In my last article I mentioned John’s stepmother Kath and my Uncle Arthur had both recently passed away. Their loss left family and friends devastated, in the true sense of the word. (It really isn’t devastating if you don’t win a reality television show!) But this isn’t an article about grief and sorrow, it’s about the practicalities when someone dies. And despite the subject matter, I’ll try and avoid the ‘death’ word and all its derivatives…Wishing and hopingUnfortunately, when someone ..read more

Another year, another year of blogging, although it’s the end of January already and this is my first blog. Better start with something lighthearted then…January’s quite an interesting month isn’t it? Christmas gone, perhaps starting to think about summer vacations and perhaps making a few New Year resolutions. So how resolute were you feeling at the beginning of the month? Apparently one in five of us made a New Year's resolution for 2023. But why do we do this? Is it literally a case of new ..read more

Today (November 14th) is World Diabetes Day 2022 so why not begin with something dramatic….I broke into a cold sweat. I felt myself drifting away, unable to concentrate. I felt I could pass out at any minute. I tested my blood sugar which, ideally, should be between 4.0 and 7.0. Mine was 1.8. Oops! My blood sugar was far too low. I was hypoglycaemic. I could lapse into a coma at any time. I grabbed a pack of jelly babies (each one full of sugar). The recommended number to eat is five but I ..read more

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Let’s not sugar-coat our current situation. Wherever we look there is turmoil. Our wonderful world is being torn apart by war, famine, climate change, politics, illness and, let’s face it, evil. We all have our own ways of coping. Personally, the bad ‘stuff’ makes me more grateful for the good ‘stuff’ that is personal to John and me. But we can’t shut the turmoil away completely, especially when it affects our daily lives (such as potential power outages). It is easy to sink into despondency (I ..read more

The NHS is ‘broken’. Apparently over half of us believe this. We are encouraged in this belief by the daily negative stories about how awful it has become, with a litany of all the things that are wrong: the waiting time in Accident Emergency, long waiting lists for referrals, diagnosis and treatment, the difficulty in getting to see a doctor. Yes, these problems all exist - I’ve experienced quite a few personally -  but let us not lose sight of the fact that, despite all the problems, the NHS ..read more

I knew I’d been in hospital too long when I panicked because I couldn’t find my mobile phone only to realise I was holding it to my ear… On the other hand, my two months stay in two different hospitals meant I experienced first-hand a few of the issues facing the NHS. My next blog will look at some of those issues but this one is about my personal ‘adventures’. As you would expect, I have some observations to make…DispensingOne aspect of care is the dispensing of drugs to patients. As regular ..read more

Disappointed. Frustrated. Isolated. Abandoned. This is how John and I feel but we are not alone. There are 500,000 people in the country like me and help is being denied to us. Who are we? We are the immunosuppressed, those whose immune systems can’t (or don’t) operate as normal to fight off bugs and viruses. Like covid.Do you remember when we first became aware of Covid-19? It hit the news around March 2020. We wore masks. We went into lockdown for months on end. Hospitals were full ..read more

I apologise for not writing anything for such a long time. It was - to coin a phrase - due to circumstances beyond my control. Like many of you who’ve had holidays I’ve recently spent time away from home. In fact I was away for almost two months. I had my own room and private en suite and all my meals were provided. But this wasn’t a hotel by the sea. I have been a guest of the National Health Service.I am a huge fan of the NHS. It would be wrong of me not to be when I am a patient of eight ..read more

I have a dog called Judy. Next Christmas he will be at least 80 years old (that’s 560 in dog years). Okay, so you’ve guessed Judy isn’t real (except to us). It was 1942 and my mum, then aged 17, was looking for a gift for her young sister, then aged two. It was Wartime and toys were scarce. Mum came across the dog in a second-hand shop. And so Judy arrived. Since then the dog has been re-covered twice (but still has the original eyes) and has fulfilled many roles - swimming team mascot, car ..read more