My positivity cracked a bit today.

I was asked to transfer from the bed to the wheelchair and have it filmed so that the team in the Wellington would know what to expect when I got there ( perhaps this week )

Amber was here, so she filmed it for us – 12 year olds are pretty good with camera phones – better than their parents, for sure ( as a rule )

It takes 2 people just to sit me up in bed, as I have no ability to do that with the metal in my back not bending  …. at all.

Then the same two people have to pull and push me ( respectively ) from the bed to the chair, across a piece of plywood ( called a slide board )

Before I came here on August 23rd, I could do all of this myself without too much difficulty, and without the plywood. Now I can barely contribute, as without any abilitiy to bend, the physics of it just don’t work. In other words, I’m totally dependent currently on 2 people to get in or out of bed, or get dressed and undressed, and my physique has been totally ravaged.

I’d sort of accepted this status and not got down about it, but after Amber had left I watched the video and the reality of my situation sank in.

It sank in and swallowed me up altogether, and the tears flowed. It’s been a good while since I felt down at all, but suddenly all positivity left me, and I fell off the cliff again.

I had about an hour of solemnity, where I put the TV on loud to drown out my thoughts, and before my school friend, Lisa Jones, arrived.

We were in infants school together, in Griffithstown, a bloody long time ago, yet she has the compassion to drive the 3 -4 hours to visit  me,  over 40 years later.

To see what a Welsh girl brings a Welsh bloke as a  present, see the picture ..

Lisa is clever, kind and insightful, and not materialistic  in any way  – characteristics that are now so very important to me, more so than the trappings of wealth.

Amazingly just now, as I was writing this, another of our little class mates from that tiny school in South Wales, just phoned me . What are the chances of that  ? It was lovely to speak for half an hour to the lovely Sian Lewis, and to tell her that I’d just said goodbye to Lisa Jones

Also I should add that Micheal Jenkins from the same class, and for sure my oldest friend, was in London yesterday and due to call in, but his work meetings went on too long, and he had to catch the last ram back to Wales

So thats 4 of us from a class of 20, in 1971 that have been in touch in the space of 2 days .

I don’t know what to say really. Maybe it’s a Welsh thing?  I don’t know if the same compassion exists in the other home nations, to the same extent?

I’ll try to find a class picture of us all that I know I have somewhere, and post it. Both girls mentioned my 18th birthday toga party in Newport, which is probably memorable for all the wrong reasons , one of which is that there wasn’t a single punch thrown, by a lad or a girl…

Seeing Lisa soon brought me back up, and I’m positive once more . We went out and endured the cold wind, drank coffee  and talked non stop

I googled our little school, and there’s not a single picture on the web, of it. Hard to believe, that.

The weekends are definitely lonelier than the week days, so I don’t look forward to them.

But this one has been pretty good,  as far as they go .

So we know how to spell ‘ caj ‘ and then I get asked to spell ‘fabdabbydosey’

Well it’s not like that, that’s for sure.

See image:

Then I get ‘ A much better word is fandabadoobie from my mate, Mike

Mike, there is no such word as that!

Mr Lucas,

I’ve just had to perform my own bowel care in the bed, with a finger that can barely reach.
I was able to evacuate a fair amount.

The ‘ nurses’ refuse to help me, on the basis that they are not ‘trained ‘ to perform this function

It’s Saturday and there’s no one that will help until Monday.. it’s NOT ACCEPTABLE that it is this way.

********  came in, I’m covered in excrement, and she refused to help, said she’d go for gloves and then never even came back…

I said I would be going out ( as I have been with careful slide board transfer to chair ) and  ****** says there are no notes to support this, and I cannot leave.

What kind of farcical situation is this?

Now she has found some notes that say I can leave… after half an hour of looking.

Im really disappointed and unimpressed.

Comments?

Russ Dawkins

An email sent at 5pm, in response to a pretty shitty situation…literally. How can senior nursing staff refuse to help a patient in such a basic way?

Nevertheless, I refuse to entertain being depressed about it, and revisit The Shard, this time with Pia, such a loyal and devoted friend.

As it was a Saturday night, the place was packed ( if you visit The Shard, DO NOT go on the weekend, if you can avoid it…)

We do have 2 drinks, but the fancy restaurants are mobbed, so we decline and go elsewhere, at ground level ( and share a pizza and some champagne – which Pia insists upon buying – as a ‘ reward for surviving 4 huge operations, without losing heart, and to the contrary making a massive psychological shift to being happy ‘ )

Thank you to Pia for accompanying me on a night out.

Whilst at the top of the Shard, a Japanese lady walked behind me and definitely said ‘ motherfucker’ in the middle of a Japanese sentence.  I then heard her say it 3 more times!

Anybody know what mother****** means when said by a very civilised looking middle aged Japanese lady?

Its quite possible that she was talking about me, of course

Thank you to Debs, with whom I’ve never yet been to a tall building, but with whom I’d love to, and to Ed and Claire Foss, who’d stopped reading my diary when it looked like I was heading for suicide, and couldn’t bear the thought of that.

It was lovely to meet, and talk to their really mature, empathetic and clever daughter, Lottie.

Views from ground level, below:

Tower Bridge, City Hall, and the Tower of London, all strung together within a short space

A friend texted me and said she was going out for a cas dinner

I replied saying that I’d not  been to a restaurant called ‘cas’

She replied, saying that it’s means ‘ casual’

To me, that didn’t seem right to spell it that way, but neither did ‘ cash ‘ as that means something else, obviously.

So I googled it… and there’s a whole online debate about the spelling of a word that doesn’t have an obvious shortened version…. without there being a definitive answer …. but this seems to be the ‘ winner ‘,  although  that’s definitely a matter of opinion….

Caj

First, the abbreviation of a word should not be longer or more complex than the word itself. Second, it should embody something of the spirit of the word. Caj is simple, direct, and brief—Dress code: caj—but it also lends itself to languorous lengthening: The date was cajjjjjjjjjj. Thorny consonantal clusters (like in caszh and cajzh) don’t conjure the requisite frictionlessness and ease, whereas the J makes phonetic sense, has a storybook charm, and is distinctive. To be casual is to obey the rules when it suits you. To keep it loose, a little wild. That J—a little something different that nevertheless avoids fussy four-car pileups of letters—delights the eye without requiring you to dig around in alternate alphabets. (Also, fasten on a second J and the word evokes, logically, the rhyming hajj.)

—Katy Waldman, words correspondent

If you think that means I have too much time on my hands, then you may be correct. That’s what being in bed for 8 weeks does for you

But hey, I bet you lot didn’t know that, and now you do.

Ha!

Russ

I’ve spent all day doing ‘intellectual’ things.

Having ‘ come to my senses ‘ I’ve got involved in various friends ocular health / eyesight/ spectacle issues, all of which I’m  good at, once again.

I’ve  also got involved with my own career future too, which was being dictated by persons other than myself, and not in a way that is in my interests.

So, a friend’s mum’s  forthcoming cataract operation, a close friend’s varifocal problems, and the manner that she’s been dealt with by a practice, and my own career direction.

Ive dealt with an import issue, involving Customs and Excise, form filling in, and organisation.

These things hardly require me to be a genius, but my point is that for the last 3 years or so, I wouldn’t have been able to mentally process the sequence of steps required, I’d have ‘ bottled’ and not done it, or asked someone else to do it.

Now I ‘ am capable ‘ again,  which is a trait in me that I assume I had before, but I can’t remember for sure whether I was or not.

My buddy, Glenn, there at the road where I almost died of my terrible injuries, and there in the ambulance after I’d tried to end my life deliberately not long ago, visited yesterday and kept saying, over and over, that he couldn’t believe the positive changes in my mentality , my ‘re-birth’ being nothing skirt of miraculous, especially given the host of extra disabilities that I now have, post op’s.

He described the ever present sadness that he sensed just below the surface, one that I thought would never ever go away, condemning me to a life of coping with misery, or ending my own life suddenly and traumatically at any point.

Huge thanks to Kev and Jo Nielsen for doing something for me today, a thing that I don’t want to share just yet, but that is exciting.

They told me yesterday that I’ve got to not stress my metalwork for a year, which means no arm biking or sit skiing without total help doing so.

A year doesn’t matter to me, I’ve got plenty of things to do, all of a sudden.

Russ,

Truly happy that you that you have found your recipe for contentment and hoping that your outlook, passion, and drive will serve to motivate others that may need a dose of positivity! Miss seeing you!

K

Really good to see Jeremy Day and Ed Foss today.

Thanks both for calling in.

I did manage to sleep a bit during today, too, after the pain in my chair.

Tomorrow my daughters come home from Portugal, so I’ll see them soon, as well as a few visitors this weekend too, along with getting out again ( I hope ) without discomfort.

Thsnks to Emily for dropping by yesterday as well,  and for Neal’s offer to, today.

Today I had more in house psychology – Lisa is a very nice lady, and it’s good to just talk to her ( not that I ‘ need’ to , these days )

I’ve been here so long that it’s changed from summer to winter outside my window.

I used to like all seasons equally, never being bothered by the cold, and quite liking the rain. My philosophy was always ‘ you can’t change the weather, so just embrace it’ and I did, every time .

I actually don’t really like people going on about the weather, for the same reason – you/ man  can’t do anything about it, so be quiet  and talk about  altering something that you can change, instead.

So what do I do all day?  Well I’m on my phone an awful lot, communicating with other people, just as I was  3 years ago when I first  realised that I had had a shocking and life altering injury.

I know that mobile phones get a bad press, but I’d be stuffed without mine. I rarely use Facebook, even less Twitter and have never used Instagram ; instead I ‘ talk ‘ to people all the time

Its perhaps no coincidence that I still get so many visitors, having kept relationships alive throughout my long periods of depression and physical injuries, via my phone.

Ok, I have to try to sleep

when I’m in my chair, it’s not long before I’m pretty uncomfortable. 

Think I need painkillers again.

Neat  

Not allowed to post pictures of nurses, but this one is my guardian angel about 4 nights a week.

Her name begins  with an R.

The others are very nice too.