tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57227351656692395852024-03-13T22:19:21.827+11:00My Unwelcome StrangerMost of what you’ll read here is life and fun, with episodes from my past, amusing and serious. But I have an unwelcome stranger lodged in my brain, as you’ll find if you explore my stories. Our destinies are interlocked, but its deadly presence reminds me every minute that each day of life is a miracle. This is my space to reflect on life, and an interactive area where we can share our experiences freely. Without you, this blog has no reason for existence. Carpe Diem!Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.comBlogger614125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-43358993699063465522013-12-17T23:33:00.000+11:002013-12-18T10:41:20.254+11:00A Last Message from Denis<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">For all my life, I've been a remarkably fortunate person.
I've been blessed with good health until the last few years, and bathed in the
love of wonderful people around me. I've had an abundance of good things. I've
had periods of sadness, too, and I very much regret having made those I love
unhappy – but those times have passed and it serves no purpose to wallow in
what can't be changed. In my adult life I never hurt anyone out of malice,
though I know I sometimes did out of thoughtlessness and ignorance.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tracey & Denis</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The last fourteen years of my life I have spent with, and
been loved by, and married the one who is to me the most beautiful, intelligent
and caring woman in the world. It's impossible for me to express the amount of care and time and patience Tracey has given me, with little thought to her own
needs. She has always placed mine first. This path we've had to share since
2009 has been more difficult than anyone can understand unless you've travelled
a similar one – and cared as much as she has. She hid her tears from me many
times, knowing how much they tore me apart; yet to cry alone and out of sight
is one of the saddest things in life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was able to truly understand the meaning of love through
her presence in my life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Denis with Sylvia (L), Christian & Alice (R)</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I also have wonderful, clever, loving daughters who mean the
world to me, and a family – parents, my sisters and their husbands and
families, who gave structure to my life through their love and concern. I have
a loving stepdaughter, and I have a delightful stepson who has grown in Tracey’s
and my </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">care from a little child to a fine man. Tracey’s family has been as my
own to me and gave me abundant support when it was most needed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">My life has been completed and fulfilled by some very
special people. They know who they are and I won't try to name them here. I've
had an occupation all my life that I've loved and which made my work my play;
and made my occupation my hobby. Not everyone can say that. After retirement
from university life, I did things that have given me great pleasure and, I believe,
pleasure to many other people. I have no great unfulfilled ambitions, except
the trip to Europe that Tracey, Christian and I planned to do in 2010, and
which became impossible when my illness came to light.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If I've clung to life to the end it's only because of the
joy of sharing life with close family and friends, and my desire to be with
them as long as possible. For me, nothing else mattered but those bonds of love
and friendship. To allow them to slip away is, by far, the most difficult thing
to accept.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So I say with utter sincerity that I've had a fortunate life
– far more fortunate than most people on this planet, and I'll always be
grateful for this. But that balance – so heavily in favour of good things over
bad in my life – is why I'm also grateful that I had the chance to reflect on
my life and its meaning through the window of terminal illness. That time for
reflection isn't something everyone gets. It's a window through which things
become sharper and more vivid than any other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It came as a shock nevertheless to face the near-certainty
of imminent death at an age when I might have expected to live longer than I
did. I thought about death a great deal in the past few years. Not everyone
does. I became more aware than ever that life is always a fleeting thing,
whether you reach one year of age, or ten or a hundred years. Every life is a
little spark that flickers briefly, sometimes brightly, and then the spark
fades quickly and passes back into an infinity of space and silence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That's how we're programmed. While we live for this brief
time, our bodies are the bearers of who and what we are. They are not us;
they're just the vessels in which our true self resides. We stop sometimes, and
try to take stock. We move on, and simply live. We occasionally contemplate the
great questions or put them aside as an insoluble puzzle. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is just how it should be. Whatever endures beyond my
body will do so, especially in the form of the consequences of my actions in
life, and my only wish is that whatever I've taken from the world, I have been
able to give something meaningful back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When my youngest sister Kay died of breast cancer in 2008,
she told us always to look for her spirit in the flowers. This is written on
her headstone. It's very apt – life and beauty regenerated. She was an earth
person, and she lies at the source of her beloved plants and flowers and trees.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am a sky person, which is why I wanted my mortal remains
to be cremated. Anyone who wishes to can imagine my spirit set free to roam where
it will. Day or night, in the eternity of space and time, there's something of
me that will be around somewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunset - Armidale NSW</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Only recently have I truly understood the meaning of the
Tibetan verse: ‘Don't mourn for me, but for those who stay behind.’ I am now free.
If you mourn for me just the right amount, I am honoured - but celebrate, as I
always have done, my life and good fortune – and accept, as I always have, the
wisest of all sayings from Chinese philosophy, </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">'Who knows what's good or bad?' <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am truly free.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2>
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Eulogy for Dr Denis Wright (2/5/1947 –
7/12/2013)</span></b></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">Tracey has asked me to review
what we might call the public life of Dr Denis Wright. Denis and I joined UNE’s History Department
at the same time in January 1976 and we retired on the same day in July 2007 so
we had a lot of shared history.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Everyone present this
morning had a connection with Denis in some way or another and held him in high
esteem with great affection. But which
Denis do you remember? Is it Denis the
internationally recognised scholar, the inspirational and innovative teacher,
the exacting but supportive supervisor, the enthusiastic hockey player and
exuberant coach, the creative film-maker or one of several other roles that
Denis filled quietly and self-effacingly?
With the assistance of Tracey’s notes, Denis’ blog and information from
Howard Brasted I’ll try and cover most of these aspects.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YFhuRUvPYa4/UrA8QrmQzvI/AAAAAAAAHEg/7tUZOtE2kOc/s1600/DenKidBlog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YFhuRUvPYa4/UrA8QrmQzvI/AAAAAAAAHEg/7tUZOtE2kOc/s320/DenKidBlog.jpg" width="205" /></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Denis was born in May 1947 in
Gladstone, Queensland but spent his childhood on the family dairy farm in
Calliope about 20 kilometres away with two older sisters Jan and Lyn and later
a younger one, Kay. Dairying in the
1950s was the most exacting form of farming and from an early age Denis helped
with the milking. His mother would wake
him with a cup of tea and a slice of toast about 5.45 and leave for the milking
parlour. Denis followed and helped with
the cows until around 7 before returning to the house to get breakfast for
himself and Kay and leaving for school.
After school and at weekends he often helped with the second
milking. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Denis started school early,
before he was 5, at Calliope State School where 40 or 50 children were taken to
grade 8. Although he was younger than
his classmates Denis did well at school but had a clear view that he was not
going to be a farmer. When asked if he
was proceeding to Gatton Agricultural College he told the head teacher “Sir … I
don’t want to be a farmer. I want to be a teacher”. Consequently, he went on to High School in
Gladstone and finished there with a result in the senior public exam which won
him a scholarship to the Teachers’ College at Kelvin Grove in Brisbane. When he left home to stay with his mother’s
sister, Auntie Mavis, he was not yet 17.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Followers of Denis’s blog
will find many stories of his childhood and they all reflect the innocence of a
very different era though there are amusing tales of his misadventures with
Bimbo Brown and the organizational perils, tinged with a frisson of danger, in
having a ‘Calliope girl’ and a ‘Town girl’ for the different local dances.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The teachers’ course was 2
years but within two weeks of its commencement Denis had enrolled in a BA at
the University of Queensland which could be studied externally with
twice-weekly evening classes. Here
serendipity shaped Denis’s future. There
were only three options in the history programme and he didn’t fancy European
or American history but Indian history sounded different and interesting. More importantly he met two people who were
to have an enormous influence both professionally and personally –Dr Damodar
Singhal and his wife Dr Devahuti.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FOkk6fWWiw0/UrA9w5A3Q9I/AAAAAAAAHFg/bOl4MOElyTE/s1600/Den+Duncan+Blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="284" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FOkk6fWWiw0/UrA9w5A3Q9I/AAAAAAAAHFg/bOl4MOElyTE/s320/Den+Duncan+Blog.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Denis & Duncan</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Denis finished Teachers’
College at the end of 1965 and was appointed first to Gladstone Central school
and then to his old school at Calliope where he found himself teaching his
younger second cousins in the same rooms where he had been a pupil. During the two years he was teaching he kept
on with external studies for his BA expanding his interest in Asia with courses
on China, Japan and the Modern Far East and always with good results including
a Distinction that was surprisingly upgraded to a High Distinction and allowed
him to apply for and win a much prized and rare Commonwealth Later Year Award
that enabled him to go to university as a full-time student. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Back in Brisbane Denis
lodged with his father’s sister Auntie Amy and was soon joined in the city by
Kay who was also at the university. In
the long university vacations Denis went home and worked in an assortment of
summer jobs, as a postie, a barman, a wine waiter and a labourer on the coal wharves
stacking oil drums.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Denis imagined he would
return to teaching and, in time, probable promotion to a headmastership, but he
was persuaded to do Honours in history with a thesis on the Kashmir
Dispute. His kindly mentors Drs Singhal
and Devahuti then asked him to stay on as a Tutor on the History of Asian
Civilisations course which he did from 1971 until he moved to UNE. A Tutor was paid more than a teacher of an
equivalent age and Denis saw this as an opportunity to marry Janette and, with
regular renewals of his contract offering security, to start a research MA on
the relations between India and Pakistan.
He was 23.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">In 1973 on the day he
submitted his MA Denis enrolled for a PhD on the new state of Bangladesh which
was formed in 1971 from what had been East Pakistan. With the commitment that we have all seen in
various settings, Denis threw himself into research with a trip to London and a
stint at Chatham House with several months in India and Bangladesh before
returning to Brisbane to continue as a Tutor and work on his research
topic. </span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Itx0AyNkt9A/UrA8XNf7jSI/AAAAAAAAHEw/mppeee1QKvM/s1600/DAW+S+%2526+ABlog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="272" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Itx0AyNkt9A/UrA8XNf7jSI/AAAAAAAAHEw/mppeee1QKvM/s320/DAW+S+%2526+ABlog.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">By the time he accepted the
lecturing position at UNE in 1976, Alice had arrived in 1975 to be joined by
Sylvie four years later. Denis suspended
his </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">PhD while he constructed new courses, wrote lectures and external teaching
materials but a study leave in 1980 allowed him to do the work in the USA,
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">and Oxford that finally enabled him to finish and
submit his thesis.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QwN4Be7EYcs/UrA8USZtCnI/AAAAAAAAHEo/DscPMH76cZM/s1600/DenPhDBlog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QwN4Be7EYcs/UrA8USZtCnI/AAAAAAAAHEo/DscPMH76cZM/s320/DenPhDBlog.jpg" width="211" /></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This is not the place to
recite a catalogue of Denis’s many publications. It is sufficient to note that he wrote
several books, co–authored others and published many chapters and articles on
aspects of Bangladeshi history, politics and culture and that he was a widely
recognized expert on the modern history of the sub-continent and, of course, on
Bangladesh in particular. He wrote
articles on child labour and the trafficking of women and girls in Asia and the
chapters for an Australian government report on child labour in Bangladesh and
Nepal that has been used by other governments as a model for combating child
labour in developing countries.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Denis spent several study
leave periods in Bangladesh, including one when virtual civil war raged around
Dhaka and he heard the bullets snapping overhead. His first two books on Bangladeshi history
and politics were published simultaneously in that country and India. It is typical of Denis that he arranged that
the royalties on these books remain in the sub-continent and be distributed to
various charities and foundations. The
number sold and the extent of the charitable outcome is unknown but both have
enjoyed a constant cycle of reprints and republication by other
publishers. Denis became such a
well-known figure in Bangladesh that he was affectionately referred to as the ‘white
Bengali’ – speaking and reading both Hindi and Bengali – and an observer who
understood the psychology of both Hindus and Muslims. Indeed, it was for that reason that he was
invited in 2001 to give the keynote address at the inaugural meeting of the
Bangladeshi Psychological Society at Dhaka University.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">At UNE Denis was an
inspiring teacher. Through his
long-lasting, full-year unit <i>The Great
Traditions of Asia</i> he introduced generations of students to the history,
culture, philosophies and religions of India, China and Japan. It is no exaggeration to say that he opened
the minds of many to the possibilities of ‘otherness’ and he displayed manifest
satisfaction when students began to switch on to the cultural history of South
and East Asia. He was also a very good
supervisor at all levels; exacting in his insistence on accuracy, use of
evidence and elegant expression but always supportive and eager to see his
students realise the same goals that had been his as a young scholar. He was the pre-eminent innovator in the
Department and later the School in his use of emerging technologies in distance
education. Indeed his foundation unit
was one of the first to be offered online long before it became standard practice. He was also the acknowledged, though unpaid,
‘go to’ man when any of the historians encountered problems with their
computers. You must remember that those
were the days when it was decided to issue computers to all staff but there was
no money to train colleagues how to use them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">His contribution to the
profession was no less significant. In
1984 he became the Treasurer of the South Asian Studies Association, the
professional body representing scholars in that field. This was when the colleagues in Asian history
at UNE took over a virtually moribund journal and turned it around so that it
is today regarded as one of the world’s best.
In 2000 SASA awarded Denis Life Membership as an acknowledgment for the
twenty years he served the Association.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hlYvj4K7L7M/UrA8exjC9JI/AAAAAAAAHFI/hvRMv7bzTXk/s1600/Den+CameraBlog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hlYvj4K7L7M/UrA8exjC9JI/AAAAAAAAHFI/hvRMv7bzTXk/s320/Den+CameraBlog.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Denis met Tracey when she
was studying philosophy and world religions.
They had much in common, as we came to realise, and with his first
marriage over Denis pursued a romance with his customary diligence. Tracey eventually moved to Armidale in 1999
and her passion for music and the theatre opened up a whole new area of
interest for Denis. He started to make
films of Musical Society productions and after his retirement he continued to
film, edit and produce DVDs so successfully that he and Tracey set up Tabbycat
Productions - a small filming and editing business. As you can imagine Denis quickly mastered the
intricacies of digital editing and production and was getting ever more
enthusiastic about the venture when his illness was diagnosed. Denis was made a Life Member of the Musical
Society and an award set up in his name.
It is a fitting acknowledgement of everything Denis stood for that the
chief criterion in selecting a recipient for the award is that their commitment
to the Musical Society outweighs their desire for self- promotion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">That brings me to the last
substantive category of activities that I must mention so that everyone has a
proper appreciation of Denis Wright. He
was for many years an active contributor to Brain Mass, an organization that
provides professional online academic assistance and advice. For almost two decades he was one of just
three directors of an international aid agency [BODHI] that raises and
distributes thousands of dollars to charities, mainly in South and Southeast Asia,
bringing health and education to thousands with the key principle being
sustainability. In 2010 BOHDI
established four annual scholarships in Denis’s name for girls in
Bangladesh. Denis also assisted ANTaR
–Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation – with graphic design and
layout for their regular newsletters. He
was a hockey coach for ten years in the 1980s and 90s and is remembered by many
of his hockey girls in town. He also
took groups for educational tours across China and was especially fond of
travelling the old Silk Road. Lastly
through his blog, ‘My Unwelcome Stranger’, Denis has given many other people
who are confronting a brain disease, as either a patient or carer, a source of
information and inspiration of such significance that the blog has been
selected for preservation by the Australian National Library in its Pandora
Archive.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5M2RfmgLD5g/UrA8kAf_qGI/AAAAAAAAHFY/1S67W40_ihE/s1600/DenChinaBlog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="282" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5M2RfmgLD5g/UrA8kAf_qGI/AAAAAAAAHFY/1S67W40_ihE/s400/DenChinaBlog.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 150%;">When we spoke with Denis
last week, Howard and I told him that if everything we did as academics and in
life was boiled down to a couple of questions they would be ‘was it all
worthwhile’ and ‘did I make a difference’?
And that for him, the answer was an unequivocal yes!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">David Kent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GMVMsR-d0po/UrAkDaUJ1mI/AAAAAAAAHEM/F5e1h12X_PM/s1600/Den-portrait-&-Flowers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GMVMsR-d0po/UrAkDaUJ1mI/AAAAAAAAHEM/F5e1h12X_PM/s400/Den-portrait-&-Flowers.jpg" width="345" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Painting by Den's niece - Jessamy Gee</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-7165923848945528062013-12-09T22:09:00.000+11:002013-12-09T22:09:07.518+11:00Funeral Arrangements<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">A Funeral Service will be held for Denis </span><span style="font-size: large;">at </span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><div style="text-align: center;">
Piddington's Crematorium Chapel, Uralla Road, Armidale</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</span><span style="font-size: large;"><div style="text-align: center;">
at 10.00 am on Friday the 13th of December 2013</div>
</span></b><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Not being in the slightest superstitious, Denis would be most entertained by this.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The date will be 13-12-13</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">A friend pointed out that if you phone that number you are connected to Qantas Freight.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Denis would also find this highly amusing.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">First class freight I would think.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Take my word for it. Don't make the call. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">We don't want them thinking that they are suddenly popular.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-66528745765529900892013-12-07T20:58:00.000+11:002013-12-07T21:01:21.790+11:00Saturday 7 December 2013<br />
It has been a very hard, but special day.<br />
<br />
Today I said goodbye to my beloved Denis.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">He died at 5.10pm tonight. Peacefully, without fanfare, just as he lived.</span><br />
<br />
They say that hearing is the last thing to go.<br />
<br />
So loved by so many people. I reminded him of that near the end.<br />
<br />
I sang him a lullaby, kissed his cheek and told him "Off you go now". He did.<br />
<br />
He was so happy and ready for it to be over.<br />
<br />
I am privileged to have been the one there holding his hand at the end.<br />
<br />
The last messages I read out to him were from his darling daughters. He asked me to share them with you here.<br />
<br />
Tracey<br />
<br />
<br />
<h4>
A Goodbye Letter</h4>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt;">Dear Dad,</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">I don’t really know how to write this
– I’ve never felt more clumsy with words. But I know I’m luckier than most
because we’ve had so much lovely time together and I get a chance to say
Goodbye and so many daughters don’t get this chance.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">I guess I just want you to know
I love you and feel so incredibly fortunate to have been brought up by such a wonderful
dad. You taught me to strive to be caring, compassionate, and strong and
purposeful. I say this because I want you to know that you don’t have to worry
about me – I feel positive and inspired by the beautiful things in life and I
will take good care of myself and stay true to my heart. I will always look out
for Alice and we’ll stay strong together through whatever life throws our way –
sisters united, no matter what.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Thank you for all your words on the
blog – there are so many lessons and memories recorded there that I know I will
read and reread whenever I need advice, to be cheered up, and to feel close to
you.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">I know you love me and are proud of
me. I’ve never wanted for anything from you. You have been the most wonderful
father a daughter could ever dream of.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I wish you sweet dreams, Daddy,
forever your Little Girl. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Goodbye, Daddyo. I love you.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Sylvia</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<h4>
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Haiku by Alice</span></span></h4>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Some Moments in Time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Floating through my memory<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">I create for you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Hockey Sticks and Balls<br />
Daddy taught me everything<br />
Goals I have many...<br />
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Spelling Must Be Right<br />
Even on a shopping list<br />
CusTURD was the best! (that was Sylvia not me actually!)<br />
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Dinosaur Project<br />
Dad's help and coloured paper<br />
Came top of the class.<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Warm Sand, Crashing Waves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Shiny shells and Cuttlefish<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Hit the fence for four<br />
No this wasn't the ashes<br />
French Cricket, Dad rules!<br />
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I was only five<br />
Numbers crunching, brain hurting<br />
Pontoon twenty one!<br />
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</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Midnight </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">wake me up!<br />
Moon is out, the tide is right<br />
Fishing with my Dad<br />
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Spiders on the floor<br />
Out of the wood, hairy legs<br />
Daddy put them out!<br />
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Favourite moments<br />
Running, laughing, stories and fun<br />
Daddy is the word<br />
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<b><br />
A pillar of strength<br />
From this life to the next one<br />
You will always be</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-52383189611032289232013-12-03T12:58:00.000+11:002013-12-03T12:58:18.460+11:00An Update from TraceyFriends<div>
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Today is an anniversary. It is exactly four years today since 'discovery'. That is, the first seizure which announced the presence of the Unwelcome Stranger. Against all the odds, Denis is still here.</div>
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You have not heard from Denis for a little while and I know everyone is wondering how he is doing. </div>
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Not so good. </div>
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That is the problem with dying. When everyone most wants to know what is happening, it is the time when you are least able to tell them.</div>
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Some protracted 'new' seizures on Saturday night, and the subsequent increased deficits in communication and mobility, mean that Denis is extremely unlikely to write on here again.</div>
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He has seen the people that he wants to see. He is weary and content to sleep.</div>
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The problem for me is that Denis, through this blog and social media, has come to feel a bit like public property for many people. Unsurprisingly, he does not feel like that for me.</div>
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With upwards of 100 requests, texts, emails, private Facebook and Twitter messages in the last week, from people who would like to be kept personally informed, you will all be disappointed to read that I don't plan on doing that. </div>
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This is not the time for me to be looking at a keyboard and answering questions.</div>
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It is the time for me to sit holding Den's hand and loving him while he is still here.</div>
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Thanks for all your messages of support. </div>
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Denis says thank you all for your friendship. It has meant more to him than you will know.</div>
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This is our time now.</div>
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-75463505000520208352013-11-27T15:59:00.000+11:002013-11-27T16:03:38.270+11:00The brain jam<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;">27/11/13</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>6 AM Ah! that's OK. I've been ferried to the bathroom, returned and have a little time when no-one is likely to bother me much.</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>[That's how far I got with that. To return to what I was writing yesterday and the day before....]</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">25/11/13</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I did a lot of fishing in my life BC, but this isn't about fishing. Good fisherfolk have a number of admirable qualities, two of which are calm and patience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> My first fishing expeditions were with a hand-line on a coke-bottle. No fancy rod and reel, just 75 metres of fine line, swivel, sinker and my savvy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> From time to time my line got tangled. Untangling a fishing line depends upon one vital principle - keeping the knot loose. Then examine it. That's where calm and patience come in. More haste, usually less speed. Lose your temper and strangle the knot, and you've probably wrecked a good hand-line.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've always felt that a lot of problems in life can be approached using the same principles.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm not certain how this relates to what I'm going to say next but I'm not sure it matters. I don't care really and you can't keep a problem looser than that.</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z-rCAasmzus/UpVlyDXbS1I/AAAAAAAAHC4/5Ny_at3EVJk/s1600/JACK.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="156" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z-rCAasmzus/UpVlyDXbS1I/AAAAAAAAHC4/5Ny_at3EVJk/s200/JACK.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As you may be aware, a new problem quite suddenly came to the fore as a consequence of the spread of this brain tumour down the neural pathways. New to me, anyway, but no doubt familiar to the neurologist and to most GPs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It’s called dysphasia. In my case the cognitive area of my brain</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> – </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the part that does the thinking – is going along at a fairly reasonable pace right now. Other parts are really running on empty or there are traffic jams in information waiting to be processed. Some lanes are freed suddenly only to get blocked again. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If I didn't have this condition I would never have understood it, except on a superficial level. You have to be inside it. I know, you can say that nearly anything, but this is dysphasia and it's sure stuffing things up for me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In my ability to communicate via keyboard, it’s crippling.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Imagine for a start that someone reconfigured the keys on your keyboard randomly every minute or two as you were typing.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Imagine </span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...that some letters in words you were typing failed to come up on the screen when you were sure you typed them.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...that totally different letters appeared on the screen bearing no relation to what you typed.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...that the Backspace and the Return keys regularly changed function.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...that a particular letter never came up on the screen.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...that even though you knew it was the wrong letter, you typed it anyway.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">...that characters and words come out scrambled although they left the thinking part of your brain intact.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Suddenly, that's my world. Familiar territory for the dyslexic no doubt. For me that's just the half of it. Couple that with failing eyesight [through seizures] that makes full stops look like commas or semicolons or apostrophes. Memory quirks and fails that make me forget where I am in a word or sentence, let alone in a thought.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Touch type? I've been reduced to typing with just one hand because of right side semi-paralysis. Forget those ancient skills. I never was a touch typist but I used to type almost as fast as one.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Voice recognition? With throat and mouth seizures, my voice is slurred and variable. No.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is one partial let-out clause.<i> If I spell everything out loud, one character at a time, slowly, then it translates tolerably well.</i> That does nothing for creativity, but at least it is correctable with another editorial pass over the text and made readable. It may be rubbish, but it's readable rubbish.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So getting back to my fishing line analogy, all I can do in my outlook is to keep the knots loose. Be patient. Sacrifice some goals for the sake of others. Accept the limitations caused by this new condition, work around them where possible and be content with smaller fish.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/">home</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/whats-new.html">WHAT'S NEW!</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/stories-from-my-early-life.html">stories from my past</a></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #fff2cc;">. </span></span></span></span></div>
Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-28275678775992327932013-11-22T13:46:00.000+11:002013-11-22T20:59:00.417+11:00Hospital 2<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">continued from <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/151113-1715-we-are-told-that-as-we-get.html"><span style="color: blue;"><b>hospital 1</b></span></a></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I expected to complete this story earlier, but events overtook its rambly journey. Consequently, I’ll trim it down because time’s growing short and my <i><span style="color: #7f6000;">[abilty to precess the words to the keburd hs suddly abut collasped. It has thaken me an abut fe minute to write thag three sentece</span></i></span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">] </span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">ability to process the words to the keyboard has suddenly all but collapsed. It has taken me about fifteen minutes to write these three sentences.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> This isn't getting the story finished. I thought I was about to face one of the things I dreaded about being in hospital, something that was not necessary when I was in hospital twelve weeks ago. I would be getting ferried by mobile potty-type chair – minus the potty</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> – </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">to a position which seemed high above the toilet bowl. When I and the toilet had completed our assignation there would be what I had previously regarded as the greatest possible attack on my dignity. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> You know what I'm talking about. To put it very delicately, it’s having your adult arse wiped by by another human being.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> You know what? As many adults have discovered, long before I did, this procedure turns out be nix, nada, <i>nothing</i>. The nurses have done it a thousand times and to them it’s just another minor but vital task.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> For more than sixty years I couldn’t imagine myself needing this help, except perhaps as a frail old man in some distant future. I didn't think that I might become ill in a very short time. After all, Tracey and I had been playing squash three times a week up to the day before I got that first seizure. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I suspect women are not so squeamish about medical things to do with their bodies as men, especially men of ahem... mature years </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">–</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> men used to being in positions of power and authority.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> You feel awfully vulnerable that first time with a nurse of any age standing behind or beside your bare buttocks with a wad of loo paper in hand. You don't have your protective CEO suit on hospital.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> But here I was, last Friday, not a CEO of anything, facing the prospect of being ferried to the toilet.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> To backtrack a little, I was going to call a nurse, get myself shovelled on to the portable commode chair and deal with the stomach pains in the bathroom – immediately. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> But then I had my doubts that I was going to make it to my destination unscathed. Or maybe the carpet wasn’t. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I passed this calculation of time and motion on to the nurse as soon as she arrived. It was a busy night and I wasn’t the only customer in the shop. As unflustered as professionals always are in these circumstances, she bid me stay right there (like I was going to flee the country right?) while she got a bed-pan. She did this with alacrity. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Usually it's not hard for a person to turn on their side in bed, so that the pan can be placed in the right spot, then both the person and the pan can be turned upright so that the person is neatly on the pan and good old gravity can do its thing when needed. The problem was that my right side was weak and things seemed no longer Code Red but a marginally Whiter Shade of Pale. <i>[That is so disgustingly bad a piece of purple prose I’ve got to keep it. <a href="http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2013win.html" target="_blank">Bulwer Lytton Awards</a>, we have a winner.] </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I decided that it was safe for me to attempt the marathon journey of five metres to the toilet. The effort of getting me up on to the pan had temporarily quelled the desire. The bed-pan was abandoned. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> We negotiated the terrain to the bathroom without incident.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> After several trips to the toilet bowl now with my private chauffeur and my privates exposed, I think I’ll be ready for the bed-pan now, should the need arise. I don't say I like the idea, but I’ll cope.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> You're all just dying to know if the visit to the loo was a success, right? Well, no, it wasn’t. I was still too freaked by the bed-pan it seems. But you'll be happy to know it was only a temporary setback and a few hours later with another visit to the bathroom, it all came out just fine. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i> This post is dedicated to the many like me who have looked after their bodily functions from childhood but now face handing that jealously guarded care over to someone else. My message is, don't be afraid. Nothing bad is going to happen. On the contrary, you are going to learn a spectacular lesson in humility. If you accept with good grace what can't be changed – and with humour if you can – what would seem a blow to dignity soon ceases to become so. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i> It isn't a blow to dignity, anyway – just to pride – and there's a difference. The difference mainly concerns attitude.</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> You can see how quickly I got over those first feelings of horror.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/151113-1715-we-are-told-that-as-we-get.html">hospital 1</a> | <b style="background-color: yellow;">hospital 2</b></span></div>
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-14617014837633871882013-11-17T08:27:00.000+11:002013-11-22T13:53:30.189+11:00Hospital 1<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">16/11/13 17:15</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We are told that as we get older, time speeds up. It makes sense on one level. Each year is a smaller portion of our life experience. At 2, a year is half your life. At 52, a year is barely a morsel of the pie-chart. No wonder the weeks flash by.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> But age makes no difference to time in some respects. It feels, now that I'm back in this hospital, as if practically no time has elapsed since I was here last – twelve weeks ago.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The huge difference is in me. When I left last time, I could walk – with a frame, that’s for sure – but now I have no safe grip with the right hand. When I left last time, I could get to the bathroom unaided, stand at the sink to wash hands, clean teeth, or stand at the toilet. I could exercise my legs in the passageway. When tired I could put myself to bed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At any time I could easily get myself from bed to chair, where I could open my window on the world via the laptop.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I can’t do these things now, but I didn't really know the significance of that until today. Everything is set up in a hospital to solve these problems, right? Well, yes....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We arrived at my room yesterday at about 4 pm. It was difficult for staff to get me from wheelchair to chair. At home, Tracey and I had our own method, involving the frame. With care and time, it wasn’t hard, and didn't mean Tracey was taking my weight.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But here, the two staff were holding me firmly on either side. It felt wrong although they were doing everything right.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It felt too late for me to have my usual afternoon sleep. Dinner was at the hospital time of 5.30 PM. You know, that time when everyone’s hanging out for their full evening meal.... Ha ha.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But you go with the routine. There’s not much choice. I didn’t want to start setting up an internet connection, and staff who knew me dropped in for a quick hello.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“It’s lovely to see you back.” It was often said, or a near equivalent. Only a few realised the irony, but it was a greeting sincerely meant, so Tracey and I privately enjoyed the joke.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“We have so many patients in. Would you like to go to bed now?”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“What time is it?”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“7 PM.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I laughed, but had a quick think about it. 7 PM bedtime was even more alien to me than 5.30 PM dinner. But the day and its implications had taken its toll on me, and they were busy. So I figured it was a good idea to sleep while I was tired and see where the evening took me. I didn't have a plane to catch.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I woke what seemed many hours later, bursting to pee. For the first time my new dependence struck home. I couldn't just shuffle off to my bathroom on my own.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But I could of course call for a nurse to bring me a bottle. The call button was there, dangling above my head, and I had one good hand. I pressed it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As I said, it was a busy night. I heard the alarm ring at the other end, but amongst a host of others. I was going to have to wait my turn.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There's nothing you can do in these circumstances but batten down the hatches, as it were. There may have been cases much worse than mine. I </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">hoped they were, if you know what I mean.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Eventually a senior nurse bustled in, very apologetic for the delay. I was too happy to see her to complain, which would have been both churlish and pointless. With great difficulty because of the lack of responsiveness of my right leg we got me into a standing position to drop the drawers (i.e., pull the trousers down). I then sat on the side of the bed, the deed was done.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“I’ll try sleeping on the other side now.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To return me to a sleeping position, another struggle with the paralytic leg ensued.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“I’ll put the rail up on this side as well,” she said, ”and you can use it to turn properly to this side.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It was a good idea. I had solid grip with that hand and could turn myself right to the side. Still, it seemed strange to be in what looked and felt like a baby’s cot, even though the side-rail was barely a palm width in height from the bed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“I guess I'm not going anywhere. I don't have a plane to catch.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But it was a stark reminder of how things had changed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“What time is it?”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“A quarter to ten.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hell’s bells. I expected it to be about 3.00 AM.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I settled down to try to sleep and after 30 minutes, there was pain and a deep rumble in my stomach. It had been upset for days. I realised that was not my bladder this time that was demanding urgent attention but something that was not going to be solved by a bottle by the bedside.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The buzzers of other patients signalled yet more demands. I was back in the queue, with increasingly urgent business to attend to.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I intended to get further than this but am having vision problems, so will finish this next time.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i>[<a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/hospital-2.html">continued</a>]</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b style="background-color: yellow;">hospital 1</b> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/hospital-2.html">hospital 2</a></span></div>
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-7103651475518326062013-11-12T20:40:00.000+11:002013-11-12T20:41:34.065+11:00The dangling leg<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aGI5PJje7-k/UoHrwnHfbJI/AAAAAAAAHBw/QfG8UZADUU8/s1600/right+leg.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aGI5PJje7-k/UoHrwnHfbJI/AAAAAAAAHBw/QfG8UZADUU8/s320/right+leg.JPG" width="264" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tracey usually tucks the baby in at night; a more pleasant ritual for the baby than for her, but it does serve more than a ritual purpose. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I of course am the baby. She helps me turn on to the side I want to sleep. She then packs the blanket a little down my back, and we hope to have a good night’s sleep. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I usually sleep as if I have a total shut-down, and often not a muscle seems to have moved till morning. I can't say the same for Tracey, though, but it's not something I can control. There's not much of anything I can control these days.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Some nights like last night I have something I want to try to finish, and Tracey is tired earlier than I [I can't imagine why!], so I put myself to bed after she goes. It usually works out OK but never so good for me as the tucking-in routine. Getting a near-paralysed foot into the right position to sleep is no easy matter. If it's wrong, the ankle aches all night.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I woke at about 3.30 am with my right leg hanging over the right side of the bed. That's never happened before. I was diagonally across the bed but managed to get myself on my back, but couldn't get my leg back into the bed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I could have called for Tracey but figured this was something I should be able to solve for myself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The best solution was to get the left foot under the right leg and to drag it back in, but I had to be very careful not to slide right off the bed attempting that. We might have been in for another ambulance visit if I did so. Another complication was that the bedclothes – a doona and a light blanket – were slewed across and over the side with the leg. This complicated matters. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I managed to hook the right ankle with the left foot. With much groaning [in effort, not in pain, but enough to be afraid of waking Tracey, who has lock-on fix on noises from this room]. I dragged the leg back bit-by-bit like a creature going back to its den with its half-dead prey.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I took a few deep recovery breaths and then raised the bed using its electric hydraulics so I was high enough to turn on the lamp, and straightened myself in the bed. I had yet to unscramble the blankets sufficiently to cover myself. Bear in mind that I have to be able to find a corner of the cover I can grip with the left hand – not a bottom edge! – and bring up the covers in enough order to put them back into place, and that a semi-paralysed right side doesn't allow me to raise my body to do that without quite a bit of effort and a fair dash of luck.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I was more-or-less successful. I had blankets over me. I decided against trying to get out of the left side to relieve my bladder [it wasn’t urgent]. I didn't know what strength I had left and having succeeded in not-falling out of the right side of the bed I was determined not to do it out of the left.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I slept fitfully for some time, and then bowed to the inevitable and got up, being super-careful to balance enough to be able to grip the frame left-handed, then stand evenly on both feet before the right-side tremors became too violent to stop me grasping the right hand on to its grip and locking it on. Success. Narrowly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> That meant I could negotiate my way the one metre to the chair. Be grateful I don't ply you with the steps [mostly backward] that I take to get there. But I did it. I was awake till after the doctor visited at ten o’clock, and Tracey settled me to bed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Before that, she told me that I had been making weird noises and movements at 2.30 AM, and she had stayed by the open door for ages in the darkness. When I had settled, she went back to bed. I suspect I had had some sort of seizure, leaving that leg out of the right side of the bed until I found it there. She wouldn't have seen it on the Baby Monitor from its position. I felt happy that I hadn’t called for help with the dangling leg that couple of hours later when she was deep asleep. Happier, I might add, than she was.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> When I woke this afternoon, there was rain beating softly on the roof, and it was 2.15 pm. Every limb, every muscle, every finger and toe was exactly as it was when I closed my eyes. It was warm and blissfully peaceful. I could have stayed that way forever.</span><br />
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-39975784944515477202013-11-10T17:49:00.000+11:002013-11-10T17:49:57.927+11:00Just one 'waffeer thin' verse<br />
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo: Jan Stockwell</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>'The highest good is like water.</i><br /><i>It flows in places men reject,</i><br /><i>And so is like the Tao....'</i></b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Please bear with me a moment before I tell you what this is about. I promise, Scout's Honour, it won't take long. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> If you've been following my postings for a long time you’ll know that a guiding light in my life has been the <i>Tao te Ching</i> [pinying translation of the name: <i>Daodejing</i>].</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> When I began teaching the year-long course, the History of Asian Civilisations, the <i>Tao te Ching </i>was allocated its own time-slot. The reason was that students needed time to start to understand the broad philosophy behind it, which I tried to explain in <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/how-do-we-make-sense-of-tao-te-ching.html">another series of postings</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The <i>Tao te Ching</i> is somewhat cryptic, and like a set of instructions for doing something on the computer, it makes a lot more sense <i>after </i>the task is completed than before it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One other explanatory thing. Taoism has three strands; philosophical, religious and popular. Reading about Taoism on the web may take you to any one of the three. Concentrating on the <i>Tao te Ching</i> itself neatly avoids the trap of confusion amongst the three. I am talking here only of the philosophical strand.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've decided to take one of the ninety Tao te Ching verses that puzzled students, and explain it via just one translation. When you read it, don't be surprised if you don't get all of it. I'm going to try to unravel and exemplify it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is the verse. It starts with the premise that order is the most desirable state, whether for the universe, society, or for a family. Following it is my explanation.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">38</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone.<br />When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done.<br />When a disciplinarian does something and no one responds,<br />He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness.<br />When goodness is lost, there is kindness.<br />When kindness is lost, there is justice.<br />When justice is lost, there ritual.<br />Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.<br />...<br />It is the beginning of folly.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[This relates to someone having a complete understanding of the nature of what they’re doing. Only a compassionate person achieves this level of awareness.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[Justice means arbitrating between two or more people. Each may have a case. If so, one may still have a grievance once a decision is reached. I return to this below.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When a disciplinarian does something and no one responds,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[Force or the threat of violence is going to be used in this case. Force may achieve a return to order, but leaving discontent, and often at horrific cost.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The paragraph that follows this details the stages in loss of order.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[When all is in order, enough said. But if it’s not, then people have to be good to each other to keep things on the level.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When goodness is lost, there is kindness.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[Taking a relationship as an example, the next step down from goodness is a willingness to be kind to each other, in an attempt to hold things together.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When kindness is lost, there is justice.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[The relationship has deteriorated further. Now there's nothing for it but to have it come before the court. There's property involved; maybe kids as well.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When justice is lost, there is ritual.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[They decide to stick it out, maybe for the sake of the children. They simply go through the motions of normalcy in a ritualised way.]</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[It becomes obvious that the relationship is a sham. Those in this relationship or affected closely by the behaviour of the parties suffer. Signals become more and more mixed. “...the beginning of confusion.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is the beginning of folly.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With no order to go by, the most extreme of events may occur. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I've used a modern example here to show that this ancient text can be applied to a social phenomenon which happens world-wide, even though it has variations according to local custom and religious tradition. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It could apply to countless other circumstances where they descend from an ordered or balanced state down a ladder of disorder into chaos. Some would point to climate change, civil war, the increased abuse of drugs, obesity and carcinogens, over-population and over-consumption.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The <i>Tao te Ching</i> is all about how to deal with this at any stage – a mindset rather than a recipe. It does not say that all systems begin with perfection and decline thereafter, although we might be forgiven for seeing a great deal of what’s happening in the world showing signs of this descent. if not from a perfect start.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i> Understanding the nature of a system or a problem provides a chance of returning it to order if it goes out of whack. If it can't be fixed, understanding it properly at least gives the best chance of coping with it.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I'm sure you understand why this is uppermost in my mind at the moment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://terebess.hu/english/tao/gia.html" target="_blank">Translation: Gia-fu Feng and Jane English</a></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/">home</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/whats-new.html">WHAT'S NEW!</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/stories-from-my-early-life.html">stories from my past</a></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #fff2cc;">. </span></span></span></span></div>
Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-73606772725807686832013-11-06T11:09:00.000+11:002013-11-06T17:53:53.069+11:00A trip to the Oncologist<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6lCo0zqjx_M/Unl2ByxULsI/AAAAAAAAHBI/O5Ja3iy5198/s1600/bt+alliance.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="190" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6lCo0zqjx_M/Unl2ByxULsI/AAAAAAAAHBI/O5Ja3iy5198/s200/bt+alliance.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.btaa.org.au/">Source</a></span></i></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We haven't visited my oncologist much. Two, maybe three times a year at most. That's because there's really not much he can do, which isn't to say he doesn’t watch over my progression carefully – he does. But in practical terms, he sanctions minor adjustments to meds – that’s about it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> He’s good at his job. I regard him as one of the best. Not that I've got all that much experience in ranking oncologists, but I can tell - and so it appears can the hoards of patients he has.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But today we met probably for the last time. We prepared for the visit by listing a number of points about how things had gone since the last time we’d seen him. That was only two months ago, and the smaller gap between visits was because we knew my condition was deteriorating quite rapidly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Going out anywhere for me now is quite a hassle. It begins right here where I'm sitting. With the aid of the chair I crank myself up so I can stand. The steel frame is ahead of me. I grasp the left handlegrip firmly while the right hand waves its way towards its grip.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I usually miss it. The spasticity of the hand tends to guarantee that result, no matter how carefully I try to guide it to its target. Sometimes I get it right, but the fingers are hopelessly curled.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tracey is often there, which makes it easier. She opens my uncooperative right hand and spreads my fingers along the grip. Then she locks the thumb on.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now I have the chance to maintain balance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The object of the exercise in yesterday’s case was to get me into the wheelchair. For that, I must turn myself at 180º on getting up from the chair. My left foot is the agile one, so it must do the twisting and turning little by little while I balance using the frame, and drag the right leg into position an inch at a time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This means moving in a clockwise direction. I can't balance on the right foot, you see, in order to go the other way. By this time it is curled awkwardly. Moving it backwards turns out best.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I did the 180º turn eventually and Tracey had the wheelchair behind me. Sitting in it was trickier than you might think. The right knee was locked, and unlocking it suddenly might have brought me crashing down.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Keep your right arm in as you sit,” Tracey reminded me. Failing to do that means the ridiculously sensitive skin of the right arm is raked by the wheelchair arm, and will look like someone’s tried to skin me alive.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I kept my right arm in, allowed the right knee to unlock as gently as possible, took the weight with my left arm and hand, and eased myself down.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>“A journey of a thousand metres begins with a successful sitdown in the wheelchair.” [Ancient Buddhist proverb.]</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The next tricky bit was the transfer to the car. Christian was away so this was a two-person job instead of the usual three. I've decided to spare you a description, and spare you one of getting out of the car into the wheelchair at the hospital. Every transfer is fraught with danger, but we made it unscathed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We’ve taken a full half hour to do the five-minute trip from home to surgery. When I could walk to the car, not long ago, it would take four minutes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The waiting room was chock-a-block full. Tracey was forced to stand beside me until a chair was vacated. My appointment was for 2.30.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We needn’t have hurried. The Melbourne Cup [3 pm start] came and went. It provided some entertainment at least. I'd forgotten what a buzz the Cup gave the once-a-year experts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Our turn came. Tracey wheeled me in, and Nick greeted us warmly. We’d got to know him quite well over the four years and there was a mutual trust among us and with Pam, the Head of the Public Hospital Oncology unit. They had all the relevant notes and Tracey gave a copy of ours to each of them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There were no surprises. We all knew each other well enough for Nick not to offer hope, as he might have done to people different to us, of yet more proteinuria tests in a few weeks and another possible burst of Avastin. We knew that it had done a great job but had outlived its usefulness and was likely now to do more harm than good. Clearly. he and Pam both agreed with us on this.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Now is the time to do everything and anything you want,” he said, “Eat your favourite foods, have a glass or two of wine.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“We already do,” Tracey told him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He came from behind his desk and, with the warmth of a friend, shook my left hand.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Pam leaned down and put her arms round me. “Hug,” she said. “Give me a hug.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“You were always bossy,” I hugged. We laughed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In a few minutes we’d be driving the short trip home, with a careful transfer at both ends, and I'd be back in my chair again. But as we rolled out of the surgery, the sun was warm on my face, and the breeze had settled. Parrots were chattering in the trees across the road.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It all seemed strangely new.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/">home</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/whats-new.html">WHAT'S NEW!</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/stories-from-my-early-life.html">stories from my past</a></span></span></span><br />
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-90188854373001299112013-11-01T09:14:00.000+11:002013-11-02T11:58:34.147+11:00Where have I been? Where to from here?<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eN0ZQ1p9kR8/UiQjnCmPmBI/AAAAAAAAG4s/7vUcUZoZD3s/s1600/avastin-543x276.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eN0ZQ1p9kR8/UiQjnCmPmBI/AAAAAAAAG4s/7vUcUZoZD3s/s320/avastin-543x276.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>25 September 2013 will probably end up being a memorable date in my medical history. It will almost certainly mark the date of my final dose of Avastin. It was exactly three years ago that treatment with the drug began.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> On 3 December 2009 I got the first warning that I had a brain tumour. We had it confirmed on 19 December and I was operated on almost immediately to have as much as possible of the GBM[4] removed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">From January to early March 2010, I had oral chemotherapy and radiotherapy in Melbourne to attack the visible remainder and inhibit the spread of the tumour’s tentacles through the neural network.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I returned to Armidale I began a course of intravenous chemotherapy but it became clear by mid-2010 that I would die within months.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So far, this fits the standard pattern of life expectancy for a GBM patient of any age. About ten months after diagnosis, on or after conventional treatment, you die.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I firmly believe that we followed best practice up to that point. Given that you're told after diagnosis you have three months to live if you do nothing, there's no time for experimenting with non-invasive treatments.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Steve Jobs of Apple fame experimented with such treatments and admitted shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer that he had mucked around too long with useless remedies, and that delay was going to hasten his death. He should, he said, have gone straight for conventional treatments and he believed that if he had, he would have lived longer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I think so too, but it's only my opinion and yours may differ. That's fine, but just make sure it’s based on informed sources. There's plenty of rubbish floating about on the net and if you take it at face value it can look convincing enough.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Everything changed for me when I began taking Avastin intravenously in September 2010. It was like a cripple being cured. Well, almost. Let's not get too carried away. I knew it was just a stay of execution, so to speak, and with luck I might get 6-9 months tolerable life out of the expensive brew.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With care, scrupulous hygiene, avoidance of infection by unnecessary contact, with love and good management, I got an amazing three further years of life from an infusion of Avastin every three weeks.</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y8iEJ9DqgKY/UjKE4_LqTGI/AAAAAAAAG7A/riLq41ZkQNw/s1600/synapses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y8iEJ9DqgKY/UjKE4_LqTGI/AAAAAAAAG7A/riLq41ZkQNw/s200/synapses.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">During that time, the slow but inexorable slide to poorer and poorer physical health occurred, as the tumour regained its strength – in recent months at an exponential rate. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Mentally, the slide has been slower, but I know and Tracey knows the falloff in mental performance is there, masked on this blog by taking hours to compose and type a few paragraphs, by spell-checkers and strategic use of search engines.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Avastin was never designed to treat a patient for three+ years. A year, maybe eighteen months – stretching it. And yet I went on, every three weeks, conscious that the proteinuria count was showing decreasing capacity of my kidneys, and maybe other organs, to cope with Avastin’s side-effects.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The nature of the dreaded seizures also changed. It was as if the neural paths in the brain for instructions to the right arm and leg had all but burned out. Just a few more neurons to shatter on the right side – the gripping capacity of the opposable thumb, the proper working of muscles for the throat, the eye and the mouth. It's still working on those neural pathways, but occupation is almost complete.</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YNtRN29rq38/UZ2i61wUcdI/AAAAAAAAGno/GceH35ukiII/s1600/typing2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="146" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YNtRN29rq38/UZ2i61wUcdI/AAAAAAAAGno/GceH35ukiII/s200/typing2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That's the pathway to this point. It's not a crossroads. There are no other options as far as I'm concerned. But let’s be clear – it's not an end point either. Not yet. 25 September was a month ago and my rate of decline is still constant, but I continue to have cognition, a hand to type with, and a computer to store the data. And I'm still me. Well, I hope so. I believe so. You can tell me if or when I start acting like someone else.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It happens. If a node of this tumour appears in the ‘personality’ area of the brain, I may well become someone else. Someone you wouldn't want to know.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But not so far, I hope. Losing my identity is one of the few fears for the future that I have – fears which have appeared in my consciousness at least. Others will surface, no doubt. I don't pretend to be bloody Superman.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_oqpWQIMdT4/UeSND-FDc9I/AAAAAAAAGzc/iF2iXyt5WVI/s1600/lift_recliners_chairs_ashley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_oqpWQIMdT4/UeSND-FDc9I/AAAAAAAAGzc/iF2iXyt5WVI/s200/lift_recliners_chairs_ashley.jpg" width="190" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>My trusty "electric chair"</i></b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've had nearly four years to arrive here and to think about this. Not all with a terminal condition have that luxury, if I can call it that. Avastin doesn't work for everyone with a GBM brain tumour. It worked for me but now it can do no more.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I accept that.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you imagine that I'm going to take to my bed and just wait till the brain tumour takes over, forget it. I'm not. But if you think I'm going to go for one or more invasive treatments, I'm not doing that either.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My body has had a lifetime dose of rays of varying wavelength through radiotherapy and x-rays. That's out.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Further chemotherapy we know to be ineffective.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Surgery might do some temporary good - or may make my condition far worse. Whatever life of fair quality remaining could be lost.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm not up for the hassle. I don't do odds-on betting. I’ll take my chances with what I have left. We have some measure of that and it's one of the few things over which I have control. The decision, I mean.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Seizures quietly continue their destructive path, each time taking a bit more. If I close my left eye and view my world through the right, it is a very blurred interpretation of what I know to be there. If I had to rely on it alone, it would be maddening. And it will get worse. The left is still good, when I'm alert. Sometimes I touch the right corner of my mouth and find the skin around it slightly moist. A few more seizures in that area and I may be drooling.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are many wild cards in the deck. Heart failure and stroke I place at the top. There's no way to predict those and if there were, so what? Better to leave that in the lap of the gods. That's my preference.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’ll fight to be able to sit on a toilet or, as I have found necessary, a commode. Stomach problems increase while mobility declines. <i>This is a very bad combination. </i>I loathe the commode, but have you considered the alternatives? </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I will fight to shuffle along using this steel frame. Tremors of the right arm and leg, sometimes violent, are proving to be my worst enemy, physically. I didn't expect that. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’ll accept the wheelchair, but only because it reduces risk. But I will move these arms and legs, the right-side ones pitifully if that's how it's to be – and it often is – rather than have my world limited to a bed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’ll accept limitations that must be borne, but work with what I have, and what the world is willing to offer me. I know only too well on whose shoulders my future rests.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Af2VOikC26g/UbO4eincrYI/AAAAAAAAGrA/a3iExQny3Sw/s1600/mymaplefor-webx.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Af2VOikC26g/UbO4eincrYI/AAAAAAAAGrA/a3iExQny3Sw/s1600/mymaplefor-webx.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Photo: Tracey James</i></b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/">home</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/whats-new.html">WHAT'S NEW!</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/stories-from-my-early-life.html">stories from my past</a></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #fff2cc;">. </span></span></span></span></div>
Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-65055692954366331692013-10-28T17:33:00.000+11:002013-10-28T20:13:15.250+11:00Sympathy, identity and other Carer stuff – Guest Posting<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0N4NVe7s-Qw/Um3_wbcCRuI/AAAAAAAAHAY/y2rXaPduvCU/s1600/Tracey+haircut+Sept+2013.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0N4NVe7s-Qw/Um3_wbcCRuI/AAAAAAAAHAY/y2rXaPduvCU/s320/Tracey+haircut+Sept+2013.JPG" width="242" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Tracey James: Carer</i></b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In a comment recently I suggested to Tracey that she ought to do a guest posting on what it was really like to be a Carer.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">She refused, and then thought about it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Maybe I will," she said, "but I doubt that you'll publish it. I'll write it anyway</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> – i</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">t'll be cathartic. You may not like it."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There were indeed things about it I did not like. I made a note on it.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You're right. In some ways, I do not want to publish
this without some modifications, but I will do so, not a word
changed. If I don't publish it as is, then my blog becomes a lie, and it would mean that how you feel is less to me than what I believe some people may think</span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> – </span><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">of me as well. And because you mean everything to me, it would be
dishonest not to. I love you.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is the posting probably every other carer in the country – maybe the world – would like to post, but for a number of reasons, never would. Here it is.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-size: x-large;"> I have a super power. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-size: x-large;">I am an invisible woman. </span></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Every week I get the handsome sum of $57.70 from the government for being a ‘Carer’.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lord knows I don’t do it for the money. I also don’t do it because I live to serve, although there are people who seem to cast me in that role.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a full-time Carer I have not been able to work for nearly four years and, golly gosh, I have no idea what sort of job may await me after being out of the work-force all these years, while saving the powers-that-be lots of cash in the process. I have two degrees and I do not consider myself a dummy but that is still a scary prospect.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The landlord, Coles and electricity company are not going to give two hoots that I have spent all these years doing as good a job as I can muster, trying to emulate Mother Teresa, giving it my best shot at curing the sick and attempting to be sweetness and light to everyone I meet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That is not always particularly difficult. I don’t actually get to speak to many people in the flesh.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Did you know that when you sell something on the local buy, swap and sell site that a real flesh and blood person from the outside world actually comes to your house? If they are agreeable you might even get to have a little chatty poo with them for a few minutes. Amazing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Virtually every single person who has come to our house to visit in the last four years has come to visit Denis...with me sort of tacked on. Yes, they are happy to see me too, or in some cases meet me for the first and probably only time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But, they come for Denis (or themselves). Because he is dying.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have often thought it is almost like only one person lives in this house. The patient is the primary consideration in all things and that is as it should be. But here’s the thing. They are not the only consideration, because there are also two other people who live here. It doesn’t often feel like that.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Imagine someone told you that as of today you were only able to leave the house maybe once a week and when you did, you were going to have time to go to Coles or the chemist. Or, on a very exciting day, both. Every other thing that you ever did and loved to do would stop. As of today. For years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Don’t confuse this with simply not going out because you don’t feel like it, can’t afford it, having no one to go out with or nowhere to go. This is about not being able to simply walk around the block in case someone has a fall, needs the toilet commode, has a seizure, a stroke, a heart attack...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Imagine on your outing to Coles or the chemist that you bump into someone and they exclaim how it is years since they saw you and they ask all about Denis and how he is and then on parting call you Mandy because they have forgotten your name. Even though you have actually known them for years and longer than Denis ever did, and you spent weeks working with them on that routine you choreographed for them...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Imagine when someone you are currently friends with on Facebook looks blankly at you, even after you speak to them, because you are long, long forgotten in the mists of time and past days of social activity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have a super power. I am an invisible woman.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You can’t really imagine these things, no matter how much you think you can, and I don’t really expect you to be able to. None of this is me complaining. It is just how things are. It is almost like some sort of interesting social experiment. Except that the characters are real and the situation is dire.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There was this day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had been woken by Denis having a string of violent seizures. There is nothing to do while they are happening, but I always try to be there, do what little I can, be comforting and watch the clock in case the ambulance needs to be called. Afterwards, I organised Denis as I always did, got his breakfast, his medications, spent an hour helping him undress and shower and then dried him, had him dressed and sitting comfortably out in his study at his computer and hey presto...THE DOOR BELL RINGS.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, I stopped everything and made the mandatory cups of tea and got the biscuits out for the unannounced, unexpected visitors and tried to be social while being extremely preoccupied by stupid things like knowing that if I didn’t get the washing on right now, before they left and Denis went back to bed (the laundry only accessible through the bedroom and ensuite) that I couldn’t do it today.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I had held my bladder for an hour after waking while attending to Denis. I was now sitting there in my pjs and dressing gown feeling dishevelled and self-conscious. It was lunchtime and I hadn’t had a moment for myself, to shower or dress or even have breakfast.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As the visitors were leaving they said all their lovely goodbyes to Denis then one turned to me while going out the door and said “And you...GET DRESSED!”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Injustice stings.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Patients are designated as people. People are designated as people. Carers are non-people.</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is totally acceptable, expected and even encouraged for a patient to:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Talk about themselves and their medical problems</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Get stressed, emotional, fearful and therefore sometimes upset & irrational</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Moan about daily stresses, big problems and smaller inconveniences</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Be upset about loss of independence</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As ‘a person’ it is totally acceptable for people to:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Talk about themselves and their medical problems</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Get stressed, emotional, fearful and sometimes upset & irrational</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Moan about daily stresses, big problems and smaller inconveniences</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Be upset about loss of independence</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have found that it is totally socially unacceptable for a Carer to:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Talk about themselves & their medical problems (because their loved one is so much worse off)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Get stressed, emotional, fearful and sometimes upset & irrational (because their loved one is so much worse off)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Moan about daily stresses, big problems and smaller inconveniences (because their loved one is so much worse off)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Be upset about loss of independence (because their loved one is so much worse off)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a non-person there is also the additional delight that it appears to be perfectly acceptable for people to burden me with absolutely anything at all. Being a Carer somehow gives people carte blanche to tell me about anything from their latest crisis and their inability to cope with something, to their medical woes. I think I could do up a medical file on practically every person I have spoken to in the last four years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sympathy. What a useless concept.</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The other day I had run the gauntlet at Coles. By that I mean fending off the usual round of Denis questions from a number of well-meaning people, with time running short before the paid Home Care lady would expect to be leaving our house. That is emotionally tiring. You start to feel like a cracked record giving the same gloomy report over and over.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I got to the check-out and was asked again about Denis. This time I said something totally factual. I didn’t say it harshly or with any inference. I said “Still alive, still dying.” Now you may be as shocked as the cashier was but I’m taking that risk. She recoiled and exclaimed “You might try to be a bit more sympathetic!”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She’s right. I am not sympathetic. I did not sympathetically get up three times that night during a short night’s sleep and wash out the poo in the toilet commode and then sympathetically continue to wash it out nearly every hour the following day. Nor did I sympathetically keep emptying the urine bottle or wash the blood off the sheets from who knows what. I did not sympathetically clean the urine that missed its correct destination off the carpet and Christian and I did not lift Denis up off the floor after yet another fall, with any sort of sympathy. Nor did I do a million other little things during that particularly bad day for Denis out of sympathy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I did it and continue to do it out of the utmost love and respect for Denis as my husband and as a person. I do it not because I am paid or because people think I should or simply expect me to. I do it because I actually genuinely care, in the very real and complete sense of that word.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One day I will get to be a person again too. In the meantime, I will be a Carer because it is a damn sight more effective than just feeling sorry for him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-51833212155410555102013-10-24T16:47:00.000+11:002013-10-27T00:24:35.839+11:00The stifling of independence<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0hugO_eTTq8/UmiKj1HnZyI/AAAAAAAAG_4/mlic4hCejpY/s1600/Walking+frames.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0hugO_eTTq8/UmiKj1HnZyI/AAAAAAAAG_4/mlic4hCejpY/s400/Walking+frames.jpg" width="296" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><b>Two walking frames that I use. The one on the left is a very sturdy one which is best for around-the-house use, while the light one on the right is best for getting in and out of the bathroom.</b></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's something that's happened countless times in all periods of history and all cultures. It happens because people develop an illness where they lose mobility by degrees until they are incapable of critical faculties and management of bodily functions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I have such an illness, but I’m not quite at that critical stage. I’m close to it now. I'm inside a body that I can describe only as feeling like a peg that's being hammered into the ground.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I'm not in the least interested in sympathy. I want to tell healthy people such as I was a few years ago something you probably won’t understand. “It’s only the wearer who knows where the shoe pinches” goes the old saying, and it's as close to an absolute truth as we get in this world of relativity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Not even the carer, even one like a spouse or partner, can quite understand the pain of dependence. They have their own pain, seeing their loved one suffer, and all that goes with being the one depended upon more and more as the illness takes hold, and steals so much from both.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The problem with <i>independence </i>is that we take it for granted in normal life. From the moment we leave the womb, the quest for independence begins, and it is one of the driving forces of life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> No normal human being wants to be dependent. The toddler screams that they want to do it themselves, whatever "it" may be. The adolescent may become a sullen monster and (we hope temporarily) hate these stupid parents who dare to restrict their freedom in any way.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> This is an annoying, often painful and necessary pathway to adulthood, and yet the human race depends on it for its development. The arts and sciences wouldn't progress without it. Adaptation is necessary for survival and that is what independent thought amounts to.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In every human lifetime, except </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">in the case of sudden death, independence comes to an end. When its loss happens slowly, there may be some time to adapt – to improvise, as I've constantly done, or use equipment to compensate for loss. Even then, the time comes when there’s no further improvising. Dependence on equipment gives way more and more to dependence on people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I suppose I should speak only for myself. I don't mind depending on equipment, because it just sits there waiting to be used, but having to inconvenience others (usually Tracey) is another matter. If she happens to be close by, I don’t mind asking for help. But to buzz her to come from the other end of the house for a petty need when she’s undertaking some task there is another matter.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> She's said repeatedly that she doesn't mind. I believe her. But <i>I</i> mind. I'll deal with it myself if I think I can.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Just now is a good example. I want to reach my bottle of water, on the right side table. It's just out of my reach from this sitting position, no matter how far I stretch. My right arm and hand are useless. To get it myself, I need to go through a series of operations; removing the laptop from the tray, then the tray, then the small blanket, placing it on the table, raising my chair, reaching for the frame, then dragging myself to my feet, gripping the handholds of the frame, moving the half-metre to the table, picking up the bottle with my good hand, putting it on a corner of the table where I can reach it from the chair, turning 180 degrees and repeating all those in reverse so I am sitting back here to type again.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> There are a myriad of little things that you don't think of when you have two hands. I surely didn't. Try putting toothpaste on your toothbrush using only one hand. No cheating now. Cutting fingernails. Try opening many sealed containers. Just one hand now. Peeling fruit. Cutting up food. Doing up buttons or zips. Taking a photo. All are designed for people with two hands. Funny that....</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> What about legs? From walking reasonably normally in 2010, I began to take Tracey’s arm, for the sake of balance. My right leg started to drag and I battled to keep it usable. Recovery work was undone by the next seizure. Fewer and fewer brain signals have been getting through and now the ankle and knee joints have all but failed. I abandoned the rollator/walker and replaced it by zimmer frame. Increasingly I have become more wheelchair-dependent in a house never designed for it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> But leave those aside. My point is that with this condition, my dependence on those around me continued to increase bit by bit but has now sky-rocketed. To return to the original metaphor, the peg is being driven into the turf relentlessly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I now realise something more keenly than ever just what those myriads of people who have come before me had to deal with, and what's on the agenda for those coming after. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> With increased dependence, dignity and privacy are eroded. It's inevitable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Every mature person over their lifetime develops their own code for each. These are not quickly or easily set aside, not after a lifetime of living by that personal code. At a formal dinner party some guest is unlikely to ask you loudly, “Have you opened your bowels this morning?” In a hospital, it happens daily.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> To survive, you learn to accept violations of that lifetime code. Questions about bodily functions are necessary. Being disrobed unceremoniously in front of a stranger can't be avoided. Having your body prodded and probed in mysterious ways must be endured. Rationally, it's simple. Emotionally, it takes longer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> This is no criticism of anyone, including myself. No-one needs feel any guilt. It's just stating the facts of life for a dependent person. Forgive the elderly who rail against being patronised or not listened to. What they’re hating is that they’ve lost their independence, and know they’ll never get it back.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I don't really know how a person enduring dialysis, Motor Neurone disease, Multiple Sclerosis or pancreatic cancer feels, because I can't. I'm not them. I can be sympathetic – maybe now far more than most because of my experiences in the past few years. The person who takes care of them lovingly has the best idea. I can't even truly know just how Tracey feels, though I feel guilty every day knowing she has to cope with me as I am. Of course it's not my fault, but it's impossible not to feel responsible in some way.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> But when it comes to it, it truly is only the wearer who knows where that shoe pinches, and no-one else in the world. The shoes of us all pinch somewhere, and all have no choice but to deal with their own sore spots.</span><br />
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-47627224515512808512013-10-15T09:07:00.000+11:002013-10-17T14:49:03.798+11:00Not the colour purple<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H54eZASRjMo/UlvxY07KjOI/AAAAAAAAG_A/JvA9I90urz0/s1600/pucestar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="168" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H54eZASRjMo/UlvxY07KjOI/AAAAAAAAG_A/JvA9I90urz0/s200/pucestar.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's funny where a sequence of thoughts can lead. A friend was saying how she thought a particular colour was puce; one I took to be khaki. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Quite a difference, you must admit. I had no doubt about the colour of puce, because of an incident that took place when I couldn't have been older than six.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> My mother was helping me in the bathroom with buttons on a new shirt</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> – you know how tight the buttonholes on new shirts can be</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">–</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">when we heard a crash, the sound of which I'd not heard before in my short life, nor ever heard since.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It was the explosive sound of a tall cabinet crashing to the floor with nearly every piece of crockery in it being smashed simultaneously.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> My baby sister, Kay, was a crawler at the time. No, a better description is a “wriggler”. She didn't exactly crawl; she wriggled along the lino on the uneven kitchen floor like well... a worm. In fact, Dad called her that</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">–</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Worm”. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> She liked it when Dad did, but no-one else was given the privilege. They got a tongue-lashing from a less-than-one-year old who had a surprisingly large vocabulary. Some of its more colourful tinges she had learned by illicitly eavesdropping on Dad, and he tried to encourage her to unlearn them before she startled her mother.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Fat chance of that. Unlike the Bourbons, she learned everything and forgot nothing, and knew just when to drop a new expletive into the dinnertime conversation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> She had her own wicked streak, and on this occasion she thought it would be great fun to grab my sister Lyn by the ankles as she was putting away the cutlery. She was quite good at silently ambushing from behind.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Thus it came to pass that Lyn found herself tackled like a rugby player, with nothing to save her but the knob on the cutlery drawer – one which, sad to relate, had been a temporary stuck-on job using Tarzan’s Grip. And like many temporary fixes in our home, it had acquired a degree of permanence that was neither intended nor desirable, regardless of the admirable adhesive qualities of Tarzan's Grip.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The knob lost its permanent status the moment when Lyn, under sibling podiatrical attack, attempted to use it as an emergency hand-hold. Sadly, in the process, the tall, solid cabinet, unbeautiful in appearance but highly serviceable, began its descent.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Apart from Lyn’s desperate effort to save herself, the floor’s unevenness was the cabinet’s reason for its downward journey, and it may have been in a precarious state of imbalance for ages. As well, it was somewhat overloaded at the top, containing, as it did, enough crockery for six perpetually hungry mouths. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Lyn jumped backward, taking Kay with her, clinging like a leech rather than a worm, which unlike the leech has no capacity for clinging to the human body.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Kay’s steely grip was just as well, given that there was a fair chance that the descending cabinet would have crushed her little skull and its entire vocabulary like a passionfruit. Incidentally, I don't mean the little wild passionfruit that grew amongst the bougainvillea. The latter had thorns like No. 6 fish-hooks that we’d brave by crawling under to get those wild pashies. They were as hard as golf balls and you had to crack them with a hammer. I was comparing Kay's skull with the regular passionfruit. Now where was I?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Oh yes. The descent of the cabinet. As described by Lyn in an email I received this morning:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It contained the dinner set that had been Grannie Wright's, and all that was left was the large platter.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> No-one was deemed to be at fault, although Lyn was greatly frightened that she would be in serious trouble for the devastation she felt she had wrought. Kay was later instructed as to the unwisdom of her little frolic, and she was so frightened by the sound of smashing china just centimetres from her little ears that she was only slightly insulted by the lectures she got consecutively from our parents about bringing anyone down in the presence of large cabinets which might become involved in her game.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Happy as we were to share, family democracy decreed that Grannie’s large platter was insufficient for the family's crockery requirements, probably because there was a fear by my siblings that I would appropriate far more than my share at every meal. This was a true if unkind observation, and because I was not earning my keep at that stage by milking cows, the matter of a dinner set of some description was deemed a priority.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Dad was the only one who could drive our first ever new car at that stage, so he set off for Gladstone to buy a replacement set</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> – b</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">rand new from Friends Department Store, of course. You don't think we’d settle for less, surely? We were proud farming folk and we bought <i>nothing</i> second hand. Either it came from a shop out of a box from the manufacturer, or we did without it till we could pay for it. Right?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Mum was a little concerned, not completely trusting my father’s ability in crockery aesthetics, but he had the car-keys and she didn’t. We needed crockery and whatever he bought would be it full stop. All she said just after he left on the expedition was, “Just as long as he doesn't come home with anything puce pink....”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Puce may have been Marie-Antoinette’s favourite colour, but it wasn’t Mum's, and I inherited a distaste for the colour ever since.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aIEPyIdvo-Y/Ulv9P6bPslI/AAAAAAAAG_U/A6Z3PJuvIi8/s1600/puce502.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aIEPyIdvo-Y/Ulv9P6bPslI/AAAAAAAAG_U/A6Z3PJuvIi8/s200/puce502.jpg" width="138" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> In the fullness of time, as bad story-tellers and shonky British Prime Ministers say, Dad returned, beaming, triumphant. We were crockeried once more. Out from the tissue wrappers in the carton from Friends Department Store came the dinner-plates.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> These would be, and were, the plates we had until my dad died. They were adorned by large flowers with dark green stems, nicely painted, aesthetically arranged.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">They were, needless to say, the pucest of puce pink.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Addendum: and here, thanks to my sister Jan for her wisdom in keeping it, is one of the bread and butter plates from Dad's choice. Magnolias. They weren't so bad, really.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/">home</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/whats-new.html">WHAT'S NEW!</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/stories-from-my-early-life.html">stories from my past</a></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #fff2cc;">. </span></span></span></span></span></div>
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</span>Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-51303041077746187372013-10-11T22:47:00.000+11:002013-10-13T14:03:01.091+11:00Legally assisted suicide<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A programme I saw not long ago that made me think deeply. In my position you won’t be surprised. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> A British man and his wife were entering a clinic in Switzerland. I noticed that as he entered, he looked for a secure hold on the door frame as he passed through, and by his gait, I knew immediately that his problem was neural.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I was already aware that he’d come to that clinic to die, on that day. After all, that was what the programme was about. He was terminally ill, and his future was bleak, without hope of relief. He’d made a decision to do so, by the process Switzerland is now famous for, (or infamous, whichever way you look at it).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Assisted suicide is its real name, but it's wrongly called euthanasia. That term has been hijacked, which is a pity. Euthanasia means nothing more than a “good death”. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Hands up all those who want a bad death? Not a lot, I see. However you want to die, whether by Dylan Thomas’s not going gentle and fighting in rage all the way, or by slipping quietly away in peace, you surely want what you regard as a good death.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I'd like to see the unhijacking of the term, euthanasia. Let's unhook it from Assisted Suicide. Well, I will, but probably it will remain confused with many other things: suicide without any help from anyone else, encouragement to suicide, assisting someone else to die illegally, unnatural death of one sort or another right through to murder</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">–</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> e</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">verything that doesn't leave you to controlled palliative care but leads to premeditated death tends to be called euthanasia. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> When people argue about it, they are often talking about different things. It annoys me sometimes that they don't agree at least what they're arguing about, and just muddy the waters.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pv19kNyLDd8/Ulfhz13WFHI/AAAAAAAAG-g/MeoyxHpqbts/s1600/assisted2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="209" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pv19kNyLDd8/Ulfhz13WFHI/AAAAAAAAG-g/MeoyxHpqbts/s320/assisted2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>Australia: <a href="http://www.australia21.org.au/publications/press_releases/12/Nov/03a4e7f1024affcd9f2f8ee45d3b381f.pdf" target="_blank">Source</a></i></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Two things I want to clarify at this point. I do not seek assisted suicide for myself, but I'd like it to be available to anyone else who’s terminally ill (by any reasonable definition of the term). I don't want to get into discussion about suicide pacts by couples and the like right now, either.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> My focus here is on something more limited; legally assisting in the death of a person of sound mind but with a terminal illness – because they’ve reached a point that they want to die.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> That's exactly what this chap had come to Switzerland to do. He and his wife entered the clinic and sat down side by side in a lounge chair. He talked with his wife and the medical staff there about the process – not for the first time, obviously. This was the culmination of an extended discussion he’d had with them over a long period of time, after talking with his personal doctor. He had fulfilled their strict conditions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> His wife was hesitant, but she had decided long before to support his wishes. She'd seen what he'd been through up to this point. Her acquiescence was an act of love.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> At one stage, when asked how about her feelings, she said she wished that he would have stayed so the family could have one last Christmas together, but she knew he felt he had had enough.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I thought she was very brave.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> So this was the day. The process was unhurried and calm. He was given plenty of time to face exactly what he was doing, or to change his mind now that he was on the brink. Then came the irrevocable moment of decision. Once he had drunk this clear liquid, that would be it. Really it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> He shared some chocolate with his wife and made some little joke to lighten the moment. I think part of the reason for the chocolate was that the liquid he was about to swallow was very unpleasant-tasting. There seemed a lot of it, but he’d been warned not to stop once he’d started. One last little kiss shared – a rather formal one, given they were surrounded discreetly by medical personnel. He smiled at her, gulped the liquid down.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Within seconds, he laid his head on his wife’s shoulder, snored quietly and peacefully for no longer than a minute, gave a little convulsive movement, and his breathing stopped. The medical staff took his weight gently from his wife’s shoulder and proceeded with the preliminary formalities of declaring him dead.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> As far as I recall, his wife was very calm. She didn’t cry. After some time, she got up, and quietly walked out of the door. She was going back to England shortly after. I think his body was going back home on the same flight.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I confess my first thought was how eerie it all must have been for her. She had walked in with her husband who had a few minutes before been smiling nervously and talkative, and she now walked out alone, knowing her husband was dead. She would get in the car, alone. Have a single seat on the plane.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It was a premeditated act, a choice of death over life. Just how could she have felt?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I can't imagine. Some state of numbed shock, surely, now that it had come to pass.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> He had found the peace he was ready for. I'll never begrudge him that. I'm not sure how long it would take her to do the same.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I hope it wasn’t long.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i>[to be continued, I intend.]</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/">home</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/whats-new.html">WHAT'S NEW!</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/stories-from-my-early-life.html">stories from my past</a></span></span></span><br />
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-43055296433521985712013-10-07T11:55:00.000+11:002013-10-07T11:55:03.679+11:00Stress, anxiety, fear. A letter from abroad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A couple of days ago I received an email regarding the <a href="http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/life-lessons-from-terminal-cancer-patient-denis-wright/story-fnet09p2-1226671303372" target="_blank">Ten Point guide</a> I wrote that appeared in newspapers and was discussed on radio and TV in various parts of the world, to which I responded thus:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 8:09 PM, Denis Wright ... wrote:</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dear Carlos,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You have asked [an excellent question].... Do I have your permission to place the parts of your letter below on the blog? If so, may I use your name or do you prefer to remain anonymous?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mr Gomez readily agreed to be named. This is the question he asked:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">How do you deal with your fear and anxiety under normal circumstances?</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For example in a job interview when you are under the pressure that if you want the job and you fear not to get it, then you become anxious, nervous and then you will have a bad performance during the interview.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I think your advice deals with the “what”, so I was wondering if you would like to write something about the “how” to deal with fear and anxiety, let’s say under the normal circumstances of life....</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I should say at the outset that I am no more qualified to answer such a question than any other person, except that I may have a little more life experience than most. Lack of formal qualifications is not going to stop me having a lash at it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Anxiety is a form of fear, usually regarded as lower level, but which can be crippling at times. Fear is an emotion that has been necessary for human survival from the beginning – for the survival of any sentient creature in fact. If you have no fear of anything, then you probably won’t last too long. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It triggers the ‘fight or flight’ response. Adrenalin is there to supplement it, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">for a good reason</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. But anxiety in our normal lives needs some thinking about, because it can be destructive if handled badly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> So in any decision I make, the first question is, am I going to flee or fight? I don’t take that too literally most of the time, unless I’m being chased by a pack of wild dogs. So far so good on that one. It hasn’t been tested. I was charged by an argumentative bull once, and I chose flight. Fortunately I was close enough to the fence for that to be the best option.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> That job interview – I can decide either to do it, or not. In other words, fight and have a go at it, or flee and back out. I'm probably <i>not </i>going to do the latter. I can expect to be a bit stressed. I need the adrenalin to be at my best. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The next thing is to find out as much as I can about what I want to accomplish in order to help allay as many anxieties as possible about it. Take the mystery out of something, replace it with understanding, and I find a lot of the fear vanishes. It gives me confidence about handling it. Knowledge definitely is power.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> If finding out more about it makes me more rather than less anxious, I may have to reconsider the whole thing... look for someone to share ideas about it... listen to advice while keeping responsibility for whatever action I choose. Not everyone has a partner, but if you do, I suggest listening very carefully to their point of view, because every window on a decision opens a different way to view it. Your partner is inevitably affected by your actions and has a right to top consideration in your decisions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> We create anxiety for ourselves by thinking we have to win every battle. We don't need to. There are times to compromise, and to be generous, even though we might have preferred some other result. What is the priority? What's the ultimate goal? What can we live with and accommodate what others want, and in consequence relieve our stress, without sacrificing something too important to give up?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <i>Get priorities right.</i> I see people fighting all the time about things I regard as petty. The way to lessen stress and anxiety is to ask ourselves, what is the worst that can happen if we lose this particular battle? What if we swallow our pride and accept what seems to be a lesser option? Most importantly, why burn ourselves up with resentment over things that don’t really add value to our lives?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The difficult area, if you are living the sort of life I imagine, is in personal relationships. In these we really have to establish our priorities. Relationships are subtle and infinitely variable. We don't go through life without taking a course of action we later believe wasn’t the best. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The worst thing we can do is dwell on it. Or maybe there's one worse – that is, not to contemplate it, and so go on repeating it. In that case, it's a wasted opportunity. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> We should be generous, and I'm not talking about money (but don’t be mean with money – there are no top-dollar front row seats in any afterlife you might contemplate). If we're generous of spirit, we find our stress levels drop.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> You mentioned <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/ten-lessons-about-life-revisited.html">my 10 Points</a> that seem to have made an impact </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I couldn't have imagined </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">in various parts of the globe. I didn't write them just for people facing deathly crises in their lives, but as a touchstone for creating a less stressful life for all of us and those around us. All of that list applies to everyone, and many of the ten have been with me through life as I picked up wisdom from all kinds of sources. Some I know I could have benefited from much more had they passed beyond a superficial understanding earlier in my life. But who knows?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> If you are stressed or anxious, try to isolate exactly what the stressful element is. That's where you have to be ruthlessly honest with yourself. Then you can deal with it directly. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Of course, there are too many personality types and too many things that people get agitated about for me to start analysing each circumstance. One size doesn't fit all.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> But... if you want the advice my guru gave to me when I went for an interview for the only job I faced a panel, it was this: <i>listen to the question you're being asked and answer it directly. Take time to do think about it first, if necessary. Don't be afraid to say, ‘I don’t know.’ Most important of all, just be yourself. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Be yourself. He stressed that last one. It must have worked. Well, something did.</span><br />
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-4223357296049933092013-10-01T21:15:00.000+10:002013-10-01T21:15:12.724+10:00A commonplace posting<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It was my friend Zoë who introduced me to the idea of a <i>Commonplace Book</i>. Consequently, I can lay the blame for this strange collection on her, even though she has no idea she did it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> On <a href="http://zmkc.blogspot.com.au/" target="_blank">her blog</a>, there's a link to many other blogs, and one of these is called <a href="http://dgmyers.blogspot.com.au/" target="_blank">A Commonplace Blog</a>. A definition of the original <i>Commonplace Book</i> is given in this blog.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> To me, it's a very appealing idea. What it means is that you collect thoughts, ideas, sayings, or bits and pieces from other sources that strike you as interesting or relevant to your life. In the days of pen and ink, they used to write down these things in a book that resembled a diary. It reminds me of Sei Shonagon's <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/man-from-porlock-and-pillow-book.html" target="_blank">the Pillow Book</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> When I read articles or books, I make my own notes of selected pieces from these sources. It's easy to do when I'm on the Kindle reader, because I can simply command it to make a note of whatever it is that interested me. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> This is as close to a <i>Commonplace Book</i> as I get. It's not quite faithful to the original idea </span>– <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">but it's mine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I thought I might make a blog posting here of selections from things I read in the last few weeks. I have several files of these from past months, and I probably should go through some of the earlier ones as well, but to keep it simple, here are just a few selections from my latest reading. I hope you enjoy at least some of them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7308" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;"><i>The History of Mr. Polly</i></span></a><span style="color: #274e13;"><i> </i>(H. G. Wells, </span></span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1866-1946)</span> </b></blockquote>
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<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">[In which Mr Polly, portly, middle-aged drapery shop-owner, attempts to engage in fisticuffs with the equally portly, middle-aged proprietor of the neighbouring shop.]</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There on the pavement these inexpert children of a pacific age, untrained in arms and uninured to violence, abandoned themselves to amateurish and absurd efforts to hurt and injure one another — of which the most palpable consequences were dusty backs, ruffled hair and torn and twisted collars.</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">==========</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>[In which Polly muses with his friend, the Fat Lady, of the Potwell Inn.</i></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He tried again. “One seems to start in life,” he said, “expecting something. And it doesn't happen. And it doesn’t matter. One starts with ideas that things are good and things are bad — and it hasn’t much relation to what is good and what is bad. I’ve always been the skeptaceous sort, and it’s always seemed rot to me to pretend we know good from evil. It’s just what I’ve never done. No Adam’s apple stuck in my throat, ma’am. I don’t own to it.”</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">==========</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/06/why-war-einstein-freud/" target="_blank">Why War: Einstein and Freud’s Little-Known Correspondence on Violence, Peace, and Human Nature</a></span> </b></i></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am convinced that almost all great men who, because of their accomplishments, are recognized as leaders even of small groups share the same ideals. But they have little influence on the course of political events. It would almost appear that the very domain of human activity most crucial to the fate of nations is inescapably in the hands of wholly irresponsible political rulers.</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">==========</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Political leaders or governments owe their power either to the use of force or to their election by the masses. They cannot be regarded as representative of the superior moral or intellectual elements in a nation. In our time, the intellectual elite does not exercise any direct influence on the history of the world;...</span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">==========</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">... Chaplin’s iconic speech from The Great Dictator, proclaiming that “we want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.”</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">==========</span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><a href="http://sunriserounds.com/why-docs-dont-do-death/" target="_blank"><i>Why docs don’t do death?</i></a> (MD James Salwitz)</b></span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Doctors get the clear message from medical schools that they do not have permission to “give up.”</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">==========</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Neglected in teaching, death is a humiliating failure, and doctors learn none of the skills and attitudes to help patients in the last days of life.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">==========</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Because of our society’s global phobia and lack of intimate experience with death, families may have little personal understanding of end of life events and therefore unrealistic expectations for cure.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">==========</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Physicians fail to understand that end of life care is a core part of medicine and that all their patients really want is honesty, symptom control, and the reassurance that the doctor will not desert them.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">==========</span></span> </blockquote>
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/308" target="_blank">Three Men in a Boat</a> (Jerome K. Jerome)</span></span> </b></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">[This story is about the perils of nineteenth-century self-diagnosis by indiscriminately reading about medical matters, as do people these days on the internet.]</span> </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So I went straight up and saw him<i> [his doctor],</i> and he said: “Well, what’s the matter with you?” I said: “I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is not the matter with me. I have not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I have got.” And I told him how I came to discover it all.</span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn’t expecting it — a cowardly thing to do, I call it — and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head.</span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out. I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist’s, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back. He said he didn’t keep it. I said: “You are a chemist?” He said: “I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me.”</span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I read the prescription. It ran: “1 lb. beefsteak, with 1 pt. bitter beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning. 1 bed at 11 sharp every night. And don’t stuff up your head with things you don’t understand.” I followed the directions, with the happy result—speaking for myself —that my life was preserved, and is still going on.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">==========</span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><a href="http://dgmyers.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/magical-thinking-about-death.html" target="_blank"><i>Magical thinking about death</i></a></span> [David Myers]</span></b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We think too much of death and not nearly enough of dying. There is a reason for that. Dying is a mental discipline, which entails many hours of training in (among other things) the renunciation of fantasies that death will be anything other than it is—the cessation of consciousness—and the bitter facing up to the reality of that fact. Those who prefer daydreams of impossible release from what awaits them will leave themselves (and those they love) tragically unprepared for the conclusive Bustle, which is “almost consequence.”</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">==========</span></span> </blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now this last one I originally had in, then I took it out, and now I've decided to put it back in. It was a book of high interest to me. Alexander was in a coma for seven days from what he claimed was a condition that medical science said was impossible to return in anything but a vegetative state. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I became skeptical when some of the claims made about the state of his consciousness or what he claimed was totally beyond consciousness were not relating to mystical experience on a level I understand. This may be my failing but it is something central to my philosophy of life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">His knowledge of brain function makes sense, but the relationship of his personal experience with the science became more and more extreme and <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-near-death-experience-isnt-proof-heaven">highly disputed by many of his peers</a>. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In my opinion, he was hallucinating. If so, to me it's an interesting exercise in turning hallucination into something people long to believe. The bits I recorded were more on the medical side. It may seem a strange little collection.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Proof-Heaven-Neurosurgeons-Journey-Afterlife/dp/1451695195" target="_blank">Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife</a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> (Dr. Eben Alexander)</span></b> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> ...the brain is the machine that produces consciousness in the first place. When the machine breaks down, consciousness stops.<br />==========<br />I was encountering the reality of a world of consciousness that existed completely free of the limitations of my physical brain.<br />==========<br />My experience showed me that the death of the body and the brain are not the end of consciousness, that human experience continues beyond the grave.<br />==========<br />E. coli are also highly promiscuous. They can trade genes with other bacterial species through a process called bacterial conjugation, which allows an E. coli cell to rapidly pick up new traits (such as resistance to a new antibiotic) when needed. This basic recipe for success has kept E. coli on the planet since the earliest days of unicellular life.<br />==========<br />Further tests revealed that the bacteria living in the man’s large intestine had acquired the KPC gene by direct plasmid transfer from his resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae infection. In other words, his body had provided the laboratory for the creation of a species of bacteria that, if it got into the general population, might rival the Black Death, a plague that killed off half of Europe in the fourteenth century.<br />==========</span></blockquote>
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-11943803447982745622013-09-28T00:35:00.000+10:002013-09-29T19:35:23.375+10:00My right foot – and other bits<br />
<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><i>Christy Brown (1932-1981) had cerebral palsy, leaving him with control over only his left foot, but</i></b></span><b style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i> as an artist and author,</i></b><b style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i> he made good use of it. His life story as told in his autobiography, </i>My Left Foot<i>, was made into a movie in 1989.</i></b><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><i>Sadly, my right foot is just the opposite. It's damn near useless.</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Brain damage or malfunction produce phenomena for which you can be quite unprepared, even though their effects make perfect sense in retrospect.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b><i>My Right Foot<br />opposite in every way from his left</i></b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Let me give you a couple of examples. When I am going to sleep, I lie on alternate sides, sleep by sleep. As I turn to lie on the right side, I encounter this strange object. It feels like the smooth branch of a young tree. It is warm to touch and obstructs the path for my shoulder. Something hangs off the end at right angles to the main branch.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I touch it with my left hand. I realise, with a shock, that it is my right arm and hand.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Something then registers in my brain that the arm has the sort of sensation my lip feels when I've had a local anaesthetic injected into my gums by the dentist. I can feel something but know there’s no sensation deep down, nor of heat nor cold on the surface.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It feels utterly weird, this arm, as if I don't own it – as if someone has strapped this thing on to me. Using my left hand, I can arrange its placement for sleeping, each portion bit by bit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yet it can be made to move on its own, with effort, in certain directions. The movements are, medically, spastic. They overshoot or undershoot the target. The fingers may grip one way but not another. I try to bring index finger and thumb together, and they can touch, but the moment I try to squeeze them together, each curls up in its own direction.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It also manifests in other ways. Sometimes I am trying to open the laptop computer – one-handed, needless to say but I'm saying it – and it won’t open. The reason, I eventually discover, is that my right hand is sitting slap-bang on the lid, resolutely and mindlessly holding it down, while the left is doing its best to get it open. <i>(By the way, I challenge you to get most modern laptops open with just one hand – it's not quite as easy as it looks the way they’re weighted.)</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then there’s the leg. When I sleep, both legs are drawn up, sometimes to a right angle. When I wake, I can stretch the left leg so the knee is locked and the leg is straight. I go to straighten the right leg and it has no intention of obeying. I know if I give it a little help with the left foot it will, but I don't want that. I want it to straighten out on its own.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I lie flat on my back. The leg is still drawn up, in the same position as when I woke. I summon up all my willpower to get it to move under its own command.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Usually, given time, it will start responding very grudgingly and then finally cooperate, slowly, like a naughty child forced to do a task it would prefer not to. Both legs are now flat and I can stretch – but I have to be careful, because if I overdo it, then a fierce cramp can develop in the right calf or quads.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The right foot. It's dead as a doornail. <i>(Don't ask me why a doornail is so dead. I have no idea, but I’ll find out what the oracle says in a minute.... <a href="http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/as-dead-as-a-doornail.html" target="_blank">I did. It's fascinating.</a>)</i> I order the toes to lift or wiggle, and they just lie there. I can't get a trace of movement out of them if it were to save my life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All the big toe wants to do is curl downwards. I think that's a response to the ankle's collapse in function, producing “<a href="http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/foot-drop-causes-symptoms-treatments" target="_blank">foot </a></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/foot-drop-causes-symptoms-treatments" target="_blank">drop</a></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">”, which is every bit as nasty and inconvenient as it sounds.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But here’s the funny thing. If Tracey’s putting an ugg boot on that foot, and touches a certain spot on top of the foot, an involuntary response causes the toes to spring to life and curl upwards like magic for a second. "Surpri-i-se!" says Tracey. It looks ridiculous and we laugh, but somehow it feels good to see them move at all. It's as if they’ve just been messing with my mind all this time by lying doggo. (It's all the other way, actually. Mind messing with toes....or not, as the case may be. You know what I mean.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What is really happening is that my right side is paralysing, bit by bit. The process is inexorable, because all the physiotherapy in the world doesn't allow for the effects of the next seizure, and the one after that. For a stroke or longer term deterioration, physiotherapy can effect a cure or stall off the evil day. But in the case of a brain tumour, it's not much use when its benefits are negated in two minutes by a seizure.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One last thing, not related to arm or leg. For these I'm blaming the addition of Gabapentin to the drug cocktail, because they started happening only then, but it may be pure coincidence. I'm referring to the onset of periods of intense drowsiness. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've never experienced them before, and they’re damned inconvenient. I’ll be sitting typing, for example, get struck with this intense desire to close my eyes, and next thing I know, I look at the screen and find my hand's been resting on the keyboard and I've typed a thousand letter Cs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The nearest thing I can equate it to, only this keyboard drowsiness is much worse, is when I've driven a long distance, and have that intense longing to close my eyes while driving. (That’s when I've stopped, folks. I'm not entirely stupid.) I'm sure you know the sensation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If I try to fight it, it won’t give in. At times getting up and exercising stall it off, but it usually comes back. That hero in movies who fights off knockout sleep-drugs, he's a better man than I am, Gunga Din.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Again, it could all be traced to the brain tumour itself and its knock-on effect, but there's nothing for it but to deal with all this as best we can.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We can do no more, but we try not to do less.</span><br />
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-40759520400863424592013-09-24T09:34:00.000+10:002013-09-24T14:15:26.673+10:00A flat earth and a racing land 3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Before I finish my story, I just want to go back to that little four year old child sitting there in the classroom. Even then, when I looked at the map of the world, particularly of great continents, I could see that they fitted together. The world might have been flat, but it was in the end one gigantic geological jigsaw puzzle. This affected my whole outlook on life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Also, I am by profession an historian. In my story, I'm particularly interested in the <i>people </i>who came to what we now call India and China. We know that humans came originally from Africa, and that some of them left that continent to go to other parts of the world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> So India and China were not the birthplaces of civilisation. From a human point of view, they were empty places just waiting for people to come along. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I'm not sure the creatures already inhabiting those places felt quite the same way. They could have done without the humans quite happily.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> To track the progress of people into India and China is a fascinating process, but I don't want to get into it here. All I'll say is that the great mountains, the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush, made a dramatic impact on people's progress and choice of where to go. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> India was protected from massive invasions by that great mountain barrier. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It was difficult to get into, going through those narrow passes in the Hindu Kush – the Khyber pass for example. Just about no-one in their right minds would attempt to enter India via the Himalayas. In many ways, if yours was a nomadic group travelling from Europe through the heartland of Asia, it was easier to give India a miss altogether and move on in the direction of China.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">The rivers provide the clue</span></i></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> If you want to track the migration of people on land over large distances, and where they eventually settle down, practically all you have to do is to look at the rivers. People need water, and they need lush fertile places where they can hunt, and fish, and stay, if a settled life becomes agreeable. Unless people live right on the coast, where fish and tropical foods are in abundance, they need to travel along rivers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Obviously, I have to cut a long story short and simplify it so I can make my vital point. People did come into India, but it was a difficult journey, so mostly they came in dribs and drabs. They didn't come in in massive numbers at any one time. Generally speaking, they came into India at a rate that India could absorb without sudden changes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The overall effect of this was to create a society where people of all sorts were accepted and integrated into the social system that was there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> China's story was completely different. People occupied the great river valleys, and settled civilisations became the pattern for various reasons, mainly because of the establishment of farming; “the hydraulic society,” it became known as, based on water.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> A settled existence compared with a nomadic one changes everything. If things get uncomfortable for some reason, nomads can vote with their feet and move on. Settled people can't. Sedentary people invest time and effort in the farm, to build solid houses, and to secure them from attackers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Ideas about property and ownership change. People who develop particular skills can sell their time and labour rather than farm and tend animals. Little villages can eventually become large cities. New rules are needed to govern urban populations.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The Chinese succeeded admirably in doing all of that, but they had one huge problem. They were wide open to land invasion from their western and northern frontiers. There were plenty of people prepared to attack the settled communities in the river valleys of China. For voracious raiders like the Huns, and later, the Mongols, they were easy pickings.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> These were barbarians, as the Chinese called them, and for good reasons they feared and despised them. The constant threat posed by the barbarians caused the Chinese communities to bond tightly, to sacrifice individual rights for the needs of the community. And that mentality has carried through in China [until recently perhaps. We can't underestimate the nature of the changes that are taking place today, because they go against the fundamental traditions of China.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It was for that very reason that the Chinese Emperor in the third century BCE ordered the construction of the Great Wall. It was intended to mark for the first time in history the area that the Chinese regarded as China proper. There was a defined border that no one could cross without invading China.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> So there was the fundamental difference between India and China. India, because of an accident of the planet's formation, had its boundaries defined by nature, but in a way outsiders were accepted and included. <i>There is no Indian race.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> This may surprise some outsiders, who have their own perception of what an Indian man or woman should look like. Forget those perceptions if you have them. The divisions in traditional Indian society are based on class and caste, not upon race.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> And what about China? That open boundary on the north and northwest has created a completely different attitude to the foreigner from the Indian one. The foreigner is the invader, the barbarian, with no real perception of civilisation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The Chinese view was that theirs was the most civilised nation on earth. At its highest, there is good reason why they might have thought this. They developed the most complex and sophisticated bureaucracy to run a nation that had ever been devised. Their literature, arts and sciences ranked with the world’s most impressive.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> India’s achievements over millennia are no less impressive in all these fields, but the Indians saw the world in a different way. And Buddhism, the export product of Hinduism, provided a uniting thread for all Asia.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> All of this has been defined by geography. If you don't understand geography, then you can't understand history, because you can't understand the human response to the challenges that geography poses. And if you can't understand a country's history, then you can't understand why it is as it is today.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/i-started-school-when-i-was-four.html">a racing land 1</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/a-flat-earth-and-racing-land-2.html">a racing land 2</a> | <b style="background-color: yellow;">a racing land 3</b></span><br />
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-77797637476686094012013-09-21T22:03:00.000+10:002013-09-24T09:42:25.959+10:00A flat earth and a racing land 2<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In December 2011, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I published a piece entitled "<a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/first-lecture-wheres-asia.html">Where's Asia?</a>" For many months, it was the most popular post on my blog and I couldn't really work out why. Sure, it was interesting enough, but that fascinating?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Then, by a bit of detective work, it came to me. It wasn't what I had written that attracted attention, it was the fact that I had blank maps of Asia in there, and that's what teachers wanted to borrow, for their own tests. So much for brilliant writing!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I hope you did your homework. No? Well then, I suppose I better start at the beginning. And yes, I know a lot of you already know all about this, but let me go through it again briefly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> There once was a great continent. There was a time when all the Southern Hemisphere continents which exist today were part of this one enormous landmass. For one reason or another that don't matter here, the vast continent started to break up, and all the continents we see today went their separate ways, riding on plates like those moving walkways at the airport, and drifted across the planet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The one of interest here, and if you stick with me long enough you’ll see why, is what we now call India. It was mostly attached to Antarctica and Africa but apparently wasn't keen on the relationship, so it took a fast escalator across that part of the ocean that now bears its name. It built up quite a bit of momentum, and eventually it crashed into Asia at the point where it now on the world map.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> This caused all sorts of ructions, but the main one was that </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">a large section of land</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> was pushed upwards, now called the Himalayas. It had nowhere to go but up. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> On what is the western side or to the left if you look at the map below, it also pushed up a range called the Hindu Kush. To the northern side of the Himalayas it banked up a great stretch of land that we now call the Tibetan plateau.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Not content with making such a mess of the southern part of the Asian land mass, it caused a good deal of mischief by raising the sea floor on what is now the Chinese side, and that's where we get those wonderful structures around Guilin that used to be the sea floor. If you look at the brown parts of the map in particular you can see how much of the land mass was raised up.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> So India's arrival completely changed the face of Asia.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I'm not a geomorphologist, but it doesn't take an expert to see the dramatic changes to everything that this troublesome continent of India caused when it crashed slowly but inexorably into Asia.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Some parts were actually forced downwards, and you can see what looks like a great hole in the ground to the north of the Tibetan plateau. It's called the Tarim Basin, and for a very good reason, because a basin is exactly what it's shaped like. Many parts of it are below sea level, even though it’s a vast desert, with enormous sand dunes in some parts, and huge areas of rocky sterile stony plains in others. It's a very forbidding place, I can tell you. <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/timewarp-in-jiayuguan-part-1.html">I've travelled by train through a lot of it</a>. What a story that was.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> But it's what the presence of those mountains do that makes a vast impact on the nature of the continent, and ultimately, its people. The high mountains catch the clouds as they drift across the land mass. It's freezing there because of the height, and what would normally fall as rain usually falls as snow.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The mountains become snow-capped and retain vast amounts of water in the form of ice and snow. When the weather warms up, the snow melts and starts to run down into the valleys. These become the tributaries of great rivers on the Indian side, of the Ganges and Indus, and in the annual rainy season, they water vast areas of the northern part of the subcontinent.</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ocue1lQCfZg/Uj14ukRMBzI/AAAAAAAAG8M/UirRHSqv2jI/s1600/asia-edited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="348" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ocue1lQCfZg/Uj14ukRMBzI/AAAAAAAAG8M/UirRHSqv2jI/s400/asia-edited.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i><a href="http://www.physicalmapofasia.com/images/1920-physical-map-of-asia-large.jpg" target="_blank">Asia [cropped]</a><br />See all those huge rivers streaming down from the Himalayas!</i></b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> A similar thing happened on the Chinese side of the Himalayas, with the formation of its great rivers, the Yellow and the Yangtze, and the Mekong and Irrawaddy further south in IndoChina.<i> In short, all the great rivers of Asia begin in the Himalayas.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The snow also melts in Tibet, slowly in the summer, but it doesn't create great rivers such as in India and China. If anything, it acts as a kind of dam. The water builds up and doesn't form into rivers that race down towards the lowlands. It goes underground, and gigantic reserves of beautiful mountain water end up being stored deep under the ground in western China. At places it bubbles to surface and large oases appear in the deserts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> You probably know most of this if not all already. What I'm interested in talking about is the effect this has had on people who came to India and China at a much later time than all this happened.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> If the Himalayan range hadn't been pushed up in the way it did by India’s arrival, we wouldn't have the Indians and the Chinese. It's as simple – and complicated – as that. <i>But how come they turned out to be so different physically, and so vastly different culturally? That's the really fascinating bit, and my story in the final part.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/i-started-school-when-i-was-four.html">a racing land 1</a> | <span style="background-color: yellow;"><b>a racing land 2</b></span> | <span style="color: red;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/a-flat-earth-and-racing-land-3.html">a racing land 3</a></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/">home</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/whats-new.html">WHAT'S NEW!</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/stories-from-my-early-life.html">stories from my past</a></span></span></span><br />
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-64040061194040796972013-09-17T17:18:00.000+10:002013-09-24T09:36:47.344+10:00A flat earth and a racing land 1<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ntdtsg7soFs/Ujf-vUhXdMI/AAAAAAAAG7Q/IPIC9SUBtdA/s1600/mapasia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ntdtsg7soFs/Ujf-vUhXdMI/AAAAAAAAG7Q/IPIC9SUBtdA/s200/mapasia.jpg" width="126" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I started school when I was four. I don't mean pre-school because that didn't exist. I don't mean kindergarten because there was none in Calliope either. None of that wimpy stuff. I mean full on Grade 1. The big league.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> At the front of the classroom, there was a map of The World. It was called that, and when I went to school, that was world enough, but of course it was a map of the Earth. It was a Mercator’s Projection, which means that the Earth was flattened like the skin of an orange which had been carefully removed and opened out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Now, I'll be honest with you. At the age of four, the flat map of the world made a good deal more sense to me than a round one. I couldn't conceive of how the earth could possibly be as round as that. In the early 1950s, we didn't have the benefit of images from space, and rocket ships coming back into the atmosphere from space orbit, with the earth's features getting larger and larger and finally becoming the sort of flat that I comprehended at the age of four.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I was definitely more comfortable with a flat Earth. I could look out the window into the distance and there was no doubt at all in my mind that it was kind of flat – well, as flat as it gets, if you know what I mean. We can allow for hills and valleys and the odd mountain or two.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Even when we went the fifteen miles into Gladstone, and looked out to sea at any point where the clear blue sky met an even deeper blue ocean, it seemed to confirm my views on the flatness of the earth. Ain’t nuthin seen from a distance as flat as the ocean, although I knew from experience that it's surprisingly un-flat when you get into it, not to mention salty. Those bloody waves just keep rolling in and knocking you down if you give them half a chance. But... the land where we stood was below us, and the beautiful sea right up to the horizon line was below as well, and the sky was clearly above us. QED. No more proof required. Earth = flat.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> No-one told me about the Mercator's Projection being a flattened out view of a spherical world. As a result, it had one tremendously puzzling feature. On this map of The World, Australia was at the centreline, which is exactly as it should be given that it's always been the centre of the Known World, but – and I know you're going to find this just as amazing as I did – <i>there was an England on the right end of the map and another England on the left-hand side.</i> It was clear as a bell. Right there, plain to see.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> No wonder that tiny little Britain had managed to put all those pink bits representing the Commonwealth on the map. Gor Blimey. There were <i>two </i>Britains, and I guessed that would have made the work of conquering so much of the world a lot easier. Pincer movement like.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I admit I didn't know quite how it worked, but it was on the map, and it was a nice map, with beautiful printing, so that must've been how it was. Anyway that was not my problem. Somehow, they'd got it together and between them created a mighty empire.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I must also say that there was a globe on the teacher's table, and we could always spin it around, if she was out of the room or was writing sums on the blackboard to make us miserable later.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I liked the globe very much and it made a sort of sense to me, even if they never could make it straight up and down, but always on that silly 23.5 degree angle. You'd think quality control would have stepped in long before and made them fix it. But, you got kinda used to it, and I have to admit now that straight up-and-down somehow wouldn't feel right.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Children have a wonderful capacity to doublethink, so I didn't try to put the two of these representations together. The flat map of the Earth and the globe existed as separate worlds in <i>my</i> four-year-old world, and that was okay.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> As a matter of fact, many adults still have this same ability to doublethink. You only have to look at their views on politics. But, let me not get off the track.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> What was the track, do I hear you ask? Ain’t it bleedin obvious?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Possibly not. OK.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It's just that several days ago, I had the thought that I might write a blog piece on a certain subject, and I'd even prepared some maps for it. But the ABC, in its infinite wisdom, has a programme on this very night, called <i>Rise of the Continents</i>, and I'm afraid it might pre-empt my little lecture. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> So, just to prove to you that I didn't get the idea from the programme, I'll put this map below, and I want you to look at it. This is about what a runaway landmass did, and how it created two very different societies.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> No, in fact, I want you to <i>study </i>it deeply. This is your homework. Questions, as they say, will be asked.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> All will be revealed tomorrow. Tomorrow-ish well. Don't be so pushy. I've only got one pair of hands you know.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Umm, I've really only got one hand that works, so lay off. You just stop being cruel to the disabled.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b style="background-color: yellow;">a racing land 1</b> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/a-flat-earth-and-racing-land-2.html">a racing land 2</a> | <span style="color: red;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/a-flat-earth-and-racing-land-3.html">a racing land 3</a></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/">home</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/whats-new.html">WHAT'S NEW!</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/stories-from-my-early-life.html">stories from my past</a></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #fff2cc;">. </span></span></span></span></div>
Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-15319386018797907252013-09-13T14:21:00.002+10:002013-09-13T14:21:52.918+10:00Going over to the dark side 2<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/going-over-to-dark-side-1.html">[Continued from Part 1]</a></i></b></span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y8iEJ9DqgKY/UjKE4_LqTGI/AAAAAAAAG7A/riLq41ZkQNw/s1600/synapses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y8iEJ9DqgKY/UjKE4_LqTGI/AAAAAAAAG7A/riLq41ZkQNw/s200/synapses.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So what's going on behind that seemingly calm exterior is a very complicated series of manoeuvres aimed at keeping my body in some sort of precarious balance, and giving it the best chance to support the brain that's composing these words. The reason why what you're seeing is not utter rubbish so far is that the cognitive part of the brain is not yet affected, and I still have the ability to get those words down in front of you in some sort of logical form. It can't always be that way.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Meanwhile, the tumour, and its effects, keep on extending. Essentially, the presence of the tumour has succeeded in burning out most of the major functions of the right arm and leg simply by inhibiting and scrambling the signals to and from the brain. I've been fiercely trying to protect the tiny ability of the leg to move from the hip, even though the lower joints are unreliable. That allows me to go minimal distances, but ones which are critical. To the bathroom and back, for example.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After hundreds of seizures, the tumour had just one last destructive mission to carry out on the right hand – an attack on a little bit it had not dealt with fully.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I had retained a slight ability to grasp something between fingers and thumb. A concerted attack over the course of several weeks a couple of months ago achieved its goal – to destroy the ability of the index finger and thumb to coordinate and grip, even slightly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I now have two different seizure phenomena beginning to take place, as anyone will know from reading the medical side of this blog </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">–</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">seizure attacks on new and unexplored territory.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The first is the tumour's attack on the throat and larynx – the voicebox – which has resulted in a series of seizures that at times have rendered me either speechless or unintelligible, although cognition has remained. In other words, under one of those attacks, I can think the words quite clearly, but I cannot say them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I begin to appreciate what those who stammer go through.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The second, and more recent, is the attack by seizures which have now affected my head, causing loss of control of facial muscles, especially those around the eyes, my mouth and ears. Sometimes my head feels as if it is in danger of bursting at the seams.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perhaps it is.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I expect these to get worse before the tumour's effects move on to other parts of my body, but who can tell? Blindness and/or loss of hearing may strike next, at any time, as could loss of control over bodily functions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tracey is the only one who has seen the facial seizures. Quite often I am alone in bed when a seizure hits. I try to gauge its severity, and whether or not it's worthwhile to call Tracey in. It may appear to strike only the hand, and yet I may lose my ability to speak at this time, or immediately afterwards.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Most of these seizures take anywhere between fifteen minutes and half an hour to recover from. I'm talking about the immediate effects here; the longer term effects may only be apparent at some later stage and usually they are much more crippling.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When you see all that can possibly happen, you might say that for the best part of four years, I've been very lucky in certain respects. The effect of a tumour on other parts of the brain could have been more devastating at a much earlier stage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Explaining this in words is the only way I can pass on to you a clearer picture of the physical extent and effects of this tumour at this stage. I haven't even touched on the psychological effects of the escalating breakdown of the physical body in recent months, and the effect it has on our family. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That would take another entire blog piece</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">–</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> one that would rightly centre on Tracey, and not just in her role as carer. It is a vast understatement to say that it's a story needing to be told in its own right.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thus far, I can live a life with reasonable quality in many respects, b</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">ut even this time is passing very rapidly. We simply don't know what the next phase will be, except that it cannot possibly be a better one, because we have nothing left to be able to make it so.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/going-over-to-dark-side-1.html">the dark side 1</a> | <b style="background-color: yellow;">the dark side 2</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/">home</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/whats-new.html">WHAT'S NEW!</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/stories-from-my-early-life.html">stories from my past</a></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #fff2cc;">. </span></span></span></span></div>
Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-68161166010367370632013-09-13T14:16:00.001+10:002013-09-13T14:19:02.608+10:00Going over to the dark side 1<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y8iEJ9DqgKY/UjKE4_LqTGI/AAAAAAAAG68/3QztggaKZGQ/s1600/synapses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y8iEJ9DqgKY/UjKE4_LqTGI/AAAAAAAAG68/3QztggaKZGQ/s200/synapses.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It seems an eternity ago since <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/first-light-nights.html">I used to run</a> daily, as dawn was breaking, through the early-morning countryside ten kilometres out of town. The bitumen strip of road was not used very much.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> After rain one morning, I noticed a small weed – a sort of yellow daisy, which had somehow managed to germinate in a tiny crack in the bitumen road itself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the days that followed, I watched it grow, and marvelled at its endurance. It would have been a hard life for it, because the day temperatures generated by the black tar surrounding it would have been fierce. It put in a valiant effort, and finally the scrawny little thing produced a commendable flower which ultimately, I guess, produced seeds. The plant collapsed from sheer exhaustion soon after that, and died. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It had performed its life's task and returned to the soil. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another generation of the little wild daisy would carry the gene.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It seems almost indecent that I should feel so strongly the procreation urge as I near the crisis which will precede my death, but I do. It must be the primal desire inspired by the genes that makes me feel so sexually alive. It's not something I can help. It's the genes making a final, pointless declaration.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> My daughters will have to close their eyes at this revelation. I suspect they cling to the notion that they were conceived immaculately.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Although I realise this is dangerous territory, it may be different for men from women. Women's reproductive life has a reasonably clear ending at some point, but not so with males, and my theory is that it's the stark prospect of death that drives it. Blame nature, not me. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's not simply sex for its own joyful sake, but something here which has deeper well-springs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It's a theory. Some might have cruder explanations. How on earth did I get on to that subject?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It's that I see the time for the ending looming so quickly now. While others make plans for next week or next month or next year, or their retirement in twenty, I've lost all sense of scheming for the future, in all but one sense. It's only a week until the next proteinuria test that will decide whether or not I get another dose of Avastin.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It's going to be unlikely. I know, I've said that before, and each time, dodged the bullet. Last time, we did the near-impossible, and reversed the trend of recent months. It is very unlikely that we can keep doing that, given that we were so near the limit last time and the break has been the normal three weeks this time and not six.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> In spite of living in this perpetual state of insecurity, or <i>because </i>of it, we make the most of each day as far as that's possible, but as you see, we look ahead in terms not of weeks, but days. At least, I do.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Not that this is something at the forefront of my mind all the time, because that would be a tremendous and pointless burden to carry – but it's always there, sneaking around in the background. Life intrudes upon its existence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> When someone comes to visit, I'm usually sitting quite serenely in my chair and there's no way anyone could know, if they didn't have the details, of the utter train wreck physically that's going on at an exponential rate. They might get a clue if they saw me struggle to stand to get inside the frame in order to move from one room to another, and then to see me sit down somewhere else as carefully as I can.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> It's not usually a graceful landing at the other end. I can manoeuvre into position, but the last part of it is a rather unceremonious flop on to the chair at the other end.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I really didn't expect that the purely <i>physical </i>problems resulting from the location of the tumour would be my downfall – sometimes literally. At first, the seizures were most obvious in the right arm, and eventually made it practically useless. It took quite a few seizures over a long period of time – years, in fact – for the right leg to become so problematic that it badly affected my walking, and ultimately stopped me walking unaided.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> On the rare occasions I go out, it has to start with the wheelchair. From the wheelchair, a rather precipitous entry into the car, and a reversal of the process at the other end.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The problem is that the muscles all over the body, which </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">even the most indolent or sedentary </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">people</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">use in their daily life</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, are no longer in action in mine to anywhere near the same extent. My body gradually becomes distorted in various ways as important muscles atrophy. Balance is one of the first things to go.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Internal organs then start to suffer. In my case it's clear that the kidneys are failing to deal with protein in the way they should, and this will result in kidney failure if some more serious problem doesn't pre-empt it. The need to take pills of various kinds to control seizures results in problems for the intestinal tract, and those in turn are treated with medication to control or keep normal bodily functions operational.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> With the best of intentions and effort, I find that lack of normal exercise means that the heart is constantly put under pressure. Without blood pressure tablets, a heart attack would almost certainly be the result, sooner rather than later. Immobility means that clots are likely to form anywhere in the body, especially the legs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> When clots are detected, such as the ones at various times in both of my legs, they are treated with injections of Clexane or something similar. If untreated, one of them could easily find its way into the heart or brain, and that could be disastrous. Think heart attack or stroke.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Isn't this fun? Except that it's not some unknown person we're talking about. It is I, and you might be surprised at what a helluva difference that makes to me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><b><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/going-over-to-dark-side-2.html">[continue to final part]</a></b></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b style="background-color: yellow;">the dark side 1</b> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/going-over-to-dark-side-2.html">the dark side 2</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/">home</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/whats-new.html">WHAT'S NEW!</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/stories-from-my-early-life.html">stories from my past</a></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #fff2cc;">. </span></span></span></span></div>
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Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-88114528301751625492013-09-09T20:19:00.000+10:002013-10-26T10:24:13.987+11:00Hospital shorts<br />
<i><span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">This posting of bits and pieces comes from the time a few weeks ago when I was a hospital patient and the sole occupant of a large, comfortable room. Amongst the comings and goings of staff, I had a lot of time to myself, which is how I like it. I thought the posting was going to be philosophical musings of one sort or another, but as you see, neither of us knows where any posting of mine's going to go. In this case, it took a severe turn towards the practical.</span></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>Thinking</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I used to have what I regarded as my best thoughts in the shower, when I was in that other world of the strong and healthy. Now, in the hospital, it's while eating breakfast. That's my story anyway.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> The problem with both places is that they're not designed to record flashes of insight, but at least at breakfast I now have a pen handy, and can grab a piece of paper to scribble something down to try to make sense of later. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Sometimes, later, it's utterly incomprehensible, which I suspect means it was utter brilliance or utter rubbish.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> That's if I can read my own writing. It's sometimes not possible. In my defence, it's usually composed on a scrap of the day's menu amongst the carnage of dropped porridge, marmalade sachets and widely distributed toast crumbs.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Tears</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Nothing tears me up inside as much as the sound of an old lady weeping. It's a sound I've heard several times coming from the room next door.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> A baby's cry, especially that of your own child, is like a saw-blade running through your whole being. But babies cry as their main form of communication when they want things – often simple things – although I admit the sound of a small child in pain is the worst thing I can think of. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> But old ladies tend to cry only when they are in deep misery or anguish for some reason, and it's painful for me to bear. It's a sound that comes from the depths of a lifetime of experience. Of terrible loss or need. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> When old men cry, they often do it without sound; no less heartbreaking for a compassionate observer, and that can be equally heart-rending.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">For what it's worth - sweet and corny</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">“For what it's worth.” It's a useful phrase. It allows you to say whatever you like, but somehow gives it the authority of humility, even if it's not always quite sincere.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>Laughter</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">i always enjoyed hearing the staff laughing and joking together when they were at the "nurse's station" a little down the passageway. Somehow it was comforting, whether at 4 am or 4 pm.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Mobility</span></b><br />
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<i><b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Beds</span></b></i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--JLEBIUzklM/Ui1LZjqyd4I/AAAAAAAAG6Q/YDYZLhaRsZY/s1600/Hospital-Bed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="262" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--JLEBIUzklM/Ui1LZjqyd4I/AAAAAAAAG6Q/YDYZLhaRsZY/s320/Hospital-Bed.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><b>This is a <a href="http://hospitalbedsonhire.com/" target="_blank">Rolls Royce version</a> of the beds here, <br />but I have no complaints about them.</b></i></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Every piece of hospital equipment is easily movable, which is vital for the heaviest. An empty hospital room can be organised at great speed to contain a bed or beds and all the necessary equipment that surrounds them for the comfort of the patient. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> A good bed itself is a masterpiece of design. It can be raised or lowered to help patients to get in and out of bed. Once the patient is in the bed, various sections of it can be raised or lowered to suit the patient's needs. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> From a staff point of view, it can be raised to waist height in order to be made up with sheets, blankets and pillows, eliminating a lot of back and other problems caused by bending down. Nor is so much effort needed in getting patients in and out of bed, or raised and lowered in bed.</span><br />
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<i><b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Tables</span></b></i><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WRlSx1u_WnM/Ui1KJ-IkCRI/AAAAAAAAG6I/CZvya4Hkexs/s1600/Table-with-ABS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WRlSx1u_WnM/Ui1KJ-IkCRI/AAAAAAAAG6I/CZvya4Hkexs/s320/Table-with-ABS.jpg" width="283" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><b>This is a very basic model</b></i></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">There are a few devices more brilliantly designed than a good hospital table. It's adjustable in height and attached at one end only to its rollers, about a metre long, and less than half a metre in width. Given that getting up and down is a problem for me, and having only one arm with any extension and fingers able to grip any object securely, I could still make use of the full length of the table by being able to roll it along so that I could put things at any position on the table itself, otherwise I would have been limited in immediate access to a very narrow section of it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> I'd love to have one here at home between chair and bed, but I'm pretty sure that they cost a bomb.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> At the hospital, I had one of these between the chair and my bed. I was also very lucky to have another one on the other side of the chair. Even with very limited ability to reach across with my left hand to the table on my right side as I was sitting in the chair, I was still able to use the full length of each table to reach various objects. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> It's remarkable how quickly the space available on the table fills up. This means that I had to learn another skill.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Planning</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">One of the keys to surviving with limited mobility in a hospital is to learn the art of moving things around efficiently. Take the number of pieces of electronic equipment that I use while in the hospital, for example. I have a mobile phone, an iPad, a Kindle reader, and a laptop computer. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> That might seem excessive to many people, but each of them had a particular purpose. Each at one stage or another would run out of battery power and because I was almost immobile, particularly at the start, I had to rely upon one of the staff or a visitor used to connecting the various devices to plug them into the electrical socket for recharging.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w0fGDno-138/Ui1a_EA7BRI/AAAAAAAAG6k/7S0Mpa7_wJ4/s1600/stable+table.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="117" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w0fGDno-138/Ui1a_EA7BRI/AAAAAAAAG6k/7S0Mpa7_wJ4/s320/stable+table.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><b>Stable-table - worth its weight in gold!</b></i></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> If all of these were spread singly across the table, they would soon have used up half the entire space on it. The stable<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><b>-</b></i></span>table I put on my knees while sitting in the chair to use the computer would have taken the rest of the space when I wanted to get up.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> So, these items have to be stacked on top of each other when not in use. And that takes a little forethought. If the item I want is at the bottom, then with one hand of limited strength and limited space on the tray, it's a case of unstacking one item at a time, getting what I want and restacking after that, trying to predict what I'm going to want next.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Adaptability</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Nature shows us that the key to survival is adaptability. While it's fine to have a code to live by that gives order, stability and meaning to life, it's those who can react positively to inescapable change who cope best.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It's certainly something you need when you go into a new environment like a hospital.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/">home</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/whats-new.html">WHAT'S NEW!</a> | <a href="http://deniswright.blogspot.com/p/stories-from-my-early-life.html">stories from my past</a></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #fff2cc;">. </span></span></span></span></div>
Denis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-46526954038550551742013-09-05T20:17:00.000+10:002013-09-06T00:34:54.236+10:00Simplicity and the complicated<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">See simplicity in the complicated.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Achieve greatness in little things.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Tao te Ching </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">When I was about nine years old, my father contracted <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_fever" target="_blank">Q Fever</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> It was well named. The disease was so mysterious in the 1950s that the Q stood for “Question” or maybe </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">“Question Mark”</span>. He was very sick; so sick that for the first time ever, and much against his will, he allowed himself to be sent away from the farm by my mother to recuperate at the beach. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As far as I could ever remember as a child, h</span>e had not had a day's holiday. Uncle Frank took some time off from his job at the meatworks in Gladstone to come and help my mother run the farm while Dad was away.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span>I have very fond memories of my father's illness, because he took me with him on this holiday. Nothing like that had ever happened before – he and I together </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">–</span> and it never happened again. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span>Uncle Siv had a shack at what was then regarded as a remote little beach called Tannum Sands, now practically a suburb of Gladstone, but at that time a ramshackle little village of two dozen or so jerry-built shacks which people had put up as weekenders.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span>It was a magical time in my life. Just before dawn every day, my father would take one of the fishing rods at the shack, and, with me hot on his heels, would go to the surf beach just down the little hill to catch our breakfast. There were plenty of fish about at that time, so we were always guaranteed a breakfast of whiting or flathead or bream. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span>I would wander about the beach, collecting anything of interest to me, or just straddling a log washed up in a storm at some stage; special to me because it reared up from the sand rather like what I imagined resembled a Viking ship. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span>As dawn slipped through sunrise into early morning, I'd watch the change of mood in the sea and sky while the soldier crabs scurried about and the seagulls did their foraging and bickering on the creamy sands. Behind me, the dew dried from the leaves of the great eucalypts and added their scent to the salt-laden air swished by the surf. It was a poem waiting to happen.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span>Life just doesn't get any better than that.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZrCI7B69i8U/UihZCMbgK0I/AAAAAAAAG5s/HZkC57KV384/s1600/sea+rocks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZrCI7B69i8U/UihZCMbgK0I/AAAAAAAAG5s/HZkC57KV384/s1600/sea+rocks.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Photo: Jan Stockwell</span></b></i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span>Just after that holiday, we were taught a poem at school which I can still recite. Anyone who has experienced the Australian bush at dawn, sitting by the ocean as the tide comes in, can easily relate to this purely descriptive song of innocence.</span><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">An Australian Sunrise</span></span></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">by James Lister Cuthbertson</span></i></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The Morning Star paled slowly, </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">the Cross hung low to the sea,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And down the shadowy reaches </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">the tide came swirling free.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The lustrous purple blackness </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">of the soft Australian night</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Waned in the grey awakening </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">that heralded the light.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Out of the dying darkness, </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">still in the forest dim</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The pearly dew of the dawning </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">clung to each giant limb.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Till the sun came up from ocean, </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">red with the cold sea mist,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And smote on the limestone ridges, </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">the shining tree-tops kissed.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Then the fiery scorpion vanished, </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">and the magpie’s note was heard.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The wind in the she-oaks wavered </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">and the honeysuckles stirred,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The airy golden vapour </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">rose from the river's breast.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The kingfisher came darting </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">out of her crannied nest.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The bulrushes and reed-beds </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">put off their sallow grey,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And burnt with cloudy crimson </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">at the dawning of the day.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span>It wasn't until my undergraduate university days studying English literature that I became aware of the hidden layers of meaning in the poetry of William Wordsworth. He was to me the leading light of the nineteenth century English Romantics. I was well aware, long before, of the romance of foggy autumns, two-toned critters before 1959 pink and grey Holdens, lovers on Greek pots never quite getting it on, and the pleasure dome of Xanadu, but not what Coleridge and Shelley and Keats were really searching for. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span>It so happened that at the same time, I was studying the Asian philosophical traditions, particularly of Taoism and Buddhism. The connection between the Romantics and the Asian mystical vision struck me with absolute clarity, and none more obviously than in this part of what I regard as one of the greatest of poems of the Romantic tradition in England. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f-ZHwI0EJ88/UihXLzuhdZI/AAAAAAAAG5c/ZuUwFRS3-EI/s1600/tintern+abbey2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f-ZHwI0EJ88/UihXLzuhdZI/AAAAAAAAG5c/ZuUwFRS3-EI/s1600/tintern+abbey2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://thenewdirectionoftime.com/2012/03/18/513/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><b>Source</b></i></span></span></a></td></tr>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey</span> </span></b></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">...For I have learned</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">To look on nature, not as in the hour </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The still, sad music of humanity,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">To chasten and subdue. And I have felt</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A presence that disturbs me with the joy</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Of something far more deeply interfused,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And the round ocean, and the living air,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A motion and a spirit, that impels</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">All thinking things, all objects of all thought,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A lover of the meadows and the woods,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And mountains; and of all that we behold</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">From this green earth; of all the mighty world</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And what perceive; well pleased to recognize</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In nature and the language of the sense,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Of all my moral being.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></blockquote>
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