General Chat

Hi Gail, thanks for the card and four leaved clovers, what a good idea. Going to keep mine in my hand bag. xxx

Well,no,I'm not brave at all.Having read Dee's thread about looking after her dad in his last days I think you must imagine that is how it is for me.Well it is not.

Carers come in to get himup in the morning,while I am still in bed.They make his breakfast while he is in his manual chair,otherwise he warms up the milk himself and pours it on his Reddy Brek,unless they want to spoil him.

I come downstairs later to get my breakfast and poke about downstairs.He will do the washing up,I put it away.Then I go upstairs and leave him to make his own sanwich for lunch.He puts the washing on too.
Twice a month he goes out shopping with Ken on the mini-bus.Getting Ken down here to help with the seat is the hardest part for me.
Every Wednesday I do the shopping and Ken has the day with him.He goes out in the electric wheelchair and Ken rides the bicycle,or poor Ken has to push him at the moment.
Thursdays I take his brother to the leg clinic so he is alone for a couple of hours.It seems like he will be out to lunch once a month now too.

Friday morning he has a neighbour and his brother in for tea and biscuits,he makes the pot of tea.

Saturday poor old Ken takes him out again.
The carers come in at lunchtime to put him on the commode if he wants it and they come in at night to put him to bed.
Now,where is the brave bit?

Sharron, you seem to approach it all so light-heartedly,that's why I find you do brave. I only wish I could have been like that with my aunty.Am afraid that she felt my stress, and it was terrible, I would have loved to be a different type of person, but am not. Maybe, if we had lived in the UK, it would have been different, aunty could have had more contact with her so-called carers, they would have at least spoken the same language. As it was, she was sooo alone, they didn't understand what she was saying. Horrible!

Eileen xx

I am going to hospital on Friday for a Cystoscopy(camera into the bladder) then next week going for a Intro Venous Urogram.i have had water infections for 2 months which antibiotics are not clearing up. They have found out I have stones in my right kidney and a cyst.Has anyone else had these test's done and what are they like
judith.

I haven't Judith but I am sure somebody has, if not on here then on the rest of the gen board. good luck with the tests anyway.

Ann
Glos

Evening everyone,
Especially to YorkshireCaz ,
I hope you are feeling a little better,I think about you often..Love and a special cuddle from Christine xx

Eileen I also am not a strong person. At 76 my mother is stronger than me! You do not need to carry the blame for your treasured aunts passing. She was lucky to be loved by you, and taken care of while you could. She knew that. xxx Good luck for tomorrow xx

Maxy Mary is 21 tomorrow please see the post for her birthday xx

Just quickly popped on to say hi for today. Have nasty storms around so will be turning puter off for rest of the day.

Good luck for today Caz, will be thinking of you.

Happy birthday also to Mary.

love and hugs to all

Gail

Morning all,

Happy birthday Mary, have posted on the other thread, but you can never receive enough good wishes.

Caz, good luck for today, hope it goes well, that the docs. can sort things out at last.

Carole, thank you once again, also for your e-mails.

14.00 is only 5 hours away.....

Eileen. xx

I'm back, got home for 9 o'clock so it wasn't bad, only 15 minutes in the 'thing' but still nearly panicked. It was my oncologist who asked for me to be put in quickly, that means I might be ending up with radiotherapy, or whatever it's called. I took Tinkerbell and my four leaved clover with me for luck, I am quite attached to Tinky already Carole and she will go everywhere with me from now on, as will my clover, I'm so lucky thank you girls.

Will be thinking of you this afternoon Eileen, good luck.
Christine I haven''t heard from you for a while, are you alright, let me know, and thanks for your cuddle.

Mary, Happy birthday, I added on the other thread but as already said you can't have too many.

Hello and welcome Judith, I haven't had any of those tests but I am sure someone will come on to help you.
I am going to bed now as my back is killing me, could hardly walk from the car to front door.

Love and hugs to all
Caz xx

Caz, glad you got that ordeal over.

Mary, again have a wonderful birthday.

Hope everyone is in good spirits today.

love
ann
Glos

Judith sorry I missed you there. I haven't had any of those tests. My friend had the bladder one years ago. A student was in with her, and the nurse was explaining everything!! She pointed out my friends nice clitoris, and told the student how in older women it wasn't so prominent! So now I know my friend had a nice one years ago!! Good luck with your tests, hope they are not as bad as you are expecting xx

Gail I saw you showing off on Marys birthday thread! xx c&p ing what next!!

Caz glad you didn't have to hang about too long. Hope the results are not too long in coming, then you can start any treatment you may need. xx

Eileen once again remember you have a whole lot of friends rooting for you today. We have nothing on today (yes we are dressed, cheeky) so can all come and sit with you until it's time for you to go into your appointment. We will be there to support you as soon as you come out!
Good luck xxx

Betty hope things are improving there. I miss your Irish accent!! xx

Y/Caz

Glad the tests were quick and you werent too long in the thing .If it was me they would have to hit me over the head with a hammer before I could go through a scannner !!! Hope your results are good and they are able to sort out your medication.

Mary Happy Birthday xxxx

Don't think there can be many people left in oz as they are all over here doing their family history !! or it seems that way when I go to work each friday .

Hang in there Liz !! Jusr imagine a finished bathroom maybe by 2015 !!!!!

I am waiting for my hairdresser to arrive to get rid of all my grey .She is now 35 mins late !!! She has been known to forget so I will just have to hope her memory is better today .

Not easy looking after elderly parents .My mum gave up after dad died then she got dymensia and very stubborn .She was also very unsteady on her feet .She was a danger to herself leaving the gas unlit etc so in the end she went into a home ( her choice ) .She hated it and fought with every one .It did have funny moments like watching her and another lady at logger heads with their zimmer frames in the corridor .Neither would move to let the other pass!!! Staff had to go and seperate them .She also had a thing about the chairs in the common room they had to be in a semi circle .One of the men insisted in putting them in a straight line so that kept the pair of them busy most days re arranging the chairs !!!!

Still no hair dresser and that is 45 minutes will go and phone her .

Love to you all

Kathy xxx

My cousin lives in Spain and recently sent this
I thought it might give you all a laugh



Latest on my Back problem

Despite knowing my back is the problem, under the Spanish system, I still had a colonoscopy recently, if you have not had one the following story describes it admirably:
Paco phoned HO hospital , to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office he showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Almeria.

Then Paco explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!'

I left Paco's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of CRA's enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.
Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken soup, which is basically water, only with less flavor. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons.)

Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because the MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose watery bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but:
Have you ever seen a space shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep
experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the bog pan had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything.

And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep. The next morning my wife drove me to Hospital . I was very nervous. (and that was just her driving) Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on the nurses?

How do you apologise to them for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.


At the hospital I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Rosita put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Rosita was very good, and I was already lying down. Rosita also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this is, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Rosita wheeled me into the procedure room, where
the specialist was waiting with a nurse, I bravely declined the anesthetic.. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point. The doctor had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' has to be the least appropriate.

'You want me to turn it up?' said the Doctor, from somewhere behind me.

'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a year. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

Alleluyah! Have had a call from wheelchair engineers to say they have the parts in and are coming for the chair tomorrow.

One of the old man's previous escapades was to ship in a batty old woman. We had always known Ellen.She had been a very smart woman.Her husband died at about the same time as my mother died.She needed looking after and he needed somebody to do that for.So in she came.

Her home was down the road and dementia patients walk.It was up and down that road after her all the time.Things from our home would go to hers and vice-versa.My credit card disappeared once and her marriage certificate turned up.The credit card was finally unearthed down the back of the stove.

Her daughter was abroad with her husband's work when they first got together.Ellen told her on the phone that she now had a boyfriend in his early fifties (80 at the time) who came from the next village and she could not remember his name.

Really,this stroke is one of the easier things he has landed on me.

It really makes the trouble I gave them in my teens seem worthwhile!

Hi

I am doing well at the minute. I will be doing more computer work with my job.

This is a good thread to rant about OCD and doubtings and such. I am glad that I sorted out that Roberts success, laid it to rest and I proved beyond doubt that he was the genetic father of Mary AK Roberts. I dont need DNA at all. The length of his wifes illness and her dying well into his fiances pregnancy proves it.

That is why I get so much joy out of these family history successes.

Ben

My thankst those who whised me wel today, especially Carole (tinkerbell). I appreciate it xxxxxxxx

Am back from that 'interview', and am listening to my all-time favourite, Luke Kelly, who performed over here in Holland often, and often In Ireland.We were lucky to meet him there. Am feeling sad and upset after this afternoon. Hope my daugher mails me about tomorrow.Don't want to climb those dangerous stairs, carry those little ones down...

Eileen x

Oh Claddagh,I listen to Derek McCormack all the time,it keeps me sane.No,perhaps not sane but containable. A bit of Ronnie Drew works wonders too,and Paddy Reilly.

Isn't it odd how a voice can touch you in places nothing else can?

eileen, pleased that you have got the dreaded interview over but I am concerned that you are feeling sad and upset, can you not 'talk' to your friend. it sounds as if you need to talk.

Carole, is there more to come? it had me chuckling although i doubt it would if I were the 'victim'.

ann
glos

Thanks to all of you who have wished me well today.It has been a really bad day.
Sharron.You have made me cry harder than I have dione in ages,, because of john McCormack's version of Kalhleen Marourneen, something I haven't listened to in yonks., but mostly because of Luke Kelly's 'Unquiet Grave', and 'Song for Ireland, The night visiting song' These songs make me feel soooo helpless and low, but also happy, in a strange way.Sharron, I am soo pleased that you know how I feel, partly. xx

Eileen xx