Being rather than succeeding?

 

 

A most unsatisfactory swim today.  Not entirely my fault, because whatever Toni had yesterday that made him a little hors de combat, struck me as soon as I got up.  A slightly otherworldly feeling and a distinct disinclination to go through the necessary processes to get me to the pool for opening time.

     At first I though it could be a case of ‘sympathetic panic’ at the onset of the new school term.  Although VERY happily retired, I do share a sort of hysterical malaise at this time of the year.  Usually it passes, almost at the same time as I see active teachers going through the doors of their respective schools, but this feeling of being down took me into the morning darkness and towards my trusty bike.

     It only took a few metres, experiencing that sickening bumpiness on the back wheel, to realise that something was wrong.  A flat tyre.  And not on the front where it is easy to take the wheel off and get it repaired, but on the back wheel that has the gears and all sorts of other things that I do not mess about with.

     So, back home and putting the bike back under the tarp and going over to the car to get to the pool.  Even if not entirely well, I have a built-in rugged determination to have my daily swim!

     Which I did.  In a desultory and unconvincing way, with my even swimming extended periods of breaststroke, which is not a good sign for me as a dyed in the wool crawl swimmer.  I did do my time, if not the full number of lengths, but honour was satisfied and I drove home.  And promptly felt worse.

     Whenever I feel under the weather (giving it is glorious sunshine who isn’t under?) I take to my bed.  And I get better.  It never fails to enrage Toni, who has a much more expansive attitude to illness than I, as a few hours prone usually does the trick for me.

     As it has done this time too.  I can’t pretend that I feel 100%, but I feel more than prepared to take on the normal stresses of life without whimpering for pity.

     As is also normal during these times of unwellness, I have little to no appetite, though even as I type those words, the ‘concept’ of food is appealing, which is only one step behind getting something to satisfy what should be a growing hunger. 

     Time will tell.

 

The start of the month also opens the way for the medical establishment of Catalonia to attend to my clinical needs.  There has been something of a hiatus during the summer, but now that the first of September has come and gone, there is a feeling of ‘let’s get going’ that seems to jolly up the whole country.  I am, of course, hoping that this positive attitude will be part of my treatment in the coming months.

     The first hospital appointment I have is a scheduled one (on a rough annual basis) that is more to do with my proving to the doctors that I am alive than having anything done to me.  I will go and have my appointment (usually with a doctor coming to the end of his employment) who will look at me, voice a few platitudes and then say, “See you next year!”  With any luck.  Though he will probably have retired by the time I go back.

     The more important appointment comes next month when I will see the fabled traumatologist for the first time.   

     I am building up a truly absurd amount of hope linked to this appointment.  I know that my knees are a lost cause and that for them to be made workable, an orthopaedic surgeon will have to take hammer and chisel to them and sculpt something artificial to take the place of the bone rubbing on bone that is my present case.  

      I am also more than well aware that such ‘routine’ operations are way down the pecking order to be completed, given the pressures that have been placed on the health service by the pandemic and other financial restraints.  I also realize that the likely waiting time for the first of the two operations that I need will likely be at least eighteen months or two years away at very best.  And that, is a daunting thought, to put it mildly.

     I understand that there are stop-gap measures of injecting something (any bloody thing!) into the space where there should be a membrane separating the end of the bone, that could give relief for a month at worst and months at best.

     At the moment I am not even near being put on a waiting list, so I am looking at getting my first operation in my mid-70s!  At which point I can hear a whole chorus of younger and needier people chanting, “Let him hobble!”  And one does have some sympathy.  But that is in the abstract, and the pain in my knees is in the very real and so I hope that Something Can Be Done.

     The Opera Season will just have started before that first appointment.  I wish I could find something apposite to say about arthrosis-ridden knees and Don Pasquale (the first opera of the season) but, apart from ridiculing old age, I can think of nothing! 

     At least Donizetti’s music is lively and that should buoy up my mood!

 

Pushing the boundaries again!

 

 

 

The graph of the usefulness of my knees would look like the inside of a shark’s mouth as the pointed tips of relative pain-free mobility are swamped by the depths of gum deep shitiness.  A rather laboured simile to emphasise that the utility of my knees as working points of articulation in the furtherance of locomotion, is basically low.  I find that I am limiting the length of my walking more and more, and the little that I do is with the aid of a stick.

     Which leads to the question of what I am going to have to do about it.  The obvious solution is to get new kneecaps but, with the backlog of clinical cases given the underfunding of the health service and the horrific demands of Covid something being done in the immediate future seems remote.

     When I finally went to the doctor after the periods of lockdown that we suffered, I was greeted by his saying that the x-rays that he had looked at giving a graphic picture of the state of my knees were among the worst that he had seen.  Nice to see you again too!

     Various (legal!) subterfuges were used to get me on to some sort of list to be seen and I was eventually told that my first visit to a traumatologist would be almost a year in the future!

     To cut a long story short, that “year” is now almost up, and in October I will have my first face-to-face meeting with someone who has the power to do something radical to reduce the pain and to make me fully (?) mobile again.

     Because the state of my knees is so variable, I have, over the last number of months resorted to crutches, sticks, pain killers and highly expensive off-the-shelf powders to bring some sort of relief.  In so far as I am no longer using crutches to move about, I would have to admit that I have made progress.  In so far as I am still in pain and can walk only limited distances, there is much further to go.  So to speak!

     Things were brought to some sort of head when we accompanied my cousin and friend to Sitges for a meal in a restaurant that is situated over the shallows of the sea.  And you can see real fish!

     Our usual parking place in Sitges is far too far for me to walk to get to the sea and so we decided to use the car park under an hotel on the sea front, thereby giving me a fairly flat walk to the restaurant.

     It took me the best part of a week to recover from the walking that I had to do – and the meal was ordinary, over-priced and badly served!  Something had to be done.

     The solution, of sorts involved buying something.  As I am never averse to spending money, especially on gadgets, I was all-in for Toni’s suggestion that the answer may be the purchase of an electric scooter.

     I am well aware that the average age of an electric scooter user is a mere 25% of mine – or less – but I am inured to expressions that look askance at me and what I am doing, so that the only question that arose in my mind was would I be able to balance on it.  And more pressingly, would it fit in the back of the car, as I had absolutely no intention of making it my prime mode of urban transport.

     A further energy depleting walk, and I was ready to buy.

     Although I am given (wholeheartedly) to the concept of the ‘impulse buy’ which my support of various good (and not so good) purchases from sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo can vividly demonstrate, I had to be somewhat circumspect about this purchase as it had to take account of my weight and height and also be something that was not dependent on being sent back to China in case something went wrong.

     Eventually, after yet another bad experience of overestimating how far I could walk, I bought one and awaited its arrival.

     It arrived (via Amazon) very quickly and it was waiting to be unboxed after I returned from my morning swim.

     The amount of construction involved in its formulation was minimal – four screws to keep the handlebars on the stem – but, without Toni it would have been, for me, insurmountable.  Three of the screws went in.  Eventually.  But one was stubborn and now matter how I (or indeed Toni) tried, it would not ‘go home’.

     Far from being downcast (as I was) Toni was jubilant, as this particular problem gave him the opportunity to try out something that he had bought because, “It would come in useful” – a screw thread re-doer.  The thread was re-done and it worked perfectly.

     The machine was charged up and all it then needed was for me to use it.

     At this point, I should point out that I did indeed own a mechanical scooter when I was a single digit child, but I had not tried one since that time.  Over sixty (60) years previously!

     It was therefore with some considerable trepidation that I ventured out onto the road and put foot to platen and pushed myself off.

     While I would not describe myself as a confident, or indeed competent, rider of the scooter, I did not fall off and I managed to return to the house after a trip of a couple of kilometres, with machine and myself undamaged.

     Result!

     The next thing to do is to try and fit it into the boot of the car and then to actually use the thing for the purpose for which it was bought.

     I am trepidatiously confident.

     Future blog entries should show whether such hope was justified or not!

Things change

 

 

I am not going to be coerced into making fatuous New Year Resolutions; I refuse to be dragooned into making a list of aspirations just because everyone else is doing it at the same time.

     Actually, I don’t think that many people actually do make such lists – they are more the preserve of desperate editors on the Today programme on Radio 4, looking for a cheap and easy vox pop to pad out some time.  As if the events of 2021 going into the equally bleak looking 2022 have any lack of ‘real’ news items to sober-up any English (remember all the other nations of the UK have imposed restrictions) revellers who might be thinking of a better way to be after the festivities on an untrammelled New Year’s Eve!

     So, I am merely going to knuckle down again to the task of writing.  I have been remiss for the past umpteen days and, while it is easy to put such indolence down to ‘Christmas Preparations’ it would be a ludicrous overstatement of the amount of time that we actually spent on thinking about the 25^th.

 

     My card writing is now consigned to a single Christmas donation to Oxfam, and Christmas presents are strictly Catalan Family, and usually proscribed by family members in advance, to make things easier.  Food is catered for by a restaurant meal.  All one has to do is turn up.

     Unless, that is, after the traditional Christmas Eve giving of presents (shat out of a log) [it’s a Catalan thing] and returning home to sleep before the Christmas Meal, you happen to have an email on Christmas Day informing you that a swimming friend with whom you had a cup of tea a few days previously had tested positive for Covid.

     Everything changed.

     I was still within the four-day period after ‘last contact with the positive subject’ and so I had to isolate myself.  The test I took was negative, but I would need to take another on the Monday after Christmas to make sure that I was securely negative.

     I therefore I had a solitary Christmas Meal, and I was similarly alone for my Saint’s Day - Boxing Day or Saint Stephen’s Day.  In Catalonia a Name Day is more of a deal than in the UK (where the concept doesn’t really exist) as it usually involves a special meal and presents.

     Before any sympathy is wasted on poor little me, I might point out that I was able to make myself a sumptuous and self-indulgent Christmas Feast and, anyway, I had books to read!

     My name day celebrations will probably be postponed until next weekend, when The Family will come down to Castelldefels and enjoy a walk along the beach.

     A walk, I imagine that will be seen as something as a luxury in the coming days and weeks, when the Super Spreader Events that characterize national fiestas nowadays will inevitably result in a startling (though entirely predictable) increase in Covid infection – and the belated imposition of more stringent limitations on our freedom of movement.

     Admittedly, Catalonia has already imposed a curfew from 1am to 6am and has emphasised the social distance rules and strengthened the public association regulations, but I fear that, as is natural for politicians, it is too little too late. 

     Which makes the lack of action in England all the more startling and worrying. 

     The Tousled Thug who masquerades as Prime Minister has, yet again, abdicated his primary responsibility, which is striving to keep the people of the UK safe.  His ‘masterly inaction’ which in his sick mind he probably thinks is modelled on the behaviour of the late Queen Elizabeth, is rather more reminiscent of the appeasement of Chamberlain as he waves a little piece of paper with his interpretation of “The Science” to justify a cowardly ‘doing nothing’ to keep the semi-evolved dregs of the Conservative back benches quiescent.

     In one respect the woeful responses of our political masters have ‘worked’, in so far as a reasonable number of people to whom I have spoken have a sort of fatalistic acceptance that, “We’re all bound to get Covid at some time or other” which means that more and more people have bought-into the ‘herd immunity’ approach to pandemic management, with a shoulder-shrug to the consequent deaths that this acceptance must entail.

 

As the more observant reader will have noticed, there is a sort of ‘wasn’t that in the past’ sort of vibe about the previous writing.  Which is fair, as it was written a week ago.  Or more.

     In the meantime, I have tested negative again and life of sorts can resume.  Except.

     There is always an except.  My questionable knees have now decided to make a statement about their physical well-being and have opted for the ‘pain and discomfort’ way forwards.

     In what has been a remarkably limited number of days, my right knee has gone from ‘something ought to be done soon’ to ‘basically, not working’.  This has meant that my progress up, down, and along is now only possible with the ostentatious use of Toni’s crutches (a bargain, 12 euros on the internet).  And our house is composed almost entirely of stairs.  Or at least it seems that way to me as I tap and hobble my way around with a complete lack of grace and agility.

     In less than a week we have gone from the ‘something ought to be done’ to the ‘something has to be done – now!’ in a matter of days.  In the middle of a pandemic.

     I do have an appointment for ‘rehabilitation’ – but, at we don’t really know where my knees have been (so to speak) there is little for the medical staff to go on.  We are hoping that my obvious discomfort will prompt the people there to demand a scan, be appalled at what they see, and put me on a list for something.  Anything.  To make what is a fairly intolerable position slightly more acceptable.

     The waiting times for surgery that have been suggested to me, not necessarily from doctors, but from surprisingly well-informed casual acquaintances, has been at the far end of eight or nine months.  And I think, given the backlog thanks to Covid, that is a dewy-eyed optimistic prediction. 

     However.  At present, I have more pain than information, and I am looking forward to the Catalan health service coming forward, scalpel advanced, to my aid.  I have to say from previous experience with the medical services of this country, I have been more than impressed, and I will throw myself on their mercy – before I swallow whatever socialist principles are left to me and go private!

 

On the more positive side of life, the Family did come down to Castelldefels for my postponed Name Day and a good meal was had by all. 

     And it’s not raining. 

     One takes one’s positives where one finds them.

Speak out!

 

I think that Toni and I are both now officially addicts to Duolingo, the language learning app.  Not content with Italian and French as his chosen languages, he branched out today on a series of lessons in German.

     I am sticking, one might say severely sticking, to ‘only Spanish’ in an increasingly desperate attempt to get the rudiments of the language to stick, somewhere, in my brain.  Considering that I am a retired language teacher, English admittedly and usually Literature, but a language none the less, it is astonishing how little I have assimilated of either of the languages from the multitudes of native speakers who surround me.

     Don’t get me wrong.  I can find my way around and usually I am able to talk and bluff my way through most situations ranging from official business with the city hall and the notorious Iberian paper-pushers that inhabit them, to getting my car seen to by technicians who defiantly do not speak English.

     Still, my fluency in English is a constant accusation against my enforced Trappist approach to general conversation in Spanish.  Somehow or other Spanish is simply not ‘taking’ with me, and it is constantly frustrating.  There is only so much that a slight smile and a depreciating hand gesture can convey: communication needs words placed in a firm grammatical structure.  And that is something that I am still working on.

     Though, come to think of it, although I have been to Spanish (and indeed Catalan) lessons, there are still basic piece of linguistic information that slips through my brain with the accomplished ease of a Johnsonian lie.  I have not been truly serious about learning the language, and perhaps Duolingo is the sort of mechanical relentlessly repetitive emphasis on the essentials is the thing that I need to get me truly started (after all of my time in Catalonia) in acquiring proficiency in a foreign tongue.

     Both of us are well and truly caught up in the striving towards the next level and competing against named but unknown people arbitrarily placed with us in our respective leagues.

     Absurd that it might be, I was inordinately proud to have come first in the 'starting' Bronze league and to have been promoted to the Silver league where, coming in the top three I was then promoted to the Gold league.  Apart from being told that such progress is found in a fraction of the percentage of learners in the app there do not appear to be any tangible gains from such exertions, except for the kudos of being at the top.  But, by golly, Toni and I are putting in the lesson time to gain points so that we can stay in the upper reaches of our respective leagues.  So, however futile the status, there is a real gain in the amount of time put into the hard slog of repetitious learning.

     It is far too soon to know if we are going to keep the effort up.  But I have to admit that I have done more work on my Spanish over the past ten days that I have done in the past embarrassingly large number of months!

     We are both still very much in the present tense of our languages, and I like to think that I am capable of attempting past and future tenses in Spanish if the mood takes me, but there is a sort of grounded satisfaction in regressing to simplicity and convincing yourself that ‘this time things are being done thoroughly’ and ‘every little helps’ and ‘anything is better than nothing’ so that in Ruskin’s words I will be able to see whether my efforts are ‘availing to good’ – whatever that means

 

The Saga of The Christmas Meal continues, with The Family finding out that many of the suggestions that they have come up with are all fully booked!  To the surprise of no one.  However, in spite of it being late (far too late) to find anywhere decent, we (or rather they) have found a place which has dropped like Manna from Heaven, or via a cancellation and another venue has been found.

     This Wednesday, we two are going up to Terrassa to have a menu del dia to find out the worth of the place, but in late November, we do not have the luxury of being able to be picky about the place that we finally decide on.  And what can one really judge from a normal menu del dia compared with what they might offer for a significant meal like the Christmas Repast.  Still, I maintain my rigid optimism and look forward to being pleasantly surprised next week.

Next week is also my blood test as part of the preparatory work for Doing Something About My Knees.  I am not sure how much further forward knowing about the composition of my blood will advance repairing the bone of the knees, but I await medical enlightenment, that might come the week after next.

     Since Christmas is horrifyingly near, it is obvious that nothing of any import will happen until the New Year and my hobbling will have to suffice until more specific descriptions of what can be done and how long it might take.  Something, neither the waiting nor the actualité, that I consider with anything approaching equanimity.

     But, there again, all personal conflict has to be seen as grist to my literary mill.

     If nothing is done, I shall write.    

   And if something is done, I shall write.   

     Hardship is a double-edged sword to someone who writes!   

And I’m not sure that that image works.  And I do know that I don’t care.

Knees Up Mother Brown!

sticks,          

 

Well, I suppose it is something to be told that the x-rays of your knees are “the worst that I have seen” by your doctor, as the opening gambit in a conversation that stopped before the Pandemic made seeing actually speaking face to face with your doctor a thing of the past.  Welcome to the new future.

      

 

My knees have never really been my strong point and a few tumbles while dismounting from my bike, have made them a damn sight worse.

     I can walk unaided, but it is so much better with a stick – and my walking is strictly limited to that which is strictly necessary.  Which sometimes means that I don’t even reach the unambitious target (set by my smartwatch) of 3,000 steps a day.

     The process of my future care is now slotted into The System and that will grind its inexorable way forward, although given the pandemic, the number of untreated cases of wonky knees is probably in the tens of thousands, and the medical mills grind slow.

     My prescriptions have changed, but only to give me better pain killers, which the doctor has suggested I use with caution – which makes you wonder just what drug they are derived from!  I have done without pain killers up until now and I can stumble my way onwards without them.  Hopefully.

     A blood test has been set up for me and another appointment with the doctor to see exactly what is happening and then, who knows?

     There was a horror story of a guy in the UK who needed to have a back tooth taken out and who searched for an NHS dentist to do the job.  He couldn’t find one locally, and after some fifty phone calls to increasingly distant practitioners, he eventually found one who suggested that the earliest appointment he could have would be THREE YEARS DISTANT! 

     Perhaps this is one of those instant urban myths that flourish in straitened times, but I am sure that I read about it in the Guardian, and since I put all of my faith into the probity of that newspaper, it gives you a mighty pause for thought.

     I have to say that the medical treatment that I have had in Catalonia has been exemplary and my doctor has been essential to my well-being.  But there is only so much that a local health centre can do.  Operations on the knee are well outside their remit.

     It is at this point that I remember my father.  He too had problems with his knees, but his problems came after a career as a PE teacher and playing professional Rugby League.  I really have to hunt around to find reasons for my knee problems, and I don’t think that a few nasty tumbles from the bike explains everything.

     Dad was told that he would have to have an operation but, even in those days, there were waiting lists and he would have to go on being in pain, waiting for a bed to become available.

     In spite of his socialist beliefs, he eventually listened to his surgeon who told him, “If you have a private consultation with me, I will be able to recommend you to one of ‘my’ beds in the hospital and then the operation will be done on the National Health.”  My father paid the fifteen guineas for the consultation, with the surgeon, which was obviously just a form of words, he was given a bed and was operated on, basically by jumping the queue.  Dad was in pain, and he couldn’t walk.  The NHS should have been able to deal with his condition but, we do not live in an ideal world, and the fifteen guineas was money well spent.

     When I find out exactly what is wrong with my ‘disaster area’ knees and what the specialist suggests needs to be done about them, then I will have to look at the possibilities and what is going to work for me.

     So far, the Catalan health service has been brilliant and has fully justified my faith in it.  My knees might pose a problem that will need a little more than faith to sort them out.    We will see.