Sunday, 26 September 2010

People in my life: the Dish and the Ballerina I worked as a lecturer in Asian history in the History Department at the University of New England from 1976 to 2007. Somewhere along the line, quite a while ago, Trish Wright-Langsford [better known in the olden days as Trish Cluley] and Gina Butler joined the staff of the Department as Administrative Officers. When Tracey met them, she called them 'Trish the Dish' and 'Gina Ballerina', names which appear to have stuck with them for the past decade.  These two women are living testament to the fact that the Admin Officers are by far the most important and powerful people in a  Department or School of a university, and woe betide those who put them offside! But that's another story. More importantly, Trish and Gina have been fantastic in keeping morale up for Tracey and me in difficult times with their laughter and wickedness and fun, visiting and telling the uni gossip and going over old times. True friends - the best. Never would they let you down.

Diary Update Late-ish Sunday afternoon. The headache I had yesterday seems to have gone, which is good news, as I was connecting it, perhaps quite wrongly, to an increase in blood pressure. I have had so few headaches over the year that the warning bells go out when one happens. Probably a case of a little learning being a dangerous thing. [Thanks, Mr Pope, but though there are plenty of Pierian springs about I don't have that much time and energy to explore them!] There's been an increase in intermittent pain in my right arm, which I am seeing as positive after some fairly heavy duty physiotherapy last Thursday to try to build some new neural connections between brain and arm. It's hard work, both for the physiotherapist and for me. It is so strange to tell your wrist to do something and it just... lies there. But with effort comes a little movement, and the only way is to build on that. Stroke victims, I know exactly how you feel when you are trying to recover use of some portion of your body. More importantly, we are almost up to the 3 week mark without seizures. This has never happened before. There's an awful lot of wood-touching going on here... Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor and what appears as advice here is simply the product of my experience with my form of cancer. It carries no authority in terms of treatment of any other person and should be seen merely as a point of comparison with medical advice from professional medical sources.