A dead WHAT?

For some time I have been aware that my right hip is dodgy. I’ve always had good hips in spite of RA but in the last few months, not long really, it has become a painful problem. Strangely, it doesn’t hurt while I’m sitting down but the pain in the night is so bad I am not getting much sleep. I told my RA drug monitoring nurse and she sent me to see the consultant immediately.

 

Now that in itself is probably novel for most people who attend NHS hospitals but my rheumatology hospital  is fantastic. I’ve been to a lot of hospitals over the last 41 years of being ill and this is by far the best. It’s like a big family. Everyone knows you, the nurses are intelligent and think outside the box and the doctors actually look at you and not at the computer. Well, I went to see my monitor nurse and she sent me to the consultant immediately. He talked a lot of sense and sent me for an x ray. Later that day (and how usual is that?) the nurse rang to tell me that the right femoral head is dead. What? How can a bone sitting in a socket be dead? The answer is avascular necrosis. In other words the steroids I have been on (very very low dose) for 35 years have somehow cut off the blood supply to the femur and it has died. Never heard of it. The upshot is a new hip joint. Apparently it has to be done within 18 weeks of seeing the surgeon in July. Doesn’t sound long really, except that 18 weeks without a good sleep is a bit daunting.

 

In the meantime the removal of the beta blocker is showing itself in several ways. The main way is that my dear husband is irritating the life out of me. Everything I say he corrects so that his apergic mind can ‘get it’. You have to be very specific with aspergic people and women (particularly this woman) tend to talk in broad brush strokes, assuming a certain level of comprehension and understanding of nuance on behalf of the other party. With an aspergic person you can’t rely on that at all. If you can mis-read a sentence they will misread it, to the extent that you might be forgiven for thinking they are doing it on purpose to irritate. They are not of course. I read somewhere that aspergic people have the ‘men are from mars etc’ male differences from women to the nth degree and it’s something to do with having too much testosterone in the womb. All the things that irritate women about men are magnified in people with Aspergers. So life with an aspergic (for me) and a person with RA coming off beta blockers (for him) is never going to be easy. It’s just as well we spend most of our time looking at computer screens………… me talking to other people and him reading left-wing intellectual stuff that can’t be misconstrued. We meet at meal times.

Our son has put a link to his new book on facebook and that’s great. I’m amazed it is going to cost £55 when it comes out in September but a lot of work went into it. I’m really looking forward to seeing it. It’s about critical theory and the end of work. You can look it up. Ashgate is the publisher. Someone described it to me as not something to read on the beach and that is probably true for everyone except my husband. It’s very pertinent to the financial/unemployment situation we find ourselves in, I believe. I’ll have to findout if I can actually place a link to it on here, not being au fait with that sort of thing.

When I told my son about the necrosis he seemed to think that I’ll survive it as I have survived a heart attack and a perforated bowel (only 1 in 3 survive), telling me that I’ll probably outlive him. In the past I have indeed survived against the odds and one day I suppose, I won’t. My luck has to run out some time. Not just yet though eh. I’ve got a few paintings to do yet. Keep getting a glimmer of bits of one. When it’s ‘ripe’ I’ll paint it.

Busy day

Today I did some last minute shopping, helped the cleaner with some of the housework, mostly I cleaned up a load of cat poo that must have been deposited on an extension lead and socket about 3 days ago to judge from the effort it took to clean up,prepared a nice meal for old friends who call in on their way to or from London/Lancashire,welcomed the remedial massage friend who came to practise massage on me and the cleaner and answered all my emails. Then I got some lamb out of the freezer for when my son arrives after his work as a researcher. He won’t have snacky food and would consider what we had for lunch as snacky food. He likes a good wholesome curry, so he can cook his own lamb.

The meal we had was smoked salmon, asparagus, tiny toms, green soya beans and new potatoes with chopped parsley. Oh and hollandaise sauce from Sainsbury’s. It said online that bought hollandaise is disgusting but it went down ok. Second course was a Waitrose chocolate tart…like the lemon ones only chocolate (both delicious) with cherries, raspberries and strawberries and Madagascan Vanilla ice cream (It says ‘ere). Finally those Ryvita thin crispbreads with Blacksticks Blue and goats’cheese. We all enjoyed it, snacky or not. I like preparing food for Tony and Jackie because we’ve been friends since we were all about 20 and just married (well people did in 1968). We don’t see them all the time but when we do it really is like we’ve always been together. We laugh and cry and don’t feel any need to show off or hide anything. Having those sort of friends is what makes life great. I always feel rejuvenated when they have gone. They have a wonderful 19 year old Volvo which has done more than 200,000 miles. They live in Spain some of the time and sometimes drive down there. They also go to New Jersey often, to see their daughter and her family. Makes me realise we don’t go far ourselves but my Rheumatoid Arthritis of 41 years puts the mockers on most travelling.

Nice was the worst place we went to for access and lack of respect for disabled people. I don’t really know where they go in Nice because you don’t see them on the streets and I had so many stares I reckon they are not used to seeing people in wheelchairs. The French baggage handlers were appalling. They tried to fold my power chair and it took ages to get it back into shape and re-fit the batteries which they had kindly removed. It was all a disaster, TWICE. Then the information office in the town was up a huge flight of stairs. Also the art gallery was up a great flight of steps and the lift had obviously been broken for some time. We had taken ages to get to it, too, using up valuable battery power. The accessible buses were very few and far between and the drivers were clearly not au fait with positioning themselves to pick up people in wheelchairs. I love France and I find it upsetting that they are not more welcoming of people like me there. I suppose America is the best for access but who wants to sit on a plane getting more and more rigid for all those hours? Brighton is a good place for us and we go down there to see our daughter sometimes. That’s a whole other blog entry.

Thank God for That

So the Labour Party has had the good sense to back Brown after all. Good idea, seeing as there is nobody else of anything like such stature. Now they need to get back to work and stop fiddling their expenses.

Just been listening to a programme on Radio 4 saying that any alcohol, even a couple of units a week, is carcinogenic.  Dear oh dear, are there going to be no pleasures left in life? I was enjoying a glass of red while listening to the programme.

Went to the doctor about my blue/purple legs. It had dawned on me that I have only had such terrible circulation since the start of taking Atenolol, the beta blocker which the medics put me on after the heart attack about 3 years ago. I might add here that everybody who has a heart attack gets put on them, along with statins (which deplete Co-enzyme Q10), an aspirin a day to thin the blood and a couple of other things. Handy for the makers of these 5 items, methinks. I wonder who in NICE has shares in any of them. Looked up Atenolol and poor circulation and lo and behold it can cause the problem. The doc agreed and I am slowly giving up the Atenolol. I am only on the lowest dose. Hopefully all the fish oils and garlic I take will keep my BP nice and stable. Also going to try red vine leaf in tablet form. That’s supposed to improve the micro-circulation – presumably that means in the capillaries. Ascertained that my arteries are ok by a doppler test so coming off Atenolol should be ok. I have warned my family that I may be less dozy in the near future.

My daughter is looking at flats, with a view to buying one. Gone are the days of the 10% deposit. If you want a mortgage now, post credit crunch, you need 25%. How can young people find such large sums of money? In spite of this problem, flats in Brighton are moving as fast as s*** off a shovel, as my son would say, so somebody is able to find it. At one point in the last few years, you could borrow more than 100%. Those days are gone for good, I’m afraid.

Well this all looks very complicated but I expect to get the hang of it soon.

I’ve been prompted to start a blog because there is so much rubbish being talked about politics and particularly about Gordon Brown. I happen to quite like the guy and can’t for the life of me see what he’s done wrong. When he was ‘saving the country’ from financial disaster he was a hero. What’s he done now that has changed that? As for all those people who have resigned…..good riddance to them. Who wants people who have done dodgy financial dealings in the cabinet anyway? As for Blears……….. imagine being so childish as to think that wearing a ‘rocking the boat’ badge is appropriate for a resigning cabinet minister. We are better off without her and her other disloyal cronies anyway. Keep going, Gordon, and take no notice. Labour will probably get a drubbing in the European gravy train elections…….I actually voted Green myself, partly because I like the Greens and partly to give Labour a snub. Nothing personal, Gordon. More a sharp stick in the eye of those money-grabbers you are surrounded by.  It’s about time the Greens had a bigger profile in Europe. I tend to think they are a pretty ethical lot and it’s time, with all this climate change business, that there was a greater emphasis on the environment in Europe.  Well, here too for that matter but I don’t think the Greens stand a chance in Westminster.

I’m not being very green this morning. It’s so damn cold we’ve got the central heating on. Must go and get dressed in some big sweaters so the heating can go off.

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