LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 19 – 3rd APRIL

I brush my teeth carefully and thoroughly each day and night.  With a damn sight more care than I have normally done, I might say.  I have a morbid (the right word I think) fear of getting toothache during lockdown.  Toothache is like headache – one of the debilitating, almost unbearable pains that can’t be ignored.  But, in these strange times, where would I go to have my teeth seen to? 

     When you hear of cancer treatment being delayed because of the medical demands of the virus, a mere toothache would appear to be of less than secondary importance.  Flossing has become a protection against the fear of future oral pain ignored!

     On one web site I saw warnings about those people in confinement being careful about how they approach any do-it-yourself projects suddenly started because of time on ones hands.  Home improvements always come at a cost and the number of accidents from the handling of unfamiliar tools, especially power tools, has ever been a significant way to injure yourself.  Now, the consequences of these accidents have very real costs in terms of the extra pressure on the health services and whether you would actually qualify for attention.

     I have no personal experience of what the medical services in Castelldefels are like at the moment and how those with chronic illnesses are being dealt with.  For example, my next scheduled appointment is in July in a local hospital and is part of the on-going treatment for my thrombosis and embolisms after a blood test in my local medical centre the week before.   

     I have been given no information about delay or cancellation, but I think it highly unlikely that the schedules that we sets six months ago are still going to be kept to.  Everything has changed, and my light touch supervision is more of a confirmation of progress rather than a necessary medical intervention – so my appointment is one that can easily be delayed.  It will be interesting to see exactly how our medical system copes, and I can take a reasonably disinterested view as my hospital visit is now more concerned with checking progress rather than active treatment.

     But one thing is certain; I have no wish to find out just how prepared our emergency services are to cope with any household domestic injuries or how medical centres and dentists are coping.  I want to live an uneventfully contained life in my home with occasional forays to the collective bins my only contact with the outside ‘outside’ world.

Last night I (and a quarter of a million others) watched a matinee performance of  ‘One man, two guvnors’ a reworking of the Goldoni original on the National Theatre Live Facebook site.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, but virtually every moment made me want to be in the audience seeing the performance live rather than looking at it on a computer screen!

     Filming ‘live’ plays produces an odd media type as its end result.  The actors have to play to a full theatre, so many of the exchanges between characters seem over emphatic; the actors are playing a ‘live’ real audience and we watchers are not part of that organic entity; this production had interaction between actors and audience which distanced we watchers even more; some of the stage business was complicated and could easily have gone wrong – all the things that make a live performance ‘dangerous’ were limited by our knowledge that this was a recorded performance.  The artificiality that we saw is something that I would have enthusiastically embraced if I had part of the actual audience.  But, I am grateful that I had an opportunity to see a performance that passed me by and I look forward to the other ‘performances’ over the next few Thursday evenings.

     Although I am grateful for the opportunity to see a much-appreciated performance, the lack of immediacy in a videoed version is more telling with theatre than it is for me with ballet or opera. 

     But, every little helps!

At least the sun came out today and I was able to ‘take’ it on the third floor terrace.   As the terrace is fairly sheltered, it lessened the effect of the breeze that would have made the sunbathing more gesture than pleasure – but for an hour or so I was able to laze around and think that summer was getting closer.

     Please!

The Doctor Calls

My daily cup of Earl Grey and my morning injection over, I have the rest of the day to consider and plan.

I have found that, much like my time in hospital, meals now occupy much of my thought and structure my day.  Toni is discovering new skills as he produces the low fat and salt-free meals that I am supposed to eat, and I have to say that he is showing surprising aptitude in producing tasty food that I wolf down with alacrity.

Although I am eating healthily, my enforced lack of exercise does not allow my body to take full advantage of the calorie denial that it is going through.  I am hoping that, after another week, my ability to go for short walks will add at least some exercise to my sedentary existence at the moment and encourage my weight loss.

Perhaps the most significant event today will be A Visit By The Doctor.  The capitalisation is essential in this day and age when such a thing is not exactly the norm.  I seem to remember when a child and going through the usual round of illnesses that a doctor’s visit was a sort of physical affirmation of the medical rites of passage as measles and mumps and the like were ticked off the list!

I have made a list of questions for the doctor.  This approach is a direct result of my mother’s experience when she was ill.  She found that the Bedside Manner that some doctors had precluded significant questions and at the end of her time with them, she was able to recollect later that important points had not been covered.  Not one to suffer fools gladly (especially when she had been hoodwinked by technique) my mother wrote out what she wanted to know before hand and doggedly stuck to her points (rather than the doctor’s waffle) and sometimes cut through pleasantries to ask the next question!

One head teacher in my experience had the ‘deflection through mutual intellectual conversation’ down to a T, and I recall leaving his office with a smile of satisfaction on my face, but no extra money in the Faculty.  It’s a good trick if you can master it.

Anyway, thrombosis, embolism and dickey heart are not elements that are made better by ‘a smile of satisfaction’ but rather by concrete changes in attitude and life style.  I need to know exactly what I need to do to get back to where I was.  And indeed if it is possible to get there.  I need hard facts or clear details about what has happened to me and how I can change or work with what is going on with my body.

It is easy to feel positive because mine is a no obvious pain condition, but that in itself, is something that can be a false positive.  After the horror stories related to me by the doctor in the hospital of the fatal results of not following the guidelines for recuperation, I am satisfactorily unsettled.  I now need to know how to put that unease to good use so that I can progress to . . . to wherever I am reasonably able to go!  With Toni’s eagle eye watching for any tea-related backsliding, I have the incentive to extend this period of abstinence from my usual caffeine and fat related diet and make a steady improvement.  We shall see.

My poetry progresses slowly and haltingly.  Perhaps one of the reason for this is that, since I have returned from hospital, I have not been writing in my notebook each day.  My notebook is for ‘ideas’ that can be worked on later.  Usually I write in this after my swim and while I am having my cup of tea in the leisure centre café.  The ‘notes’ that I make are usually of a truly banal nature concerning the weather or some trivial details of my daily life, but the point of always keeping a notebook is that sometimes these quotidian remarks develop into something more significant, or, almost in spite of myself, I find a phrase or a sentence that prompts some other writing.

Another element, just at important as the creative, in my notebook is as a jolt or reminder of action that needs to be taken.  Sometimes I have gone as far as to write a signed and dated note to myself, agreeing (with myself) to get something done by a particular date!  Having written it down in a book, it is a constant reminder of those things that, in my case I have not done (and there is no health in me!) – ah, the cadences of the Book of Common Prayer are never too far from my way of expression!  And generally speaking they work, my little aide memoires.  Because when you really want to do what you have not done, all it takes is the slightest hint to actually get it started!

The doctor has called and my conversation with him was both better and worse than I expected.

He said that I can re-join the normal life of my fellow humans at the end of this week, when short walks and drives will be acceptable and I will be able to get out of the house for the first time.  Well, that’s not strictly true as the doctor arrived when Toni was scouring pharmacies to find more of the Clexana injections that I take.  Apparently these are in short supply, though god knows why as they seem to be the bog standard treatment for thinning the blood to treat thrombosis and embolism.

Anyway, the doctor said that they don’t really know why the thrombosis in my right leg formed and they were still studying the blood tests to see if there is anything that might give a clue.  They will also be checking my heart after the extra work that it had to do to cope with the thrombosis as that might be damaged as well.  The course of injections I am taking will last for six or twelve months, maybe longer.  Although there is a chance that I will fully recover, that chance is qualified by what may be found out further.  It may be that the damage to heart and lungs is permanent, but that is taking the most pessimistic view.  Which I, resoundingly, refuse to accept.  At least until further evidence to the contrary is shown.

I also asked about tea.  When I asked the doctor looked at me quizzically and said that I could drink tea.  I then pressed him by asking how many cups of tea I could drink.  To which his response was, “What sort of question is that?” to which I replied, “Yours is one only a foreigner would ask!”  At least he laughed and said, “I’m not going to worry about a cup of dirty water!”  Dirty water!  Only a lesser breed without the law would refer to Earl Grey as dirty water!

So, although I am going to be able to do the simple things in life a little earlier than I expected, the long-term problems are still to be discovered.  For example, when I asked about my present low far/no salt diet and how long it would last, the reply was, “For ever!”  Ah well!

My next doctor’s appointment is in three weeks time and then in March I have two tests back in the hospital to see what progress, if any, has been made.

At least I will be able to drive myself there!  I hope!

Four Days Later

It has now been four days since I returned from hospital to a more domestic setting.  And four days in which I have had to supress all my natural impulses, and try and learn to relax and rest and take it easy.

You might think that would be easy.  Just think of it as a ‘holiday at home’ with ‘butler’ service provided by my partner, I told myself.  Sit down in a comfortable (reclining) armchair, write, eat, watch television and allow the sun to warm the back of one's neck through the closed window.

It has been much, much harder than I thought it would be.  The basic problem is that my medical problem (thrombosis, pulmonic embolism etc.) while serious has no outward indication and, apart from a slight tightness across the chest, I actually feel fine.  But I’m not.  And I have to keep telling myself the same.

Walking up stairs is a problem.  Not because I can’t, but rather because I can too easily!  I have to tell myself to climb three steps and pause and the next three and pause and so on.  When I need something, it is an automatic response to get up and get it.  And if I do get up quickly, there is no stabbing pain or twinge to remind me I’m ill.  Presumably the only indication that I will get is when I drop dead!  However, let us not dramatize this too much.  I am feeling well, indeed very well, when you take the ‘waiting on’ that Toni is doing into account!

I keep telling myself that this enforced, unnatural tranquillity is only for a fortnight and then I can start taking little walks.  And I’m already 4/14ths of the way through!

Given what has happened to me over the past week or two, my view of life has (in the short term) changed somewhat – priorities change when a doctor explains the significance of my condition with horror stories in which some foolish patient ignored medical advice and went for a walk smoking a cigarette AND DIED!  Well, I don’t and have never smoked, but the import of the story is not lost on me!  Therefore, in the reworked version of my ‘way of life’ the two ‘luxury’ basic needs that I have are to drive the car and go for a swim.

I have been told that driving a car may be possible in ‘a couple of months’ – and there is nothing which defines captivity for a driver than lack of access to wheels.  The going for a swim is even more tenuous.  My usual daily total for my swim is 1,500m. crawl.  I have been told that in a month or so I might be able to complete four lengths in a slow breaststroke!  Now that is going to be difficult, the temptation to do more will be almost overwhelming – but the possible outcome of ignoring advice is, after all, terminal!  So I may well stay in line!

Although the last two weeks have been somewhat focussed on me and what is happening to me (at least to me and mine) the outside world has, allegedly been carrying on as if there were nothing wrong with me!

The travails of the Conservative (“Lower than vermin”) Party in Britain over Brexit would be laughable if it were not so important.  May is a disaster, but I am not sure what sort of leader would be able to take the terminally divided party forward.  And certainly looking at the dearth of talent on the ‘government’ side there is no one who immediately springs to mind as intellectually, politically or morally eminent enough to take the party out of the morass into which it has sunk.  I suppose that we, the people, are looking for a politician of the calibre of Sir Robert Peel who was prepared to split the Conservative (“Lower than vermin”) Party in the repeal of the Corn Laws because it was the right thing to do for the country above the needs of the party.

I think that even Peel (1788-1850) would be uncomfortable with the grotesque anachronism of Rees-Mogg, and the fact that this reactionary throwback is the most favoured candidate for the leadership of the Conservative (“Lower than vermin”) Party in the eyes of activists, is a crushing condemnation of the present positioning of a right-wing minority government that doesn’t seem to have any idea about what specifically it wants from one of the most significant episodes in the history of our country since the Second World War!

Meanwhile in Spain there seems to be a descent into the world of the comic, given the news that fills our television screens.  This infantile approach to government is not helped by the fact that the minister who is mostly in the news at the moment has both the name and the look of a cartoon character himself.  Señor Zoido (sic.) is the Minister for the Interior and is responsible for the present hysteria in Spain as the investiture of the next President of Catalonia approaches.

So far, in their frantic response to the independence issue in Catalonia, the Spanish government has dismissed the Catalan government; instituted direct rule from Madrid and imprisoned Catalan political leaders. 

The past President of Catalonia, Puigdemont went into exile in Belgium and in an embarrassing series of inept actions by the minority right-wing Spanish government they attempted to use Interpol and an International Arrest Warrant to get him extradited to Spain where he would have been arrested.  It was clear that the Belgian authorities regarded the warrant as baseless and the Spanish withdrew it before it was ignominiously rejected.  They are now paranoid that Puigdemont (the only candidate for the presidency) will somehow or other make it back to Barcelona for the investiture.

Zoido (sic.) has been poncing his rotund, porcine way across our TV screens preening himself on the risible (but expensive) and futile ways in which he has ordered the security of the frontiers.  To illustrate the security of our borders, on TV this morning one reporter drove from Spain to France and back again with no police or security at the border, illustrating the expensive waste this political propaganda continues to be.

Our glorious walking joke of a national president keeps himself out of the limelight – as he always does when anything difficult raises its head, pushing others into the firing line in order to save his own non-existent prestige.

To some extent, it is necessary for the minority right-wing national government to concentrate on Catalonia because, otherwise, it would have to focus on the number of PP corruption cases that are coming to judgement.  Bear in mind that literally hundreds of PP officials, ex ministers, workers, etc. are involved in billions of euros of corruption presently in the courts and you can see that any distraction from the systemic corruption of the party is a positive for them. 

I also fail to see why they worry.  No member of the government ever resigns, no matter how overwhelming the evidence of wrongdoing is.  Documents, film, tape recordings – no matter the evidence they ignore it all and hope that it all goes away.  And with the politicization of the judicial system in their favour, they have little really to worry about.  At the moment, however, some of the accused in the most notorious of the corruption cases are ‘singing’ and implicating all of our favourite villains in government.  

Even so, I do not hold out much hope for those thieving criminals to be behind bars any time soon.  After all, look at the thief that is the husband of the sister of the King.  He has been tried and found guilty; he has been given a seven-year prison sentence.  Is he in prison?  No, of course not, he is living in Switzerland and recently went on holiday to Rome.  As his philandering father-in-law once remarked on a television broadcast, “Justice is the same for everyone!”  Except of course for when it isn’t!

So, in spite of the fact that I am stuck in the house, my irritation and disgust reach out through this country and the United Kingdom.  It keeps me occupied!

Tomorrow is the Catalan investiture, so I expect Spanish hysteria to reach a point of melodramatic queenliness unparalleled in recent political history.  Each action they take against Catalonia merely serves to make them appear more ludicrous and less democratic.  

Bring it on!