...and then this happened...

I thought I was OK, that I had got off  Scot Free. But no, something is lurking on my xrays that may or may not be old scars.


Haven't been feeling too good lately.


CT scan yesterday so hopefully I can give whatever it is a name-and start to see it off.


Just to let you know why I've been quiet.

A SNAPSHOT.

I have been having flashes of a an image, rather like some cheesy 'whodunnit' where the heroine with repressed memories sees fragmented scenes of a faceless  man ...a tattooed  arm...a shoe crunching on broken glass, you get the picture. Usually it is the genre of film where she goes up into the attic of the very old unlit house during a violent thunderstorm and we know the assailant is there, waiting and playing very creepy music to ease her way up the stairs.

My flashbacks are thankfully totally benign. They are of me, on a bicycle aged 16 1/2 on a lovely summer's day in 1950 ; visions brought on, I have no doubt, by the book I am reading at the moment by Frank McCourt  'Tis, the sequel to his masterpiece Angela's Ashes. The time line is familiar and his story of the pale sore-eyed semi-literate fighting against all odds to study, his longing to belong, to be able to discuss Dostoevsky with other students,  to know how to talk to girls/anyone in authority shamed as he is by bad teeth and eyes like 'piss holes in the snow' -resonates with me.

So there I am riding the deserted Sunday lunchtime  streets of The Bay; I know where I have been and where I am going.

 I have just come from the house of a couple who are close to my current boyfriend Hugh. Hugh is an orphan and he is a fairground boxer. The Hudsons live in a fine detached house...a Grange or a Lodge with out- buildings, a gravel drive and a paddock behind the house.  Mr. Hudson has two artificial legs...Mrs Hudson is the image of Googie Withers.  They are superior beings.  They have a library in their house, a small room of crammed shelving, a dark wood table and two leather chairs.  He asks what would I like to drink and I catch Hugh's eye, he looks as non-plussed as I.  I ask for a Port and Lemon because it is the only drink I have heard of...I do not know what Port is but with the lemon in there it should be drinkable.  He serves it to me in a cocktail glass with a piece of fruit I do not recognise stuck to the rim.  I don't know if I must eat the fruit  before or after taking the drink. or must I not eat the fruit at all.  Hugh is drinking water and the Hudson's  something clear containing something on a stick but I watch them anyway. She takes the stick out of her drink and nibbles at the green berry, while he holds the stick out of the way while draining the drink, then he puts the berry into his mouth. No help to me.   I sip my drink, it is delicious and the smell of the fruit begs me to put it in my mouth.  It is pineapple though I do not know that, I just know that it is delicious and juicy and I want more. I drain my glass and eat the fruit. I am offered another and because I have no knowledge of how to behave I accept.

These are pre-lunch drinks; the Hudsons and Hugh are going on somewhere... sounds very exotic to me. I say goodbye and ride my bicycle very fast all the way home. I think that the Hudsons thought I was unsuitable for Hugh...He did have the most elegant manners for all that he was a Fairground boxer. Perhaps they adopted  him. The sun was warm on my legs and the drink had worn off by the time I reached home. I never said a word to mum.

LAST WORDS ON THE SUBJECT: PROMISE

SATURDAY : JP is downstairs with an English friend watching France-England in the World cup. England are getting clobbered and [bless him] JP's usual ecstatic yells for French victory are subdued- I even heard him tell the chap- 'Not to worry-Eengland always comes back in ze second 'alf.'

He has been up since six...walking a very startled but grateful dog, trying his best not to make a noise. I have not let him know that I have been awake since five.

Yesterday Dr. D. came for a home visit. Dear Dr. D.

How to describe him without him appearing to be in some way too odd? If you did not know him and were asked to give him a profession you would answer, an aesthete...theologian perhaps...a Quantum Physicist with bad social skills...very slightly autistic... not too great at the tactile business of Doctoring...very shy and extremely funny in a throwaway mumble aimed at his desk blotter. Wears tweed summer and winter. He has never let me down, misdiagnosed or rushed me when in full-self-diagnostic flow.

He was on holiday when I needed him last week and his Locum gave me all of four minutes, and a prescription for antibiotics. I faithfully took them, they made me drowsy, killed what small appetite I had, did nothing for the cough which combined with awful intercostal pain made breathing a challenge.

Dr.D did a number of things which did not involve touching, though he did listen to my chest and to me, that is his forte...he knows what to take on board and what to discard. He prescribed a limited dose of Steroids.

GERONIMO!

The man's a genius. I sent JP next door to fill the script and took the first one  that day. Slept like a baby that night so that on Saturday morning I leapt out of bed, took in a lung full of air and felt no pain.
I cleaned the cat's Poo-palace and surrounding area. Vacuumed and dusted, showered, blow dried my hair, put on some slap and  presented myself downstairs all before breakfast...and still felt capable of doing more.

SUNDAY: I'm on my third day of these wonderful recuperative s, four more to go and I dread to think  how I shall manage without them-why I do believe they are having an effect on my brain power.

But then again... the smart bugger has probably given me placebo's - aware [as he is] of my utter belief in his powers and having diagnosed this last illness as 'all in the mind'.

Whatever...it has worked.

PS: 14th smokeless day.

What's up Doc?

100 words: an exercise encouraged by Mr London Street.

I'm early, he’s late. Forty minutes; enough time to imagine a thousand ways to die.

The duty Doctor- he’s new to me, but he knows me from the screen.

‘What seems to be the trouble?’  I hate that question  with the emphasis on ‘seems’...as if  we love the surgery so much with it’s uncomfortable  red leather seating  and ‘whoop on a loop’ music  we will make up sickness just to be here.

I don’t lie; I tell him I felt ill and chesty before I stopped smoking.

He listened; ‘breathe’ and here ‘breathe’ then ‘again’.

‘A bad chest infection.’

Reprieved!

DAY ONE: PLUS ONE

Actually it is Plus one and a bit.

Saturday was a bad day. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I had managed to delay my first  ciggie until after lunch, the idea being that if I delayed it a little every day I would end up living in a smokeless zone by week two.
But Saturday was a bad day and I fell right off the wagon. By the end of what was a stressful day  I felt thoroughly ashamed and not a little nauseous.

Sunday: Today I became a non-smoker. It wasn't too hard because I had chest pains, nausea and a mouth like an ashtray.  Sunday was Day One.

Monday: Today was a strange day; I thought about having a cigarette constantly, but now have the mind-set of a non-smoker [I shall be berating smokers next]  and quickly found something else to do. This afternoon I fell asleep on the couch for 1:1/2 hours...so tired...bed at 9;30pm.

Tuesday: I can't imagine that I will give in now...and return to Day one: minus.  I can only think that the reason I feel so sleepy is because I have not slept properly for a long time.  My lungs no longer ache and coughing stopped. Fingers crossed. Actually feeling very proud of myself.   Was it too easy? Will I not receive the kudos I deserve.?

Thanks to you all who wrote to encourage me...I would have felt a right Wally had I let you and myself down.

DAY ONE: Minus four.

MONDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER 2011

I have been feeling odd; bit of a cough as expected after 64 years of the weed, light-headed yet achy behind the eyes nose and cheek-bones...classic allergy symptoms I've been telling myself when my thought process turns to the most obvious and, some would say, most deserved diagnosis.

But it is the sharp pain under my ribs [ diagnosed by me as intercostal cartilage strain or inflammation of:-] which  is the one symptom, the final symptom which leads me to the decision that I Must Quit.


 To that end I dug in the rubbish drawer for the Niquitin lozenges from my last attempt, only remembering the foulness of them on sucking the first one. I sauntered next door but two to the Chemist - our usual glorious Pharmacist - she of the ebony skin, silken dreadlocks and the whitest truest smile was on holiday and her Locum, a tall elderly taciturn man with a full head of white hair and moustache to rival that of  Dick van Dyke's Dr. Sloan, suggested, when I asked if there had been a breakthrough and had someone thought to flavour the wretched things so that they were palatable, wandered around the aisles and suggested that 'perhaps if I bought some strong mints and sucked along with a lozenge...'

That was Day one: minus one. I lasted until 1pm. I tried keeping busy, but one has to sit down sometime and Milou didn't feel like giving up his afternoon cuddle on the sofa with mum, Doctors, Flog it and Countdown.
My count was six that day...which I felt was a credible effort.
Day One:  minus  two and three followed pretty much the same pattern except that I think I must be holding my breath or somehow controlling the strength of the breaths I do take because though I slept well enough the intercostal pain was worse this morning.

Took another stroll to the Chemist...tablets are mint flavoured but at  £15. Hell's Bells. Forget it. I will quit, but slowly using will power. [famous last words?]

Just Googled Intercostal Cartilage and I think I have been 'Bracing'. Yup!

Life in the old girl yet.

Will no doubt be flagging Day one when it arrives.

I looked for a suitable illustration on Google Images but they are all too preachy, too worthy , patronising or just bonkers; as if we are not aware of the dangers involved in sucking up the tarry smoke.  Then I thought of the very old song by Phil Harris:

 Smoke smoke smoke that cigarette 

                        Puff, puff puff and if you smoke yourself to death

                              Tell St. Peter at the Golden Gate, that you hate to make him wait

              But you just gotta have another cigarette.

This song came out in  1939/40 and it was one of the songs in Mother's meagre collection [the B side wassomething about a card game: I remember: Now sitting right there in that there clan, there chanced to be a one-eyed man and he kep' starin' at me out the corner of his eye...an' ol' one eye would deal and then, it cost Bill another five or ten....]


So even then they knew. 1]that nicotine is addictive and 2] It was/is harmful.

BUS PASS HEAVEN / HELL

The other day I took a bus into the Bay. It was the first bus I'd been on since we bought the car so, maybe it has been at least ten years since we were without transport.  Even then we would eschew public transport, preferring to walk to the end of the road and then down the Downs along the seafront and into town that way. Of course we were both ten years younger then and the short mile was nothing to us [although laden with shopping we would always taxi back up the hill]

Now the car is gone; not too lamented when we count the money saved and bask in eco. glory of a little less pollution,but  there are times when we have to go to town and this was one of them. I couldn't ask NOAOson, who takes us to our weekly big shop out of town as his plate was overflowing at the time and I needed to browse the Charity shops-not a necessary journey but I needed my fix.

So there I was, waiting for the  10-10 bus. It was late and I was reassured to see there was another elderly woman waiting with me.
A small single decker arrived and I followed the woman inside, flashing my bus pass at the driver. He tutted, took the card and shoved it upside down over the thingummy plate and I moved inside and wedged myself in the only free seat on the sideways bench next to a very fat, beautifully made up lady of an age between 18 and 80.

The air was redolent of talcum powder, Ralgex, Lavender water, Christmas gifts of Givenchy Gentleman, my own [thankfully liberally applied ] Mitsouko, and a faint but definite whiff of Eau de Urine.

From my sideways bench I could see down the bus and every seat was occupied by a Senior Citizen with heads bearing every shade of hair from snow white to iron grey, with some bluish and pinky horrors to season the pot. But the most surprising thing-used as I was to the silence of a London bus, where the journey is a trial to be undertaken with as much speed and anonymity as possible lest one is made visible to the drunk, noisy and potentially violent-here there was a raucous cacophony of sound composed of conversations carried across the aisle, much laughter, and in one instance, singing by two couples along the back seat.

Snatches of speech:

'She didn't!'
'She bloody did.'

'I said to 'im, if you want it you can lug it upstairs.'
'My, Jim had one of them.'
'Was it worth it?'
'Nah! Could have done it meself.'  The mind boggles.

'My boy's coming down this weekend.'
'That's nice.'
'He's got a Bentley.'
'If I 'ad a Bentley I'd sell it.'
'Well he's got two.'

'Donald wanted a chop but at those prices I said it's mince or nothing.'

I  alighted  at the top of the High Street, thanking the surly driver who grunted and swished the door shut before I'd hit the pavement.

Now I'm trying to decide on a collective noun for a clutch of OAP's-and as it includes myself it has to be a good one, flatteringly descriptive of our Joi de vivre.

How about: A Survival of Seniors: