C’m On – Let’s Admit It At Last…!

The other day I indicated that i was convinced that the way to get shot of my weakling body and wobbly legs, was simply a matter of pushing myself into greater bodily effort.  I’d been listening to too many wise heads and – “taking it easy”- so I told myself…

But, recently, I picked up a repeat prescription for the steroids I have been swallowing for the last nine months.  This time, I took the trouble to read the pamphlet that came with them. 

Guess what?  It seems that the side effects stemming from the intake of steroids are exactly those that I had been thinking were the result of my taking it too easy:  muscle, cartilage, bone weakness, amongst lots of other things. 

 It seems that these particular steroids have a general debilitating effect one one’s bodily functions and the general idea is for the doctor to slowly wean his patient off them.  So what I have been struggling against all these months is not the disease so much as the cure…!

Too be fair to my doctor, she is under the instruction of my medical specialist and it was only a couple of weeks ago that I mentioned to the specialist that I had seemed to have been on steroids an inordinately long time.  He agreed and told me to cut down immediately to two tablets.  He would also send a report regarding this instruction to my doctor.

This week I am down to one tablet, and this is the week when I choose to read about the tablets I was taking…!

Well, at the end of these few steroids, I have to stop altogether.  I guess, then, it will be a wait and see matter as to whether we “get back to normal”.

But, will it turn out that I have to “C’m on and admit it, at last” – the fact that I am eighty years of age, and an old man?  And I shouldn’t be expecting to be able to dance around like an Olympic athlete.  Although, come to think, what about these old geezers who, annually, run the London Marathon.  Some of them are well into their seventies and eighties.

So maybe there’s a chance for me yet…!

Well, we’ll see…

Depression Looms…!

I have spent quite a few weeks uploading to the Flickr website over a hundred pictures, taken when my son and I took a trip around the Mid-West of America.  It was great taking in the amazing vistas of cowboy country…   It was great just being there where so much of American history was made!

I have never forgotten that trip, and I carry around in my head experiences that could never be reproduced on a photograph.  Nevertheless, it was the constant viewing of the pictures, as I uploaded them, that has caused the inevitable depression that I knew would be overtaking me, sooner or later…

You see, even though I have been out of hospital for over six months, now, and awaiting what I thought would be a slow – but sure – improvement in health, and a drift back to my normal activities, the improvement hasn’t materialised – well, not drastically, anyway.

Much as I try – with workouts in the mornings, and forcing my wobbly limbs to try to accomplish what used to be easy achievements around the garden, those same wobbly limbs don’t seem to be getting any stronger. 

Mind you, I’m approaching eighty years of age, which could have something to do with the wobbliness…

But whether all this comes of a lack of sustained effort over long periods – (because of my breathing, which has been pruned back by Pulmonary Fibrosis) – I don’t know.  But I think, in all probability, it has quite a lot to do with my present bodily state…! 

And it is a state that, in no way, will be able to emulate the activities I was able to accomplish during our US saga – according to the pictures I have been looking at the last few days.  That is, unless I find a way to get over my present bodily incapacities.  And as I have commented before: you need a blast of plentiful air to fire up bodily activity!

But it occurs to me that if I ignore the “blast of air” theory and just get on with the required activity, then the slight mental panic - engendered as a result of heavy breathing at the slightest movement - could be flicked into the background and a successful achievement of the desired action be produced –  even though some panting ensues afterwards.  And, as time goes by, and as further activity becomes the norm, maybe the panting will become less.  Who knows?

Any medics out there who might go along with me on that particular theory?

Well, I’m going to try it out, anyway.  There’s a piece of fencing in the back-garden that needs repair, so that’s one bit of activity that is going to be tried out in the next hour or two…

Catch you later…

In The Good Ol’ Summer Time

Anybody remember this title?  It’s a song that stays buried way back in this old ‘un’s memory – so far back that the title is all I can remember; The rest of the words faded long ago…

But what I do remember are the the good old summertimes of my youth, when we could guarantee idyllicly warm – even hot – days and beautiful blue skies that went on and on from May ’til September.  And they were summers that were so constant that all the factories and offices closed down in July or August for the summer holidays.

Mind you, that was in the days of unpaid summer breaks when working-class folk took the family away for a week at the seaside – a break for which they had saved their pennies the whole year round.  And every Dad - clothed in a flat cap, collar and tie, jacket, rolled-up trousers, and minus shoes and socks - took his ritual paddle in the gentle, foaming surf as it lapped over golden sand.

But these were old-time family scenes that tend to be shown on television when a TV programme recalls Dear Old Industialised England in the depressed Twenties and Thirties.  The theme of such programmes is usually to compare these old times with more affluent modern days as folk fly off on their foreign holidays to enjoy a couple of weeks in constant, blazing sun.

As a matter of fact, since my Dad and Mom and my sister lived in those pre-war days of struggling poverty, I never saw the sea until I was fifteen when I decided to bike it to Rhyl, in north Wales – about the nearest seaside place to Birmingham, where I live. 

So my dad bought me a second-hand bicycle and I had a few “training” rides around the outskirts of Birmingham – just to get me into some kind of physical condition for my forthcoming epic effort…

A couple of weeks later I started out.  It was 109 miles to Rhyl.  It took eleven hours to get there and – boy! – it sure was a push getting there…

And as I dismounted and trundled my bike along the promenade, I was never so disappointed in my life! 

The sea was a murky grey colour… 

When, in the past, I longingly glossed over picture books of the seaside, the sea was always blue! 

It took me a couple of hours to work out that the sea reflected the colour of the sky, and picture books always illustrated lovely sunny days, with blue sky and blue sea, and golden beaches.  Unfortunately, the day I arrived in Rhyl, the weather was threatening, with glowering dark clouds and a hint of rain in the air – hence the disappointingly grey ocean.

But it all came together the next morning, after I had settled myself into my smart, little bed-and-breakfast cottage.  I awoke to a brilliant summer day.  And the sunlit, blue sky was reflected onto an inviting, gently undulating blue, blue sea…

But why am I going on about summertime?

It’s because – like many others of this world’s population - I’m beginning to wonder what mankind is doing to produce the kind of weather we are now experiencing.  

Whilst the scientists argue among themselves about the cause of it all - and what’s to do about it - it seems we are becoming subject to massive downpourings of the cats and dogs variety.  And here we are again – in dear old England – calling out the emergency services to help us mop up the floods that seem to be becoming an annual event in various parts of our green and pleasant land…

And it doesn’t seem to be confined to rainy September, either.  No.  Floods seem to be coming Spring, Summer, Autumn and – no doubt before long, – Winter!

Not that I am not aware that, even as I write, there are countries going through a lot worse than we are in England. 

So far, here in the Midlands, some of us have escaped unscathed.  But I note that, this time, Birmingham folk are baling out their homes only a couple of miles away from here…

Lord help us!  I hope Mother Nature doesn’t intend to make any further advances in this direction…!!!

And Lord help those poor folk across the world whose lives – in every sense – are being swept away by these (natural?) (man-made?) phenomenon, at present making the existence of so many of the world’s inhabitants so completely and utterly miserable.