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The trouble with old people
This week's big item refuses to die. Still, it takes the mind off the mess in Iraq. One of the columnists in today's Times writes about old age. She says that she wouldn't want to end up in an old folks' home. I doubt anyone would. It's not the homes that look depressing, it's the occupants. They look like, well, aliens, said a woman visiting a home with her husband on the programme on telly last Thursday. She found it hard to imagine they'd been adults.
The writer in The Times says 'I may trust the State to wipe my bum in old age, [I wouldn't bank on it] but I don't trust it to choose nice curtains.' I think if she got to the state of needing her bum wiping, she wouldn't notice the curtains, let alone care about them.
'Even the homes where the elderly are not rough-housed, drugged into docility or just left to stare at the telly ten hours a day are scary and depressing.' That got me thinking. Tellies are everywhere. The reception where I take my car to be serviced has a telly that is always on. The waiting room at the hospital where I went for my pre-op check had a telly on loudly and, even worse, so did the post-op room. There's no escaping them. Are they considered a sign of civilisation?
Thought for today
Second childishness and mere oblivion
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
As you like it, Act 2, 7
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1.4.06 19:11
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Larks or owls
I am a lark. Became one years ago when I decided a run every day would do me good. The run slowed to a walk several years ago after a knee injury. Sad, but at least I can still walk briskly. Work left me too tired to run when I got home so I got up horribly early (it seemed then) and pounded round. Every day I had achieved something no matter what happened at work. I shall remain a lark.
Planet earth
The latest episode featured caves and, as if that wasn't bad enough, cockroaches on a pile of bat dung. I do not like caves and I do not like cockroaches. Fortunately I did not have nightmares but I did dream about being in a building that I knew was about to collapse but nobody would believe me.
The cockroaches reminded me of a hospital where I used to work. The surgical wards and the medical wards were in different buildings separated by a main road but linked by a tunnel under the road. I had to cover cardiac arrests in both buildings. At night I would run through the tunnel to save going outside. The tunnel went past the kitchen and was dark and hot and crawling with cockroaches which crunched underfoot as I sped along. Yuk. That put me off cockroaches (and hospital food).
Thinking of the hospital reminded me of a cardiac arrest I was called to one night on the top floor (fourth floor I think) of the medical building. I was based in the surgical side so had to run up flights of stairs; waiting for a lift would have taken too long. I arrived at the scene feeling weak, and was confronted by a body on a bed undergoing CPR. Someone had passed a tracheal tube into the patient's oesophagus instead of trachea so that the partly digested remains of his last meal were filling the Ambu bag attached to the tube. Resuscitation like that is doomed from the start, and this one was no exception.
Thought for today
Another good reducing exercise consists in placing both hands against the table edge and pushing back.
Robert Quillen, (1887 - 1948) American journalist
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2.4.06 18:52
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The last rights
I expect many have incidents at work they won't forget. I remember being called to a cardiac arrest where an American registrar was already trying to resuscitate the patient. He wasn't impressed with us Brits. Nothing was straightforward (that's the nature of cardiac arrests) and kept saying 'Shit'. We weren't used to staff saying that, nor, I imagined, were the patients. In the commotion he knocked over the patient's jug of water that was standing on his locker. That brought another Shit. At least it didn't fall on the defibrillator and fuse it. Worse substances than water get spilled in hospitals.
One evening in the same hospital, the night sister asked me to see a patient she was concerned about. She was right to be concerned, he looked as if he was about to expire. I thought he ought to be moved to the coronary care unit asap. However, although there was space for him there, no porter was free to transfer him.
The hospital was a series of huts (I bet that impressed the American registrar) and the CCU was at the back of the ward across a narrow concrete road. Night sister and I decided to push the bed ourselves out of the french windows at the end of the ward, across the road and into the CCU. It wasn't far. Unfortunately, we reckoned without hospital beds. (This was the late 1970s.) We were halfway down the slope to the road when one of the wheels came off the bed. We laughed about this later but it wasn't funny at the time.
Thought for today
Unnecessary dieting is because everything from television and fashion ads have made it seem wicked to cast a shadow. This wild, emaciated look appeals to some women, though not to many men, who are seldom seen pinning up a Vogue illustration in a machine shop.
Peg Bracken, US writer and humorist. The I Hate to Cook Book (1960)
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3.4.06 18:37
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An unwelcome purchase
The woman at the supermarket checkout this morning commented on my bag of broccoli; I hadn't taken a pre-packed one. Just as I was about to ask if there was a special offer on pre-packed bags she told me that on the television this morning was a story about a woman who had bought a pre-packed bag of broccoli from Tesco. When she opened it, out popped a snake. I told her I always checked the bananas for spiders. We've had all sorts here, she said. A three inch lizard once made an unexpected appearance.
Follow the crowd
The food industry was criticised today for the nation's poor dietary habits. Good grief; the fashion industry will be criticised next for the nation's poor dress sense. People copy others. They follow the latest fads.
More young people are killed whilst driving though fewer have licences. What is to be done? A person from the RAC Foundation gave suggestions none of which included advanced driving. Learning to drive well after passing the L test is not expensive. Both RoSPA Advanced Drivers and Riders, and the IAM offer tuition at a fraction of the cost of that for provisional drivers. It's better to develop skills than bad habits particularly as bad habits can be difficult to discard. Insurance companies are concerned more with postcodes than proficiency, however, passing an advanced driving test can be an insurance of its own. And would look good on a CV; shows thought, initiative, perseverence, sense.
Thought for today
The reason there were fewer wrecks in the old horse-and-buggy days was because the driver didn't depend wholly on his own intelligence.
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4.4.06 19:05
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Space saves
My walks take me near a dual carriageway. Vehicles thunder past bumper to bumper, too close for their speed. Crashes on dual carriageways and motorways kill few but delay many. They could be prevented if drivers kept further apart. The slogan Speed kills is catchy but untrue. I suggest a new one, Space saves (time, money, lives).
Saves space
Hospitals sometimes store notes of patients on microfiche and then, I presume, destroy the originals. A laudable practice, an efficient way of saving space, but not efficient overall. When patients return for new treatment, some poor minion is ordered to find the microfiched notes, photocopy them to their original size, punch holes in the sheets and then fix them into another folder. A soul-destroying task I used to think, and largely pointless as most of the information was either too old to be relevant or too faint to be readable.
Thought for today
The eyes are of little use if the mind be blind.
Arabian proverb
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5.4.06 17:27
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Lock up your poultry
A dead swan that had been floating in a harbour for a week in Scotland was found today to have the dreaded H5N1 virus. Police patrols are out checking for chickens in passing vehicles. I spotted a dead crow by the roadside this morning. Should I have reported that? I expect it was killed by a blow from a car rather than a dose of bird flu.
All going pear-shaped
Yet another hospital is considering laying off staff. The North Staffs hospital is in trouble with a £15m debt. Is that all? I thought. The trust I worked for had a debt of twice that. A consultant surgeon said they had been told to treat fewer emergency cases though he wondered how that would be achieved. Apparently treatment from GPs will improve so people won't suddenly become ill. Emergency surgery in my trust was gradually reduced by transferring patients to other hospitals but ambulances still brought severely injured people to the A&E dept. As the number of emergency operations fell, so the difficulty of dealing with the severely injured patients rose. I was not sorry to leave.
Thought for today
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Samuel Butler, Notebooks, 1912
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6.4.06 19:46
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There's a time for all things
It'll be time to get on my bike soon. Haven't done so for four months. The cold, dark, icy weather has put me off. Do I wear a helmet? Yes; I feel naked without one. In the rain it keeps my hair dry; in the winter it keeps my head warm; and in the summer it keeps my hair free of wasps and flies. It identifies me as a cyclist and, because it has a yellow cover on it, in theory makes me more visible. Drivers approaching a T-junction might spot me sooner by noticing my head above hedges or fences as I near the junction on the main road.
Does wearing the helmet make me feel safer? Not really. If I fell off I'd rather be wearing the helmet than not. However, I'd rather not put it to the test. The only time I came near to falling off was when I ran over a cat.
As I strode along yesterday afternoon, a chap, probably late thirties, rode a bicycle along the opposite pavement. Adults who feel safer riding on pavements probably shouldn't ride at all. They are more likely to be hit by cars coming out of drives than those on the roads.
Should the wearing of cycle helmets be made compulsory? No. Road safety measures should concentrate on promoting skilled interaction with other road users.
Thought for today
Risk varies inversely with knowledge.
Irving Fisher (1867 - 1947) The Theory of Interest, 1930
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7.4.06 18:58
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