imagine it wasn’t
happening. Sort of worked.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the festival’s highlight, The Actual Museum of Roath (a
shed in a garden on Werfa Street), Sir Alfred Street and Dr Glen Roy explained
to us all the true history of the district.
To think that I’d been deluded by library fact for so long. That cave painting they discovered in the caverns
under Roath Park Lake was, of course, the outline of a prehistoric Clarks. For years I’d thought it was of a rusty bike. And the economic wars with Splott over Roath’s
access to the sea via Clifton Street I’d put down as internecine fighting
between mods and rockers. Chairman Moy’s
long march to the Wild Park on the edges of Llanishen I’d managed to miss
completely. As I had the discovery of
the great Mappa Maindee with Roath shown there as twice the size of India. Which it is, of course.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW_NhwNg_PQbJDGNjVwRa5RICdhnCY5Vsz96fQYzO9U5QZosLpHb4GvQHBvwEOlxnyNLQf9TO-35VXe1igGkF78P3Aerfu7lhjif7x0T6YKMMz6S78Q3ukvCWMdYv-_1znRMYHcTvtV6U/s1600/Made+In+Roath+Oct+2013+033.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW_NhwNg_PQbJDGNjVwRa5RICdhnCY5Vsz96fQYzO9U5QZosLpHb4GvQHBvwEOlxnyNLQf9TO-35VXe1igGkF78P3Aerfu7lhjif7x0T6YKMMz6S78Q3ukvCWMdYv-_1znRMYHcTvtV6U/s320/Made+In+Roath+Oct+2013+033.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the film, Sir Donald Street (who looked a little like Sir
Alfred but with a beard) showed off a collection of Roath artefacts of wondrous
variety: The Elm Street Marbles, bronze
age cooking pans, slippers from the age of the Vikings, Ifor Novello’s once syphoned petrol
in a bottle. I left truly chastened by the extent of my misunderstanding of the past.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Round in Arran Street where Luke Rice was displaying his new
take on Broadway (the American version totally shadowed by our own native
working-class bohemia) I met Wing Tang.
Wing’s trick was to do two minute
instant portraits, drink a beer, and then do the same portrait again. In pencil.
Succeeding versions became increasingly shaky with the faces more real
but the hair increasingly fuzzy. For a
pound he agreed to do me. No beer, he’d
run out. The result was a reasonable likeness,
if stern. Finch unsmilingly facing what's next.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There must have been something in the air. I managed the walk from there to a viewing of
Betina Skovbro’s Facing The Park photos with only one stop (Sandringham Road). Betina has gone along the run of terraced
houses that face the Mill Park’s Waterloo Hill end and photographed the
inhabitants – adults, children, pets – and then had them blown up larger than
life size and affixed to the insides of their windows. The super-sized residents stared out at the
park, smiling. Almost everyone had taken
part. The warmth was palpable.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I get given stronger painkillers. New stuff with a higher opiate content. Do not operate machinery, it says on the
label. If you are on ladders, do not work
without a firm hold, warns the Information for the User leaflet. Alcohol will increase the effect
significantly. That’s it then. No more whiskey-fuelled wallpaper hanging for
me. TV and Viking slippers instead.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Along Newport Road on the way back to the car I pass house gardens
in which inhabitants have dumped the past’s detritus. White goods with their doors hanging off, bed
frames, sodden mattresses, mounds of brick, stone and fractured mortar. Roath’s past given up on waiting for the
future. Unless Sir Alfred and Dr Glen would like it,
of course.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
[in the photo - The Museum academics - TRE Harris, Dr Glen Roy and Sir Alfred Street]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-23131506713749643242013-09-02T08:47:00.000+01:002013-09-02T08:52:16.105+01:00Waiting<div class="MsoNormal">
The rules have changed.
Well not the rules exactly but the conventions. It used to be that waiting was done in the
nearest thing to silence possible. It
would be carried out in richly cold, ill-lit rooms across the land, stuffed
solid with men in ancient overcoats, women in hand-knitted sweaters, and children
befuddled with straggly scarfs. Queuing
in quietude, the odd person reading the Daily Mirror but the rest staring somnambulantly
into space. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our local doctor’s surgery was exactly like this. He drank, my mother told me. He would tank up as protection against the morning
rush of gout and gangrene and diphtheria.
His hands were cold. His bag
would be open, the appurtenances of his doctor’s trade disgorging onto his
leather-edged blotter, his calendar, and the rest of the pill-boxed clutter on
his mahogany desk. He always smelled of gin.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But outside was order.
Nurse Ratchet, our local Cardiff equivalent, maintained iron control. You were seen in the sequence in which you
arrived. No exceptions. You sat in ice silence. You listened keenly for the mumble of your
name. When it came you got up and walked
into the consulting room, knocking just before you went on in.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But it’s different today.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m in the early evening emergency clinic at the local
GPs. For emergency read this is the only
way to get an appointment with anyone before
you die. I’d like to see a doctor. I’ve got a date available end of next month,
any good? Not really, I’m in a lot of
discomfort. Is it an emergency,
love? Yes. Right.
5.45 this evening. But expect the
surgery to be full. So you arrive and you
wait. Time passes slowly, here in the
mountains. The fish move round in their
tank.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once was you could get several chapters under your belt during
this forced interregnum. Not anymore. The United Nations have taken up residence in
the carpeted waiting room. On my bench
are an extended family from Eastern Europe.
Mother, two pushchairs, five children of various ages, the teenager on
her mobile, the younger ones playing chase the monster and jump up and down on
him, shrieking at full volume, until
he’s flat across the floor. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the far corner a couple from the sub-continent sit in fat, animated discussion. She has her head covered. He reads to her from a paper he flutters in
the vapid air. She waves her arms. They could be discussing the price of wheat,
the Council’s new wheelie bin proposals or news from relatives back home. Whatever it is they are not cowed into tranquillity
by the fact that there are others in the room.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Two white girls in hoop earrings and trainers tap their feet
to the sounds coming from their headphones.
There’s leakage, a bit like a
Brillo pad being rhythmically bounced off a metal tray, but by now in the
rolling by years I’ve got used to that.
It’s a background I can filter out.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The black Africans are something else. Joyous, alive and with personalities that
reach out to fill the room. Already the
tall one, the first to arrive, has engaged the receptionist in loud, joking banter. He is followed into the room by a friend
wearing an oversize t who places a small beat box on the floor. Out of it come the amplified rhythms of juju
hip hop. There is finger snapping, much
smiling and a load of body swaying which Victor Sylvester would have described
as dancing but here is simply a way of getting through the day. The two are joined by three others who
enthusiastically bop around their corner of the waiting room as if this were a Saturday
night at the bottle shop.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The receptionist ignores the intrusion. Arriving patients smile and sway in
sympathy. The NHS should provide this
everywhere.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Later, at the pharmacy over the road, where the waiting area
is almost a completer replica of the doctor’s – same patients, same seats, same
NHS information notices, but no fish -
the extended Eastern European family cluster the desk. Bar a girl of around eleven no one speaks
English. The pharmacist is asking
important questions. Is she on any other
medication? Where is the pain? Is it jabbing or is it there all the
time? The daughter does her best, the
mother points to her mouth, her throat and then her stomach. Yes, says the girl. Which one, asks the pharmacist? The mother smiles and nods her head. She is given a bottle of Gaviscon and a box
of tissues and the suggestion that she go back to the GP if she needs any more
help. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I get my usual armful of prednisolone plus various other
medications to help counteract the steroid’s more evil ways. How do you cope, I ask? We do, is the reply.
Behind me the Black Africans have all arrived.
They haven’t got the beat box out yet but I’m sure they will.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-23278903415482796762013-07-20T13:04:00.000+01:002013-07-20T13:04:32.882+01:00Nye Bevan Started This<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’m so used to travelling to the hospital by now that the
car drives there itself. Two
roundabouts, four sets of lights, swerves, chicanes, zebras, staff arriving on
shift in a steady stream, patients drifting the roadway like clouds; a world of purpose melding with a world of the
lost. In the strong early sun the
features that endear this outpost of the NHS to me are all still present. Gangs of smokers, babes in arms, dressing gowns
flapping cluster the entrances. Consultants
in suits rattle into their mobiles as they stride the stairs. Ancillary staff, mouths full of crisps and coffee,
dot the summer grass. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Along the corridors which run back from that entrance-framing
and slightly frightening full-length portrait of Nye Bevan, founder of health
free at the point of need, the crowds surge.
There is purpose here. Overweight administrators roll Tesco trolleys of
paper files, patients are on sticks, the tattooed limp, there are mad bastards in gaping gowns. Heading for the clinics are the aged in
catalogue shoes, the young on their
career paths to glory, well-meaning volunteers,
new patients, returning visitors, the don’t know what work is, the can’t be
bothered. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’m in the hands of physiotherapy, the latest referral in the Service’s attempts to still my synovial
cyst. I’m
signed on for a series of sessions in the gym.
It’s called <i>back2basics </i>or something
equally uninspiring. I ask at reception
and the woman there isn’t sure what it’s actually called either. You wait here, love, they’ll call you when
they’re ready. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Stoically I sit
myself among the limping and the lame, the wheelchair bound, the stick bearers,
the becrutched; those carried here, and
those who stumbled in on their own. Are
these to be my fellow gym mates?
Nope. They’re real patients
around whom hope drains away like sand. On
the wall are adverts for support equipment
including an ergonomic aluminium exoskeleton that could have been designed for
Rocket Man. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
With my pain in retreat I feel I should be at the David
Lloyd not here. Inside it’s like being
back in school. A 50s set-up of varnished
wooden wall bars, beams, ropes hanging from a high light-filled ceiling. All that’s missing is a vaulting horse. In its stead stands a fan and next to it a
water-cooler. Be sure to drink from here
often, instructs the instructor, ice-cold mouthfuls in cardboard cones.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
There are nine of us with everyone on the surface looking
fit enough to run for charity. In a side
room there’s a mad bugger wearing camouflage shorts and covered with tattoos at
a density thicker than burning tyres. He
has slash scars across the side of his head and a face that would frighten
ships. Staff are measuring the strength
of his grip. He once, I imagine, could
crush scaffold poles and punch holes in reinforced doors. Is he with us? No, thank god, he’s not.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
We are each given a set of forms to complete which, in
addition to the usual identity questions, ask us how we feel about the lives we
live. Write down an activity you find
hard to do and measure how much pain is involved on a scale of 1 to 10. The guy next to me, who looks like Nick Hewer
from The Apprentice, has written <i>Harry
Belafonte</i> down as his name. I’m sure
this can’t be right but I let it pass.
His hard to do activity is picking up pieces of toast from the
floor. I think for a bit then put down
shopping at Homebase as mine. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
We set to. There’s
stretching, floor mat work reminiscent of Pilates, circuits, sessions on a
treadmill, stepping on and off a bench while holding a fairly heavy medicine
ball. Do this in your own time and at
your own level, yells the instructor. A
guy in a Superman t-shirt is running at sprint pace on the machine while a
woman in a loose-fitting ensemble sourced from Laura Ashley has given up and is
collapsed at the side waiting for world to slow down.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I crack on, sweat coming out of me like rain. It’s the old days back. Step up, breathe, step back. Chuck the ball at the wall. Catch it.
Squat, stand, leap in the air.
That’s it, shouts the instructor, go for it. I do. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
After twenty minutes or so we are told to stop. We cluster in a heat-ridden clump around the
gym’s single fan. That’s given you all
an idea of what we’ll be doing over the next five weeks, Norman tells us. I think that’s his name. No
mention of backs. Amazingly mine still
feels fine. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Out at the lockers a guy who reminds me of Tony from the Sopranos
tells me he’d normally run a mile rather than exercise. But running a mile is exercise, I reply. Guess it is, he says, unfolding a crushed
jacket from his brand-new red Cardiff City rucksack. But I did enjoy it all. Sweat drips off my nose and fans out like
Australia across my back. Me too. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-23024464593307569542013-07-01T10:43:00.000+01:002013-07-02T11:10:57.809+01:00The Psychic Centre<div class="MsoNormal">
The way to overcome the synovial cyst pressing the spinal nerve
is to hang the leg down below the peddle.
It’s a cycling technique I’m proud of, makes you look like a boy racer
ready to round a corner at speed.
Although doing this on my folding Bromfield - small wheels, no crossbar,
handlebars like a giant bottle opener - can look somewhat surreal.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s something about these bikes that makes teenagers
shriek. It happens again today. As we roll up through the crowds along
Churchill Way, the feeder hidden deep beneath us, a gang of bright sparks at a
bus stop start the cat calls. ‘Come on
boy, get your feet turning, push those peddles.’ Why? Better than chants of **&!!!*** I guess.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bikes are certainly the best mode of transport for post-Polymyalgic,
lower-spine synovial cyst sufferers.
There can’t be that many of us out there. I'm down to 2 mg daily of the wonder drug and the cyst is falling in and
out of focus like pulsar. Sitting is about
the only sure relief I know: the spine opens and the the pressure on the cyst reduces. Doing this on two wheels lets you move about as
well which makes it just about perfect.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m leading a psychogeographical tour of Cardiff, and doing it by bike. There are twenty of us, all winding our way
through the city centre. It’s Saturday afternoon
and the sun is uncharacteristically blazing.
The streets are dry and full of the joyful.
The pubs and bars have spilled out way beyond the confines of their
smokers-only enclosures. Shoppers
in t-shirts have their arms full of brand new purchases.
You would not know there was a recession.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’re heading up to the place in Park Lane where Bute’s Dock
feeder, a sort of canal without boats built to fill his first West Dock with
water, emerges briefly. It’s there, stuffed
into a two foot gap, fifteen feet below us, darkly surging. Everyone is terribly impressed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After this it’s the Glamorgan Canal underpass at Kingsway
and then the psychic entre of Cardiff. Everyone
wants to reach this spot. The psychic
centre – a place of power and mystery. I’ve
told them all that this is what it is anyway.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We get there through the surging crowds leaving Bute Park,
decked in <i>Help For Heroes</i> t-shirts and Battle of Waterloo military hats made
from cardboard. It’s Armed Forces Day. I’d
forgotten. The tattoos and the beer
swill down the pathways. “This is Cardiff’s
psychic centre,” I announce just as the refuse collection service arrives to
empty the bin next to which I am standing.
I plough on regardless. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Here,” I tell them and the massed bus queues and straggling
car parkers who have all moved I towards
me to hear what’s happening. “Here is where the power lines cross. The Roman roads north and east and west, the
canal with its iron and coal, the ley lines running down from the Beacon’s
standing stones, the secret tunnels that access the castle, the roadways into
and out of the capital. They all meet
here. This is a vast nexus of subliminal
power, ancient and modern, lay and spiritual, real and imaginary. Can you feel it?” The entranced crowd nod. They can. It’s here, the vibrancy, the energy. If we pulse it up into our bodies I’m sure we
can all fly. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I tell them the story about how the late blind bass player
and poet Dave Reid would be out on the town drinking and when he’d had enough would find his way up here
simply by sensing the ley lines. He’d sprawl
on the floor and thrash his white stick about until the police arrived. What could they do with a drunk blind
man? They’d take him home. Reid’s personal and free taxi service. He pulled this trick many times although once, after the
cops had unloaded him into his Cathedral Road bedsit, he chose to re-emerge and started flailing about again in the road there.
This time the police were not so obliging. They took him back, all the way to the psychic
centre, and then into police HQ nearby where they locked the drunken blind man
in the cells. £25 fine and bound
over. That’s what psychic power can do.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The crowd laugh, in sympathy perhaps. I’m doing well. The cyst is in retreat. Cardiff around me is real. The past merges
with the present.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The tour finishes at the new library. We’ve gone around the back of Wetherspoon’s Prince
of Wales where the fake outline of St Mary’s Church hangs high in the air. So much of the city is fake. The West Gate, attached to the Castle wall,
is a Burges recreation. The stone circle
in Bute Park is artificial, put there by the Gorsedd of the Bards when the
Eisteddfod visited. The Gorsedd itself a
fake, imagined by antiquarian and all-round literary man Iolo Morganwg two
hundred years ago and now a fabrication so long that it has become venerated.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the Library, wedged in between the drinkers and the
Wagamama diners, I perform the poem of mine which has been engraved onto the Library’s
front glass. It’s a list, as many of my
works are. This one rolls the characters
– street and otherwise – who have made Cardiff into a reverberating chant. Here, I tell them, the past really does
become the present. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
Near
this spot you could once<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
cross
a Cardiff bridge<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
before
that a Norman ditch<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
before
that Welsh water<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
before
that Roman mud<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
Was
there much here<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
found
in the clay?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
socketed
axe head<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
with
converging ribs<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
bone
fragment pot<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
a
few microliths<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
Now
all lost<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What we’ve got instead is the vibrant future. Leg down, one
peddle cycling, I head off. Synovial
bugger, you haven’t got me, not yet.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
**<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Prednisolone update:
dose reduced to 1 mg / 2 mg on alternate days. Ghosts of unsettled sleep and fear of crowds
finally put to rest. Does the wonder
drug ease pains from the cyst? Jury hasn't told me yet.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Creative Update: since March 2012 the house hunting, house
purchase, property development, battles with planning and with Welsh Water, management
of project, finding the money, selection of builder and then actual building with its noise,
disruption, neighbourhood agony, super
stress, dust and constant timetable readjustment “they’ll put the flue liner in
tomorrow”, they don’t, you ring up to complain, they don’t get back, all this
has taken its toll. Writing has reduced
to a trickle. Blog meander. A few e-mails. No poems.
Not a new piece of verse in almost 9 months excepting the RS celebratory ode as a
new commission, proving, I guess, that it can still be done.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Creative Future: kick start, soon.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
House Update: have moved, Southminster a dead duck. Bronwydd glory with its trees and peace
instead.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Status: married, again, and it’s wonderful<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Car: Ford escort staggering on but on its last MOT and has
to be changed. Can anyone get enthusiastic
about these things? Not me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Family: enlarging.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Music: Georgia Ruth, Ray Charles, John Fogerty, The Ventures, Max Richter –
bought them this month.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Books: <i>Edging The
Estuary</i> – the trail along the waterway – due March then June, then mid-July
and now July's end, 2013. My fear of having a title out at the same
time as the Eisteddfod boom at long last realised. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Films: went to see <i>Man
of Steel</i> and it was like being inside a computer game. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What’s on the player as I write this? Neal Casal. He visited Chapter once. I somehow managed not to
be there.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-60976625284061894042013-06-13T17:00:00.001+01:002013-06-13T18:12:10.644+01:00By Bike<div class="MsoNormal">
Predicting when it will strike is rather like trying to tell
when the next earthquake will ripple, out there, along the San Andreas
fault. There’s a whole science built
around trying to tell when the earth will next quake. Armies exist of researchers, observers,
record keepers and data gatherers. But
my synovial cyst, the one there in my lower spine, bulging like a peanut, a
jelly bean, a leak of oil coming out of the gearbox that is my no longer that
powerful back - that one has only me keeping track of its meanderings, its
appearances, its pressure points, its miserable actions and reactions</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve been tracking it for almost a year now. I use a spread sheet – giving it daily marks
on the scale of 1 to 10. 1 equals barely
discernible. 10 is screaming agony. I’ve
got to 8 and often hit 7. The last time
was on the way home from the Park Plaza bar in the drumming rain, Guinness sloshing
inside me. The discomfort just got to me. I had to
sit on a university wall up beyond the Queen Street rail bridge. Wait there to be rescued, rain in my ears,
rain down my neck, rain in my face. But
sitting did hold the pain back. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I showed the spread sheet to my specialist. Showed him the highlights anyway. He took absolutely no interest. They come and go these things, he told me,
waving my scruffy bit of paper away. They
are hard to predict. We have to wait and
see if they are unbearable. Are they
unbearable right now? I’m sitting there
in his patient’s chair, stress banging through me on account of how I’m sure
any minute he’s going to recommend me for a major op, metal inserted, walk with
difficulty, never to be the same old me again.
No, they’re not. I tell him this
truthfully. They aren’t. This consultation morning unaccountably and unpredictably
I’m utterly pain free.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The following week, however, it all comes rolling back. The need to sit down all the time to gain
relief. Or to stand at a funny angle,
leaning forward to out to the right. It alleviates
things. I do it in the queue at the
single basket till in Marks and Spencer’s.
Fellow shoppers look at me as if I’m a weirdo. A loon just arrived from the farm. Just got in from Mars, I tell them. I have to stand like this because of the
gravity. I smile. They turn away.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve moved house, too, which has made things worse. There seems to be a direct correlation
between stress and discomfort levels. It’s
as if somehow the raised shoulders and
strained stomach that accompany worry unwittingly open the neural pathways to the
doings of the synovial cyst. Let the
bastard through. Let him beat me once
again. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not that I’m really that keen on allowing anything to actually
beat me. I fight back. I’m trying whiskey this week which, despite
not really doing much to interfere with the synovial process, certainly makes
life feel a lot better. In the new house
I’ve got the single malts – I have a collection now – in a line at eye level in
the kitchen cupboard. Like books of
poetry by poets I admire. Inspirational
and always worth returning to.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I forgot to take the prednisolone yesterday and, if truth be
told as Nessa would say, I may well have forgotten the day before too. Post move the old routines have all
collapsed. I barely know where I
am. I opened a box marked in the removal
man’s scrawly hand as “shoes”. It
contained cushions. I did see a box labelled
“drugs” in the back of a new cupboard somewhere but have yet to find them
again. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Brompton I have found.
My folding bike sits, collapsed like a transformer, under the
stairs. I’ll be on it tomorrow. Leaning out over the handle bars at that
Martian angle, moving while sitting. A
painless process. And I can do it in the
streaming, fresh faced, open and very
earthly air.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
On Saturday 22<sup>nd</sup> and Saturday 29<sup>th</sup>
June, 2013 I’ll be conducting a Cardiff delta exploration, to be done by
bike. The estuary that is Cardiff revealed. The city you barely knew existed. Two and half hours of anecdote, cycling, poetry,
alternative history, topography and comment.
If you don’t own a bike we can loan you one. More details can be found here <a href="http://www.cardiffcycletours.com/real-cardiff-by-bike/">http://www.cardiffcycletours.com/real-cardiff-by-bike/</a> No mentions of prednisolone nor synovial
cysts. Just maybe the odd Martian lean
as we cycle into the wind. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-29822532515763244152013-04-19T13:35:00.005+01:002013-04-19T13:36:31.456+01:00Facet<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
So it goes like this.
I’m in the car driving back from the builders merchants with a boot full
of home improvement requisites (batteries, screws, rubber gloves, a new saw with
which to tackle the dead tree, a bucket, escutcheons, door knobs, glue) when
the phone goes. Being ultimately lawful
I negotiate the bend and get myself stopped on the kerb before I take it. With a voice sounding like something direct
from <i>Stella</i> it’s the hospital. Ringing me. Gosh.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s UHW X-Ray here. We want to get you in for your facet joint
injection.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Your facet joint injection I’ve got you down here for one.
Mr Finch. Yes?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, but that request was made months ago when was in real
pain.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oh there’s a three month waiting list see love sorry can we
do you Friday?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No. I mean I <i>was</i> in pain, enough to boil eggs on my
back at the time, but in the nature of
this cursed condition that’s passed now and I’m pain free again. Well, relatively. I don’t
see the point. Can I defer it?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ll put you down as a cancelation then.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No, don’t do that. I
needed that injection when it was the only thing available to me that could alleviate
the pain and then it wasn’t available. I
had to wait. When I rang up your
department said they’d get back to me soon.
And it’s been 90 whole long days.
If I’d turned up at A&E after falling down drunk you’d have got me
round to X Ray and checked my bones for breaks almost immediately. But because I suffer from a condition (as opposed
to getting pissed which I guess is just part of daily life) I’m slung on an NHS
waiting list. That’s not equitable. I want the thing deferred so that next time condition
strikes I can call down my already done waiting time and have the thing
straight away. Can I do that?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I listen but she’s gone.
It was my use of the word “equitable” I’m sure. The line is dead.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I check the private medicine website. Facet Joint Injections. Available within the week. £500.
Nye, your great vision has become terribly muddied. I decide to go to the pub instead.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-29833497275212604132013-03-11T11:43:00.000+00:002013-03-11T12:22:54.157+00:00Rebuilding<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the car park at Llandough the easterly wind is cutting
through my jeans. It’s March and the weather
is following form. There’s no one here,
hardly. Some workers on the hospital redevelopment,
their vans dots the tarmac. These are the
trades in all their multiplicity -
plasterers, electricians, heating engineers – <i>no job too big or too small – all aspects of building work undertaken</i>
– style added in olde English font, mobile numbers the only point of contact.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My appointment is for 7.45 am, an out of regular-hours slot
beaten only by the 8.00 pm Saturday evening appointment I was once offered by
X-Ray. The Llandough waiting room, a warm refuge full of happy posters and
machines offering granola bars, rice cakes and healthy bags of nuts, has one other
client. In the vastness of the sea of chairs we sit
not acknowledging each other. He’s on
sticks, unshaven, wears a builder’s check shirt coupled with trackie
bottoms. He’s got a Bluetooth hands free
stuck in his ear in case anything urgent comes up. Nothing does. <br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The receptionist has turned on breakfast TV for our pleasure. Primary colour vapidity delivered by a well-groomed
couple lounging in arm chairs. Their voices bounce excitedly in that new
century pre-fab high street manner where everything is perky bright and vicissitude
is permanently banished. The book I’m
reading can’t compete. It’s a history of
the blues with stories of black men in river deltas twelve-baring themselves to
fame and Muddy Waters sitting outside Mississippi juke joints thrilling to the
sound of his first record coming at him out of the windows. But before the hi-vol emptiness of early
morning TV it’s a total non-starter.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Right on the button I'm called in and asked questions. I’m
made to stand on tip-toe and have rubber-headed hammers tapped on my
knees and lower legs. Bend your
knee. Straighten it. Fine. We, the consultant and I, gather around
his computer screen and look at a flow of successive images. These were taken
during my last MRI scan - my spine revealed in cross section. Bones and the shadow shapes of muscle and cartilage.
There it is, says the consultant, pointing.
The white blip of the cyst. I’ve
seen it before. It looks like a seed – a
flageolet or a butter bean. It moves and
presses against the nerve. Is it hurting
now? No.
Excellent. You are having a good
day. He smiles, indulgently. We’ll let it alone for three months and I’ll
see you again. If it’s still a problem
them we’ll have you in, push this muscle aside, cut out a bit of bone, drain the
offending cyst and then put some metal
in there to hold you together. I don’t
know if I should be stunned or not. I
don’t say anything. We shake hands and I go - back out through the morning
wastes of the TV drenched reception and through the double doors into the cold
air. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s a familiarity to all this. The consultant spells out a future and then
you find yourself wandering the car
park, your vehicle lost, your head full of fear and fury. But I get straight to it, the green car of
mine with the rust everywhere and the demister which hasn’t worked for three
years. I climb in and drive back. Rock and roll on the player. Old stuff, like me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the house my construction workers are moving apace. Where the dining-room wall once was are now
acro props and dust. Out back in the
wreckage of the garden a cement mixer cranks and spins. The walls of the new extension are rising
from the flower beds. Where they meet
the house they mesh. There are metal
pins strapped across the cracks in the plaster.
A man in a check shirt is tapping the brick work with a hammer. Another is squirting gunk from a syringe into
the gaps. They are similar processes, surgery and construction. Both start early, both remove rot, both fix
by pin and glue. One set wear check shirts,
the other gowns and bright hats. Both walk away saying see how you go. If you have any trouble give us a call. All aspects covered. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Should I be worried?
Given the prospect of having to spend a fair slab of time on my back
waiting for post-op recovery not to speak of running the risk of something
going wrong and the pain not disappearing but increasing I guess I should. But there’s been so much of this stuff, going
on for so long and appearing and reappearing so often that I’ve come to accept
this as the norm. Just be grateful, I
tell myself, that you are hanging on in.
Like I say in the poem:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Beat<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
John Tripp 59<br />
B S Johnson 41<br />
Arthur Rimbaud 37<br />
Buddy Holly 33<br />
<br />
Kingsley Amis 74<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
not managed him yet<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I will.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-69905513680863625942013-02-19T09:36:00.000+00:002013-02-20T09:06:01.861+00:00Beyond The Day Care Unit<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Physiotherapy sits in a wasteland way up beyond most of the clinics
I already know. It’s deeper into the
hospital than X-Ray or Pharmacy, both places where I’ve spent more hours on
hold than I have with BT. It’s beyond Short Stay Surgical where I’ve sat in fear and
trepidation waiting for catheters to be inserted and cameras on long flexible
sticks to be turned on. It’s out there, further
than the cubby hole occupied by Radio Glamorgan, UHW’s own station. Here Vince Savile, hospital porter and
brother to the late ungreat and now late himself other Savile once deejayed. Does anyone now listen to these
enterprises? There are nineteen
presenters all beaming in the staff photo and twenty-three thousand visitors
recorded as having visited the station’s new web site. Local radio clearly rocks on. Then there it is. Physiotherapy announces the sign. I’ve arrived.
The waiting room is dense with seats, buff, serried,
uninviting. There’s a rack next to
reception where you can leave your crutches.
The art of the recycle. The places is like Lourdes. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m here to learn how manage. What can't be fixed can certainly be accommodated. So I'm told.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rich, his name is on his badge, the man who will sort me
out, is fitter looking that I was at his age.
In fact he’s fitter looking than I’ve ever been at any age. With his huge healthy hands he takes notes, asks
questions, learns about my case. He checks
my records, my graphs, my MRI scans on the hospital system. He tells me that it’s the cyst that’s the
issue and the way it bulges, flows, ebbs, and presses. I had an idea it was. We can’t solve it here,
he says. But we can help manage. Yep.
Manage. Word of the age. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I get a demonstration of lower-back specific exercises –
stretches and flexes – things to help with the discomfort, when it flares. He
hands me a sheet showing the routine being done by a stick man. Round head, smiling face, no hair, thin
body. Me. To a tee.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back home I do the stick man thing while staring out of the
window. Point hands at feet and hold for
thirty seconds. Sit up. Bend back.
Breathe. Repeat. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Beyond are men here to build a new extension. They have their hoods up against the cold and
wear knee-high leather boots like they might have done at the battle of Omdurman or when riding
through the brush in the cowboy west. Now
it has stopped endlessly raining they
are digging up the patio. They uproot
plants and crack slabs into slivers ready for the arrival of the mechanical
digger. This wonder machine on tracks
will excavate the footings.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By now, like me, this house had almost all of its innards
explored and tested. It’s old, it’s been
around, it needs some tlc. Rods have
been inserted into cavities, coverings have been lifted to check the
sub-structure. Cracks have been discovered,
stitched and sealed. Roofs have been
waterproofed. Steps mended. The framework has been stabilised. Damp ingress excised. Blood counted. Temperature taken. Wiring renewed. Body declared to be about as okay as it’ll
ever be “for a build of this age”. It’ll
all be okay for the medium term. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Quite how long that medium term will be is no one is
actually prepared to say.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The sky is cold, winter blue. Uprooted
plants and fragments of slab begin to appear stacked in the skip. The dross we no longer need. When they are done I’ll get the guy on the
roof with the scraper and the claw hammer to have a go at Mr Synovial down
there in my lower spine. Hit it a
couple of times, squeeze it out and then stick the incision back together with
two screws, some hi-flo instant set grout and a metal strip. Plaster over. Allow to dry then paint. You’d never know there’d been anything
there. Okay for the medium term. That’s all I need.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have a cup of tea and two naproxen. Next week I see the neurosurgeon. He does scraping out and re-grouting, so I’ve
been told. Does it with micro precision and has an 80% success rate. He doesn’t wear a hood and comes to work by
BMW and wearing patent leather
shoes. He probably doesn’t listen to a radio which
has a large battery stuck to its outside with masking tape. That’s my guess. But how do I know?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-75758091940470193002013-02-04T09:56:00.000+00:002013-02-05T09:17:17.964+00:00The Blues<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the waiting room I have my head deep in my book. It’s in so deep that when they call my name I
fail to hear . It takes the receptionist
tapping her feet in front of me, files in hand, to get me to stir. This is the Welsh National Health and I’m
being called in more than fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. Aneurin
Bevan, your dream is coming true at last.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The trick is, of course, that after checking your weight and
your blood pressure (what do you want me to do? I’ll need an arm) and your name
and address, mother’s maiden name, medical number, GP details, birthdate and
secret password (mine is <i>arse</i>,
apparently there’s a move on to popularise these once discredited words) I get
to sit in waiting room number two. Empty apart from me and my book. Medical students come and go. A trolley of files rolls by. The leaflets on the notice board advertising the rheumatic hip self-help
group and what to do when you fall over flutter in its breeze.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m reading the late Robert Palmer’s <i>Deep Blues</i>, an excellent history of blues music. Palmer was a music journalist and fanatical
record collector with a personal library of blues albums that ran to
thousands. He’s explaining how it was
that jazz improvisation came from negro string bands and early jump-up groups having to extend the length of their
numbers. They had to do this to satisfy
the demand of dancers who didn’t ever want to sit down. Middle of this my name again gets called. This time I hear. I pad my way to today’s
target - the consultants room.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s all centred on this.
Me sitting there before the doctor, a pair of silent students arrayed
left, my file in all its fat and paper-stuffed glory in the centre of the
desk. The pred levels we’ll leave as
they are, 3 / 4 mgs on alternative days,
the consultant tells me. Get that down to 3 mgs
each day by the end of the month. The
synovial cyst is the real issue. Your MRI
scans show that it might not be growing but it’s certainly there. They are so unpredictable these things. It will take just a small shift for the pain to start for you again. She frowns sympathetically. You are not in pain now? I was last week but today, no.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are drugs we could put you on, gabapentin for example,
but it does have side effects. I get
read a list. There’s everything I've heard before on the
prednisolone danger directory and then more. Fat face, night frights, pain everywhere, bleeding stomach, head spins, fear of the outdoors, suicidal tendencies, hiccups. Get all those and you’d never leave your bed. Not everyone will suffer from these side
effects, she tells me, reassuringly. Up
to you. For now I’ll pass.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’ll see what we can do with your visit to the neurologist,
she continues. You’ve already been on
the waiting list for 3 months, can’t be long now. I’ll give him a call.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then I’m back on the street.
Nothing actually prescribed and nothing new to do. There are a few specialist consultations
out there somewhere in the future, maybe a spinal injection if that department
gets its act together and another visit to Rheumatology in six months’ time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What would Charley Patton or Robert Johnson have done? Sung about it a bit accompanied by their slide
guitars, <i>Pain Down My Leg Blues</i>, <i>Hollerin’
‘Bout Gabapentin, Shake That Synovial Thing Mama</i>, and then retreated to the bar. Alcohol, the great cure all. If in doubt put
half a bottle of Wild Turkey down your neck.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Patton died at 48, Johnson at 27. Doesn’t really give you hope. <o:p></o:p></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-77326043761929579092013-01-22T10:59:00.000+00:002013-01-22T10:59:53.670+00:00Pain Is Not A Precise Art<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Sometimes with pain you can make it start. With luck you can also make it stop. In my case that’s stand up, stretch a bit, and
then the electric begins to flash. Sit
and lean forward and after time the sparks begin to stop. But pain, of course, has an antipathy to regulation, and it has
ghosts. Just
when you think it’s gone it comes drifting on back: a veil, a bank of fog. It settles around you like a dark cloak. From out of the past there it is: a heavy hand holding you back.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
In desperation I’ve done all I know. High dose prednisolone, double naproxen, same
for co-codamol. Yoga breathing. Hot compresses. Ice. Lying
in a dark room, foetal position, Neil
Young’s <i>Psychedelic Pill</i> on the
player, loud, just to cover my moaning.
Today, though, we try for the light.
Out there, under the blue sky, heading for Homebase.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
It’s a simple activity.
Car journey, car park, short walk through the green-framed doors past
the display of cut-price couches, wheelbarrows and January-cheap Christmas decs. We’re heading for the lighting. New stuff for the hall. Easy.
But, naturally, it’s not. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The whole world has changed here. Where once I knew instinctively what a 60-watt
bulb looked and felt like, how bright it would be, how long it would it last,
how much it would cost, how hot it would get, how many times I’d need to change
it, today I’m lost. Watts have become lumens. Simple standard bayonet and screw fit have
been replaced by multi-sized prongs,
screws, turns, clips and holders. The
bulbs themselves have branched into
LEDS, halogens, incandescents and energy-savers with subdivisions that involve
sodium, mercury, metal halide, sealed beams and shatter-proof tops. Bulb shape
is a past thing too. Today they are
lozenges, globes, pyramids, cubes, drops, prongs and bubbles. Lamps in profusion. I have no idea which one I want.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Above the racks Homebase helpfully display a poster which
demystifies everything. Except it does
not. Lumens mix with watts, old merges
with new, nothing is clear, nothing gets printed on the sides of the Made In
China bulbs in the display below. I’d
like it bright. Chances are though that
I’ll end up buying something that takes ten minutes light up and will even then
not be bright enough to find the door.
There’s a light like that in our bathroom. I refuse to go in there for a pee without a
torch. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Right here the pain intervenes. Electricity in the lower leg. Rising fire.
I retreat to the store’s display of occasional furniture and sit. Usually
works. I’ve chosen a sort of armchair
that looks like a throwback from the 1950s.
The past keeps recycling. But then
I’m old enough now to have got used to that. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I lean forward and try to make myself invisible. But it’s no good. An extended family of Chinese origin arrive,
clearly in the market for 1950s throwbacks, and start to examine the chair
while I’m still sitting in it. They want to see how it revolves. One of them gets down and peers between my
shoes to check the mechanism. “This is
comfortable?” he asks. Yes, I nod,
handing him the price card. £50 it says.
I get up and stumble over to sit,
instead, on the edge of a unit which
displays various sorts of tile cement and other things in tubes reduced for a
quick sale. The Homebase bargain
bin. Do I want anything? Other than an end to the roaring pain,
nope. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The Chinese family have decided that they will purchase
the chair and are carting it off towards the check out. Good luck.
I thought it was overpriced. We
return to the car. Sue has a bag of
bulbs under her arm, she knows how to decode the new lighting world. All I can think of is relief. What it feels like. How long it might last. How to make it arrive. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
And then it’s no longer there. I’m sitting and watching the road go by and become
slowly aware that the pain has gone. The immediate future, despite low wattage,
might be bright. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-74533515932187588022013-01-11T11:44:00.000+00:002013-01-14T09:51:54.470+00:00Teeth<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The pred levels are sinking.
I’m down to 3 mgs daily now and on such good and familiar terms with the
wonder drug that I’ve dropped the <i>nisalone</i>
bit from its name in favour of something more streetwise. For now the polymyalgia is almost a memory although
I’m sure its traces lurk down there in the dregs at the bottom of my bloods. The new enemy, and one of considerable power,
is the spinal cyst. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Looking at the dates on this blog it’s obvious that I have
been severely distracted for several months.
The latter half of 2012 has gone by without comment. This doesn’t mean, of course, that little
happened during that time – the reverse in fact. Between September 2012 and January 2013 I've been property developing, to live in rather than sell on. The opportunity presented
itself last October so my partner and I went ahead. We sold up and bought anew. A big house with its own drive half-way up
Penylan Hill. Don’t underestimate the
attraction of a drive. In the Cardiff
world where the car is king and the pavements thick with cyclists having a
drive is a bit like owning a strip of 5mg prednisolone – salvation on hand
whenever there’s a need. <br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With gusto we set the sell and buy circus in
motion. I have a dim memory of the last
time I did this, way back in 1979. I swore then that because of the
stress, expense and outrageous hassle I’d never do it again. Why in
2013, then, have I decided to ignore those
warnings from my younger self? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Out there in the world of land and property is a line of essential organisations who need consulting, paying,
obtaining permission from, paying, talking to, paying, obtaining clearance
documents from, paying, and just for good measure, paying again. The line stretches out to the horizon and the
faces blur. The mesh of commercial, legal,
fiscal, and governmental interests, all acting with due diligence, comprehensive record-keeping, and a clearance fee on each occasion (to cover essential costs) out
bleaks Bleak House. The cash in the bank
account whirls down towards zero.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the middle of all this, with builders taking the floors
out, new central heating going in and the internal water supplies being rerouted
I decide to have my mouth repaired. This
is the latest episode in a long-term saga which I won’t bore you with here but suffice
it to say that for several decades now I’ve been a regular at the local
dentists with broken bicuspids, misaligned molars, contracting canines and collapsing
crowns. On a good day I can fracture an incisor on a banana. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the Dental Hospital they’ve made the offer to rebuild and
I’ve accepted. This means six or more
two-hour attendances, drilling, pulling, refacing and reinserting with I don’t
know how many injections of lignocaine to help us along. I’ve read Martin Amis’s recollections of his
own time in the dental chair. That's in <i>Experience, </i> his 2000 autobiography and a book
with a lot more going for it than many of his novels. I should be prepared.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I get to UHW the
car park is unaccountable cordoned off and closed. I park a mile away and head in on foot. The rain is coming down as only January ran
can and the cyst is letting me know what the world is about. Pain is coming up my right leg like jets of
fire. Half way there I have to stop and
stuff my mouth with painkillers. I’m
carrying naproxen and heavy-dose co-codamol. For good measure, as the pain is wrapping
itself round me like a poultice, I swallow an extra 5mg of pred.
Might help. It’s an anti-inflammatory
after all.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the dental chair I’m floating. I’m set out so that my head is lower than my
feet and I’m injected on both sides. I’m
not sure which world I’m in. To hell
with what’s going on inside my mouth all know is that the leg pain is going and
then, after time wobbles a bit, is gone. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A couple of hours later I’m in the Japanese recovering. This style of dining has been chosen for a)
its freshness b) its lack of calories and, more importantly, c) its ability to
deliver a decent full meal as a sort of non-tooth threatening mush. Ramen – chicken bits and noodles. Soft as a brush, just right. I’ve a bottle of Sapporo (4.7%) in hand and a bowl of edamame as an appetiser. Around me there’s a multi-cultural melee of young people chattering
and eating while simultaneously pushing their fingers at their smart phones. They are dining on raw fish and seaweed, udon
doused in soy and crab’s legs coated in batter. It's the modern way.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I go for broke and swallow another 5mg of Prednisone with
the beer. That should fix it. The top of a back tooth snaps and comes away
like pieces of badly-fixed render. I’m
unfazed. This has happened so often before
so why should I be? I’m back at the Dental Hopsital in a week or
so, they’ll sort it then.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
More importantly the synovial cyst pain has gone back to
that place where pain goes when it needs to recover its juices a bit. A fog in my lower back. It’ll hang there, hiding, and come back out to
burn me again tomorrow. But for now it isn’t with me. Glory be.
What made it go? Pred, NSAID, pain-killer, dental injection, lying upside
down, time, wishful thinking, prayer, luck, or beer? One of those.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-80798995197585317092012-09-17T09:45:00.000+01:002012-09-17T09:45:18.519+01:00Not A Smoker In Sight Approaching the hospital is unsettling. We’re on the fringes of one of the city’s 1970s
estates, all grass and orange brick, underpasses, men out walking dogs. Kids on skateboards. Women in trainers pushing buggies. The sun is up there, hiding behind
cloud. There’s a car-parked pub that
does steak that sizzles. Houses with
washing on twirling lines. On the main
road are trucks and vans rucking up road
dust. A lone seagull sits on a fence
wondering just what it’s doing this far inland.<br />
<div class="Poems">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Poems">
<br /></div>
<div class="Poems">
The entrance, once we find it, is modest, the car park free, the
building low-slung and silent. There’s
no one hanging around the entrance, not a smoker in sight. This
could be a council office or a care home.
It could. But actually it’s Spire
private medicine. A hospital outside the
NHS.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Poems">
<br /></div>
<div class="Poems">
In the waiting room there are comfortable chairs, no jabbering
TV, no Coke machines, and a complete lack
of misshapen sprawl. The coffee is
free. There are papers to read. Admittedly they did take an imprint of my
credit card when I arrived but that was, as the receptionist put it, just for
identification purposes, best be sure.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Poems">
<br /></div>
<div class="Poems">
Almost all writers in history have suffered illness. Consumption, gout, bad livers, hearts that
fail, the bloody flux, the ague. They
lose their sight, the use of their limbs, are confined to wheelchairs, kept in
bed, made to take long holidays on the coasts where the air is clear. They move slowly. They
are bled. They leak. But they all carried on. They got up at dawn to bash the words
out. Thinking through fog. Letting the pain wince its way out through
their lines. Bottling it just to get the
books done.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Poems">
<br /></div>
<div class="Poems">
Me? I’m knocked flat by
all this sudden vicissitude that’s seeping through me like a river. Rather than be out there running across the
world I’m inside my room worrying. I
must get a grip. I need to let the ideas
circulate again. Encourage them. Give them time to foam up and flower. There’s that book I’m writing. How the rock and roll changed my life. How music is always better than poetry. How sound in the air beats words trapped on
the page. The history, the past and the present. Where we all fitted. Where it all then went. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Poems">
<br /></div>
<div class="Poems">
I start to think about Howlin’ Wolf and how seeing him of stage
at the Colston Hall in Bristol in 1964 changed my view of music forever. Quite a Finch revolution that. Wolf arriving in the centre of my quiet world
like an alien. A 300-pound negro in a bad suit
roaring above Hubert Sumlin’s guitar lead, turning my idea of what music
was thrillingly on its head. I reach for
my notebook but don’t get that far.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Poems">
<br /></div>
<div class="Poems">
On the button I get called in for my appointment. Synovial Cyst. Ganglion.
Non-cancerous. But there. I’m shown the MRI scans, horizontal slices
taken along my spine. There it is at
Level 4, nestling in the facet joint and
pressing itself softly on the sciatic nerve.
A white oval the size of a peanut.
Would that be KP or Marks & Spencer, I ask. The consultant laughs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Poems">
<br /></div>
<div class="Poems">
I get more than 30 minutes of description and discussion. Prognosis, treatment, outcomes, risk. Watchful waiting. Further facet joint injection. Surgical intervention. These things ebb and these things flow. Today there’s little sensation. Last week my back and right leg were full of
electric rage. Listen to your body, I am
advised. Run if you like. Exercise is better than no exercise. Treadmills are not good for the joints but do
a bit. If there’s pain stop. If there’s not then carry on.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Poems">
<br /></div>
<div class="Poems">
If the whole thing gets worse then ask for another nerve root block. Waiting time on the NHS – 3 months at
least. Privately less than a week. Try high does prednisolone for a day or
two. The stuff will circulate your whole
body and some of it will stick. If all
that fails then surgical intervention will sort it. We’ll make an incision,
move your muscles to the side a bit and then suck the peanut out. You’ll feel like you’ve been kicked in the
small of the back for six weeks but after that you’ll be fine.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Poems">
<br /></div>
<div class="Poems">
So there’s a future. Aged
Finch sails on. We shake hands. Outside they get me to put my pin number into their credit card machine. The amount I’m paying makes me wince but it’s only cash. Inside I’ve got a new calm flowing. Worth
every cent.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Poems">
<br /></div>
<div class="Poems">
Me and the polymyalgia and the bladder stuff and the new
companion Mr Peanut Synovial we all clatter out into the car park. Rattle,
smile and hum. Out there I spot a fat
woman leaning on the door of her Citroen C1 sucking on a Bensons. A man in overalls on a ladder is trying to
fix a faulty exterior wall light. At the
pub over the way they are taking delivery of beer in pressurised aluminium barrels. The sun glints. The world still works. I head home, fast, to write it all down.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Poems">
<o:p></o:p></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-16214837906308093662012-08-29T14:18:00.001+01:002012-08-30T08:56:33.825+01:00God of the Sea<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
This is the beach where Ulysses was washed up after his battles with god
of the sea Poseidon. Ulysses, hair in damp straggles, naked and unconscious
on the sand, was revived by Naussica,
daughter of the King of the Phaeacians. So
wrote Homer. And as a reminder there’s
the Naussica Taverna full of sweating and Homer reading diners staring down at me from the cliff
edge.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Naussica – in Greek her name translates as burner of
ships. But out in the bay there are
nothing but peddalos and heat. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The beach itself in the parts that aren’t forever British
is entirely Russian. They don’t look like us.
The men have bellies that protrude but don’t flop. They wear tight and tiny bri-nylon swimming
trunks, just like ones I used to have in 1977.
They sprawl across the Thompson
Holiday loungers smoking their Russian cigarettes. They don’t read. They play cards, they drink. They lunge at
the sea and emerge bronzed and dripping.
A woman with a tattooed Venus on the half shell climbing her belly. A man with a bear growling up his.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’ve gone to Greece with my prednisolone packed into both
my check-in and hand luggage and with an extra packet in my pocket just in
case. The polymyalgia bubbles
under. The treatment is working. No more proximate muscles like rusted slabs
aching like they were trying to jump me to Mars. Instead I have my new fellow traveller, the
sly and slippery synovial cyst.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
This one sits somewhere in my lower spine and can only
really be subdued by high-strength co-codamol supplemented by Naproxen, a sort
of super ibuprofen on speed. Sounds good on paper
but in practise it just makes you numb.
A better cure turns out to be alcohol which relaxes things enough to
ease the agony. We brought gin out
bubble-wrapped in Sue’s suitcase and the local beer isn’t that expensive so
things should be good.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Out walking I can feel it, Mr Synovial, pressing the
sciatic nerve and making my lower leg feel like it’s got a cold chisel in its centre moving up and down. With PMR you could run a
bit and the pain would go. With this one
you have either drink or lie down. And
as the one often leads to the other, I find myself doing both.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
In Corfu Town – Kerkyra –
after a long sit in a café opposite the truncated British cricket pitch
we visit the Church of Saint Spyridon. His
remains are here in a gilded box, closed today but still touchable. A line of Greeks take turns to kiss the place
where his feet might be. On high days
they take him out and parade him through the streets. He’s a preserver and a fixer. Saint of salvation and health.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
A women next to me scribbles something in Greek onto a
piece of paper and puts it in one of the saint’s waiting bowls. There’s a whole stack of other slips
there. They tower. Prayers, pleas for help. Worth a go I decide. Help me, I write, Saint Spy, see if you can
do something about this spine of mine. I
leave the slip unsigned. Saint Spyridon
will know who put it there.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I follow up this uncharacteristic act by buying a six
inch candle from a box near the door. I’m
heading for the spot just outside where similar candles of supplication have
been stuffed into a pit of sand and melted wax.
They waver and flame. They look the Orthodox part. Behind me
an entire extended Greek family are emerging from the Church. They carry candles too, all nine of them, women in black, children in trainers, men in suits. The difference is that while my candle is 6” long theirs
are five feet and thicker than your leg. Aflame like Thor rockets they dwarf my miniature squib. Beijing Olympic fireworks beside my November
the fifth. Next to the candle dump is an icon depicting the great man in his
golden beatitude. The family take turns
to kiss the image. At this level of
investment they are bound to get whatever it is they want.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Me? Not a
hope.<br />
<br />
But then again it’s now a week
later and I’m back home in the drizzle again, Saint Spyridon a sunny memory. The Cyst is still there but, amazingly, it
is quiet. No flares, no return of the
lower leg cold chisel and no repeat of the shaking electric razzle scream of a
pain I was getting up and down my right leg just before I went. And I haven’t
taken a naproxen since last month.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Good boy Spyridon. I'll be back.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-63571140274842727652012-08-07T12:21:00.000+01:002012-08-09T09:33:01.125+01:00Road Race<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
In an afternoon when the rain holds off long enough for
the sky to go blue the best place to be is not in the city. So I’m out on the roadside in Wales’ green
desert, somewhere north of Builth. The
verge here has to be wider than my home garden, thick green, lush, durable. The sun is on my back warming through my shirt. It
could be Hawaii but it’s Cefn Coed. In
the near layby a couple towing a caravan with a four by four are sitting on
deckchairs drinking tea. They watch the
traffic roll by. This is how we relax
these days. Roadside get away from it
alls.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’m here actually
to watch the Kate Auchterlonie Memorial Cycle Race. Women in lycra with numbers on their backs going past
in a great herd on bikes. As a spectator
sport this one isn’t much. The women do
fifteen mile circuits passing me every half an hour. They go at a hell of lick. Lead motorbikes with flashing lights clearing
the traffic, then a tight cluster of furious peddling followed by a few stragglers
spread out down the road. Blink and they’re
gone. And then it’s back to watching the
breeze move the grass beyond the hedgerows and the kestrels hovering
overhead until the women come round again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
To fill in time I march up and down the layby trying to
free up the pain from my leg. Is this
the polymyalgia returning in a great flare?
I’ve upped the prednisolone from 5 mg to 10 mg. The GP says it won’t matter in the short term but
the head is already filling with fog. I
do a series of leg stretches, squats and knee presses. I am watched blankly by the couple drinking
tea. I smile back but they do not react. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I go behind a tree for a pee and am immediately spotted
by a vehicle traversing an otherwise totally abandoned dried up off road
track. The occupants wave. The countryside’s synchronicity. I pee on pretending they are not there.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The cyclists come round again. I give them a cheer and clap a bit to offer
encouragement. For them traversing this circuit must be like watching paint dry. They
disappear into the distance. I do a few
more knee bends to beat the PMR back.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Up at the clinic the following day I get the news. This isn’t polymyalgia bubbling up from where
it’s been sort of slumbering. Instead it’s
my new friend the spinal ganglion cyst.
This is the growth the size of a small grape that’s insinuated itself
somewhere in my lower spine disrupting the way the nerves work. The result is leg pain, foot pain, and thigh
pain, often all together, in long slow
burns, in starts and shakes and rushes and aches. They fade and then they
come back. They go and then they stay. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The consultant puts me in the loop for another MRI scan
and a further set of spinal injections.
Might fix it, might not. You’ll
also need to see a neurosurgeon who will discuss with you the risks involved in
having the cyst surgically removed. Risks?
The surgeon will explain it all to you.
Doesn’t sound good.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I do the anticipated circuit of bloods, weight, urine
sample, and BP measurement ending at the pharmacy where the great
team of twenty or so NHS dispensers, heads down hard at work, take an amazing
30 minutes to get my prescription filled.
At the local Co-op the single pharmacist turns my monthly prescription
for four different drugs and a tub of chewable calcium round in five
minutes. There’s a lesson here.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
On the wall of the UHW Pharmacy next to a sign reading “Antibiotics
will not get rid of your cold” is another which says “To ensure patient
confidentiality please do not stand or wait against this wall.” Better not hang about here I say to the old
lady on sticks queuing next me. She frowns. I don’t
have a cold she says, shaking her head.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
On my way out under the grey shell of a sky, new tablets
in a giant bag under my arm, I go through what the consultant has told me. Hope
for the best but the best is often elusive.
Try. Live in the moment. We’ll see what these new tests throw up. Let’s see how you get on. I’m
really sorry this has happened to you.
She is too.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’ve asked her if there’s anything I should now not
do. Stretch? That’s fine.
Exercise? That’s good but try to avoid
running. The action of all that pounding
jars the spine. Go on
the bike instead. It’s the perfect activity. Cycling – much better than watching paint
dry. Sure is.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-85275402376189650172012-07-18T10:54:00.000+01:002012-07-18T10:54:16.764+01:00Slicing The Air<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’ve barely time to open my book among the waiting queues
at clinic six. I’ve <i>Nightwoods,
</i>Charles Frazier’s dark novel of North Carolina with me. In this the violent mixes with the lost among
the endless trees of the time-stuck Appalachians. Frazier came to fame a few years back with <i>Cold Mountain</i>. In the film of this Sacred Harp singers can
be seen beating out the rhythm of the
shape-note rouser <i>I’m Going Home, </i>their
hands celebrating glory, slicing the
air. God is with them in their
singings. He is all around. Down here in the clinic he also hovers,
although maybe with not quite the same all-pervasive fire. Files arrive, delivered in what looks like an
ex-Tesco trolley. Mine is on top. I’m in.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’m also back out.
Five minutes is all it takes. The
prednisolone levels are continuing to fall.
I’m down to 5 mg now, a dose at which most side effects cease to be
visible. Healing, however, will still be slow and susceptibility to
infection from just about anywhere a worry.
The tests all show you as normal, the consultant tells me. She smiles. Normality,
the aim of us all. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
A day later and I’m up the road in the Department of Oral
and Maxilio-facial Surgery being told that the prednisolone will certainly interfere
with the healing following my tooth extraction and that the alendronic acid may
compromise bone recovery. Polymyalgia,
your tentacles get into everything.
Prednisolone go away. I took 5 mg
this morning. I’ll have a go at 4.5 mg
tomorrow.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The extraction is carried out by a dentist from County
Clare wearing a white smock two sizes
too big for her. Amid the small talk
about the loveliness of Ireland and the wetness of Wales it sways about like a duvet
cover. I get two mouth-deadening injections of lidocaine with another six added as the procedure rolls. My mouth doesn’t like giving up. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
She’s great at the talk, put the patient at ease. We’ll just loosen it up a bit first. You may feel some pressure. Snap.
There, that’s the crown off. Now
let’s see if we can get it out in one piece. Snap. No. This
is a difficult one. I’ll have to just
move around a bit. You’ll feel more pressure. I do. She’s
told me to raise my left hand if I experience pain so I lift it up. It’s like the northern lights in my head. More lidocaine. Then more again, just to be
sure.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
A second dentist who insists on calling me sir
arrives. He is bearing a drill. We’ll just see if we can cut into this. No. We’ll
have to slice the socket. No.
Yes. Crack. No. Have to cut a bit of bone out here, just so I
can get a grip. I Raise my left hand and get another shot of
lidocaine. My mouth is starting to feel
as big as the Severn Bridge. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
But eventually it’s done.
My mouth is sewn up and stuffed with gauze. Fragments of my left lower rear molar lie
like pieces of moon rock on a dental tray.
I get a free packet of surgical cloth for use in supressing bleeding and
a badly printed instruction sheet. “For
the rest of the day take things quietly” this says. “Take only cool non-alcoholic drinks. Eat a soft diet. You may sit up but do not lie down.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Will Marks and Spencer sell things I’ll be able to cope
with? Rice pudding, coddled eggs, luke
warm soup. I’m sure they will. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Back home sitting up but certainly not lying down and
with a glass of 15 seconds in the microwave water beside me I stick on the <i>Cold Mountain</i> soundtrack. I’m looking for spirit and uplift. But instead I
get the Reeltime Travellers doing “Like A Songbird That Has Fallen”. Pretty much it I suppose. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1980328201461608349.post-19453810189385218842012-06-12T12:27:00.001+01:002012-06-12T12:27:40.118+01:00Fallow<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a fallow period.
No consultations, no tests, no health scares. A quiet time of simply taking the prednisolone
each morning and flickering the dose between 6 mg and 7 mgs to keep the pulsing
pains at bay. The target dose is 5
mg. Decrease should be no more than a
single milligram in two weeks. At this
rate I ought to be into freedom territory by high summer. The body’s own cortisol production is around
5 mg daily. Since starting on
prednisolone my own production has atrophied.
Getting it restarted needs balance and care. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I look at the line of drugs on the shelf: Omeprazole,
Calcichew, Alendronic Acid. Support dope
to counteract the effects of the Prednisolone.
They stop you being sick and keep your bones from thinning. I guess they’ve worked. Further along are some hopeful things –
Vitamin D, Echinacea, Zinc, Concentrated Cranberry, Saw Palmetto Complex. This is the snake oil end of my medicine
cabinet. Tablets that work by trust
rather than fact. Mind over matter. Hope instead of surety. Belief.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve read the books – how to walk through walls. How to fly.
How to speak without opening your mouth.
How to lift things by thought.
How to tell the future. How to walk on water. None of
those things ever worked. I have great hopes,
however, for what it says in my edition of How To Beat Polymyalgia Rheumatica. People do beat it, it assures me. It doesn’t go on forever even if it might
seem like it does.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then I hear the mail arrive.
In the days when I was an aspiring poet and sent my efforts out for
consideration on a regular basis the thump of paper hitting the doormat was a familiar
sound. I always felt that rejections
were like police raids. They arrived at
dawn, unannounced, and were usually upsetting.
Thank you for sending your poetry for consideration but our editorial
team felt that despite its high literary values it isn’t for us. May we wish the best of luck elsewhere. What
they actually meant, of course, was your verse is rubbish, we suggest you put it in the
bin. But no one ever said that. The literary world can be overly polite.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Today it’s a padded bag.
Inside is a well-wrapped bottle of something called Gastrografin and a
letter summoning me in to Radiology at the Heath for a “CT Thorax and Abdo and
Pelvis with Contrast”. The letter has stern warnings about wearing
jewellery and eating beforehand.
Drinking squash is okay, apparently.
Although being over 25 stone isn’t.
There’s a special number to ring if I am. I commit this to memory just in case.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fallow period over then.
My letter is signed by someone called Emerctbodywithgastrotemp V2. If I don’t attend the appointment, writes Ms Emerctbodywithgastrotemp,
I’ll be removed from the waiting list and my referring clinician will be
informed. </div>
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I send in a message by telepathy. I’ll be there, don’t worry. Thank you for your concern. That should do it. Then I go out for a walk in the drizzle. Fits my mood.<o:p></o:p></div>Peter Finchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07894891082003041608noreply@blogger.com0