Deprivation?

A “passenger side air-bag replacement recall” for my car has left me bereft for a day – a whole day - without a car.  My car!

Irritatingly, I had to get back from the garage where the faulty car is now with a not-free taxi.  I think, since the fault is nothing to do with me, the firm could have paid for my return to car-less domesticity.  But they didn’t.  And now I have to endure that terrifying sense of isolation and fixity that a confirmed driver feels without his wheels.

I do still have the two wheels of my bike, my electric bike, but even with electrical assistance the range of operation that I am prepared to consider is remarkably restricted. 

As is usual for me, this typing is displacement activity for something else.  Through my interest in history and geography, I seem to have sold my financial soul to the National Geographic Magazine – not their famous monthly publication, but rather a series of their archaeological books which detail various famous sites throughout the world.  I don’t know how many volumes I thought the series comprised, but they seem to be never ending, and there is always something interesting enough to make me feel that the money that I am constantly spending is worth it. 

I particularly like the fact that they show imaginative reconstructions of how the wrecked sites would have looked in their original glory.  So, it was fascinating to see what the site at Petra would have looked like when it was a working trade centre.  I know that a further two volumes in the series are waiting for me in the Post Office in the centre of town, but without the car I am loath to make the journey to get them.  So, I type.

-          Later that day –

I obviously did not type with sufficient brio and conviction as the journey to the PO seemed like a logical and necessary thing.  I now have two more books on Tikal (of which I had never heard) and Saqqara (of which I had).  I have to admit that given the breadth and magnificence of the Mayan ruins of Tikal, I really think that I ought to have had that particular location stored somewhere in my brain.  But it wasn’t.  But now is.  It looks like the sort of place that would pass Dr Johnson’s test and actually be “worth going to see”!

As the accompanying text with the wonderful illustrations is in Spanish, I do tend to spend longer looking at the pictures than trying to work out what I am sure is fascinating information contained in the text.  To prove my point, I just opened the book on Saqqara at random and read a paragraph and, while I would be prepared to give a paraphrase of what it contained, I would not like a fluent Spanish speaker to check my summary.

It is true that I live in my own little “Magic Roundabout” world where I, just like Eric Thompson, use visual images to guide my textual understanding.  He made up stories based on watching the French originals of “The Magic Roundabout” and did not bother with a translation to guide him.  In much the same way I use my recognition of ‘pointers’ in Spanish conversations to guide my responses - however imaginative my use of language has been in deconstructing what I have been told. 

There is not always a perfect match between my inspirational appreciation of a foreign language and the poor natives who have to think about what I might have understood them to have said.  But it does lighten my days, even if it darkens theirs!

A real (and vital) test of my understanding of Spanish comes tomorrow when I go back to the hospital which is monitoring my medication for a ‘Control’.  At present I am administering a combination of injections and pills to keep me on the straight and narrow of health.  The future, I hope, holds a regime of medication that will do without the injections of rat poison because, let’s face it, that is what the ‘blood thinning’ agent that I am being given actually is!  So far, according to my rough calculations I have given myself over 200 injections in the war zone that used to be my tummy!  Enough, as they say, is enough and I would dearly love to take back the sharps box that I have borrowed from my medical centre complete with the empties!  But the reality is that I will probably need a few more ‘controls’ to get the medication right and that means that I will have to continue to administer the injections.

Because of my selective understanding I take most of my treatment on trust.  I have seen a few doctors and they have taken time and trouble to explain what is going on with the blood clots, embolisms and thrombosis, but the detail of my treatment is part of an ongoing routine that I do not really follow.  At present, for example, I do not get to see a doctor when I have my controls.  The blood drop test is administered by a nurse who passes on the information to a doctor who then decides what combination of medication I need to take until the next control.  The information comes in the form of a sheet with printed information about the amounts I need to take leading up to the next control.  Given the variety of combinations that I have already been through I do not think that we are getting any nearer to a finalized and regular dosage.  But I live in hope.  I have seen fellow patients with sheets that are obviously for whole months rather than the week that I have, so, probably, even at best, I will have a monthly visit instead of a weekly one.  But I will settle for that rather than the fatal alternative!

I continue to be surprised at the difference between my swimming and walking abilities.  As far as swimming is concerned I am now back to normal, indeed a recent swim was completed in a time that matched and bettered my pre-January times.  My walking is a different matter.

I find that walking more than a couple of hundred yards is a real physical effort and I am more than grateful that I purchased a collapsible shooting stick that is an efficient walking stick as well.  I was talk that the damage to my lungs might well be permanent and so I will have to make do with what is left.  I have also been told that there is no point in my exercising to the point of breathlessness as that could be dangerous and so everything has to be done in moderation – not my natural state!

Back in January my doctor told me that I would have to “find a new life” and I suppose that discovering how much I can do and how to cope with the difference that it makes is part of that discovery.

Rethinking a life style is not made any easier by the fact that, sitting here typing, I do not feel any different from what I felt before the pulmonary embolism was discovered, and if you watched me around the house you would see no difference: I walk around unaided and go up and down stairs without any noticeable ill effects; I use my bike to go to and fro and I am even marginally thinner!  But I am daunted by a walk through town, something that I would have not thought about for a moment before the illness.

We have a trip to Edinburgh planned for late July and that is going to have to be a very different experience from the other city breaks that we have had in the past.  Gone are the days when I used to enjoy getting lost in a city maze and walking my way back to something recognizable.  Things will have to be planned with busses, trains, taxis and resting stops.  I have even found that walking around a gallery is now something that needs to be thought about, and something that needs my shooting stick!

I do realize just how lucky I am that the embolism was discovered in time and that exhaustive and exhausting efforts are being made to treat me.  But it does not stop me feeling all the frustration that limitations on previous freedom impose.  Just like my car deprivation, so my personal movement deprivation prompts me to explore an area of essential self-reflection for survival.

-          Later that week –

Such is my indolence that weeks go by without my adding to my blog.  But today, today is going to be different.  Although this is being typed on my new computer and there is always a glitch or two before I understand what minor modifications are necessary for a new machine to fit into the old order!  Still, I am determined that this will be on the site today.  And I am further determined that I will get back into the routine of producing a daily blog.

What, you might well ask, am I doing rather than typing?  Well, the gruesome answer is that I am reading The Guardian.  The adjective is appropriate because I am becoming ever more depressed to find that my wishy-washy liberal (with a small ‘l’) pseudo socialist ideals are more and more distanced with what I can se going on in my immediate neighbourhood and indeed in the wider world.

Spanish politics are depressing in the extreme. The so-called Spanish government is characterized by rampant corruption, ineptitude and arrogance in roughly equal measures.  Wait, no, that’s not right: first and foremost, our government is systemically corrupt and corrupting.  If you wish to join me in my depression just Google “Spanish Corruption” and see the wealth of gob-stoppingly astonishing information of what PP and its minority government get away with!

Turning to Britain is hardly a relief.  The full horror of Brexit is getting clearer by the day as the poleaxed government, sorry “minority government” of the “hostile environment” May prevaricates its way towards disaster.  The “Windrush” Scandal has left me with a deep sense of shame and the continuing revelations about the Home Office demean one of the great offices of state.  I have no wish to be associated with such small-minded viciousness or the callous practioners who have engineered it.  And, yes May, I am referring to you and your disgraceful tenure at the Home Office / to say nothing of your awful premiership!

And then I turn to the United States of America - and I instantly look towards the Middle East for a more rational approach to political life!

Wherever I read in my Guardian, it merely fuels my frustration of a right thinking (in a left-wing sort of way) decent person whose reasonable view of the world seems to be at variance with the voting majority.  

 I know it is easy to turn to the plays of Ibsen and take Dr Stockman’s cry in “Enemy of the People” of “The majority is always wrong!” and feel justified in loneliness, but that is not enough.  Everywhere I look people seem to be willingly joining in a global danse macabre towards oblivion in which the dance steps seem to be way outside the normal rules of rhythmic movement!   

Facts now are more than elastic, and prejudice has become the new reality – or perhaps it always was the generally accepted reality, it is only now that supposedly intelligent organs of the establishment rise above factual refutation and demand that their prejudiced views become the accepted norm.  And yes, Donald Trump, I am referring to you.

Perhaps some of my misery is parasitic on the fact that my next ‘control’ is in five days’ time, with the same combination of injections and pills leading up to it.  It seems to me that my medics are no nearer to finding a workable system of user-friendly medication than they were months ago.  However, I live in hope that one day I will be presented with a sheet which covers a whole month of settled medication, rather than the few days at present!

The next control clashes with my Spanish lesson, and I have missed too many classes already to be jocose with missing more.

On the positive side: typing with my new laptop is a delight, and it makes me happy.  And that is a good thing.  And I have bought a new case for it.  And that makes me happy too.  Who truly worries about world destruction and the decimation of my pension through the devaluation of the pound when gadgets and their care can deflect a susceptible mind!