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Category Archives: health

Died In My Arms

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Posted by Rob in beer, death, drink, food, friends, health, pub

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

eating, food, health, life, musings, paramedic, pub, pulse, thoughts, unconscious, vaso-vagal

royal oakWe had dinner with a six friends from the wine circle at the Royal Oak in Aubourn on Saturday night.  After a fine repast, I was stuffed to the gunwales with piggely pie, loitering in the bar area, finishing my pint of Black Sheep best bitter.  Sid called out to me “Rob, help me”.  I turned to find him slumped backwards across bar and bar stool, looking decidedly dodgy.  I rushed to him and caught him as he began to slide to the floor.  His usually pink complexion had turned greenish grey, he was sweating profusely but felt cold, whilst losing consciousness.  Now I knew Sid was diabetic, so I guessed he was suffering a hypo, wrestled him back onto his stool and asked the barmaid to call an ambulance.  “Not nice but no cause for panic” thought I.  As an afterthought, I checked Sid’s pulse: nothing.  Checked the other wrist and carotid: still nothing.  Forget the “no need to panic” comment: Sid is dying.

I shouted Maeve and Elsie, Sid’s wife, over and we dragged Sid onto one of the padded bench seats.  Still no detectable pulse, but he was breathing and wandering in and out of consciousness.  So I called for quiet and listened to his chest.  His heart seemed to be thumping away at a reasonable pace: so why didn’t he have a pulse?  I no longer thought Sid was dying but I couldn’t make sense of the symptoms he presented.

Ten minutes later, Sid was waking up and regaining some colour, as the paramedic arrived.  She had him hooked up to ECG and tested for blood glucose (9.7 mmol/l) in minutes.  She gave us her diagnosis: Sid had suffered a vaso-vagal event.  The silly old sod had eaten and drunk so much as to put his guts into shock.  This had caused his body to divert virtually all blood circulation to his guts, accounting for his blanched complexion, undetectable pulse and loss of consciousness.  Given his diabetes and previous heart attack, she recommended that he be taken to Lincoln County Hospital for a thorough check-over, but he was not in any danger.  He was discharged at 01:00 next morning.

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Poverty Cooking

Featured

Posted by Rob in chicken, cooking, economics, Fish, fishing, food, health, poverty

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

children, economics, life, malnutrition, musings, poverty, rants, thoughts

mushy peasA saw an item in on a news magazine last night that made me wonder. They were discussing the resurgence of malnutrition as a problem in the North of England. One interviewee, a single mother of two, told how she sometimes went without food herself, in order to guarantee that her children were fed. I salute her dedication. But then she showed the meal she was making for them: chicken nuggets, tinned mushy peas, and frozen chips. Chicken breast, dried marrowfat peas and potatoes are significantly cheaper than the ingredients she chose (and probably healthier too). I’m guessing the reason behind her choice is that she can’t cook.
It is an absolute disgrace that folk should suffer such poverty in a country as rich as the U.K. I fully support the interviewee’s right to demand better.
There’s an old saw that says if you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day; if you give a man a fishing rod, he will eat for evermore. I wonder whether a few cooking lessons might ease the situation?

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Rip

07 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by Rob in accident, Competition, Fiction, health, Love, relationships, Sex, Uncategorized, virgin, Writing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

dating, life, love, sex, sex 2, virgin, writing

Couple SilhouetteMy third offering for The Inkwell’s Half-hour Challenge for January, against the theme “Bells”.

Gordon Besford carried his virginity like a millstone. The swinging sixties and sexual liberation were long ago and, at eighteen year of age, he felt cheated. His mates boasted of regular sexual encounters, though they were conspicuously short on detail. Meanwhile, all the women of his age that he knew gave the impression that they were virgins. Something didn’t add up.
His ex-girlfriends had been a big disappointment. Only Jennifer had even permitted him to play with her breasts and that was the absolute limit she set on their intimacy.
Sally was Gordon’s latest girlfriend of three months and, at long last, matters sexual seemed to be on the up. Gordon really liked Sally. She was pretty and sensible; displayed little of the childish regression that his previous girls had hidden behind. He genuinely enjoyed Sally’s company and conversation but, most of all, he lusted after her body.
Sally had initiated French kissing on their second date. He was thrilled and encouraged by this show of independence and reciprocated desire. Gordon felt that Sally would take him all the way, provided he let her set the pace. So he suppressed his urges and went with the flow.
After four weeks, their meetings settled into a pattern: they were together at her parents house most evenings, usually kicking around in the lounge or kitchen. But every Saturday night, her parents went to the local pub from eight to eleven, and Sally wasted no time in leading him to her bedroom.
He liked the way she gave him clear instruction as to which parts of her were on or off limits by guiding his hands, groaning with pleasure at his touch, but tapping his wrist if he wandered too far, as they kissed. Most of all he liked the way the on limit grew a little larger every Saturday night.
By Bonfire Night, they were both naked except for their knickers. Genitals were still out of bounds but Gordon felt things were moving apace and it was only a matter of time. On the second Saturday of December he decided, albeit with some trepidation, to try using Sally’s tactic, took her right hand from behind his neck and guided into his knickers. He expected resistance or, at the very least, some reciprocal trepidation on Sally’s part. Instead she eagerly sought out his erection, began to massage gently whilst purring in his ear, as though she had been waiting for the invitation. Gordon was so bowled over by this affirmation from Sally that he was moved to tears.
The following Saturday, Gordon could sense the impatience and expectation in the air as they waited for Sally’s parents to get ready and leave. The very moment the door clicked shut behind them, they dashed up the stairs, giggling with excitement and tearing off clothing on route. Gordon was slightly alarmed when Sally pushed him back on her bed, leapt on top of him, her hand immediately seeking his cock as she snogged him hungrily. Still she would not permit his hand inside her knickers but grunted and panted as he fiddled with her clit through the sodden cotton.
The fourth Saturday was Christmas Eve and her parents stayed in. Gordon couldn’t cope with being with Sally yet unable to play with her, so he went home early. They met again on Christmas day to exchange presents. As they parted, Sally whispered in Gordon’s ear “They’re going out tomorrow afternoon”.
Her parents had already left when she opened the door to him.
“Hello” he said.
“Fuck hello” she barked “get upstairs and get your knickers off!”
He obeyed at a gallop. This time, she too was naked as she jumped on top of him. Is today the day he wondered. But no, their activities were much the same as nine days previously, albeit with the added excitement of full nudity. He enjoyed what they did together and felt closer to Sally than ever before but still worried that she held so much in reserve and winced when he thought he still carried the label “virgin”. She recognised that he was brooding as they parted.
“You want to go all the way, don’t you?” she asked as she was dressing.
He was surprised at the question, first because of her directness but also because he thought the answer was obvious.
“Oh, yes Sally” he pleaded.
“Mum and Dad are going to a party on New Year’s Eve. We’ll do it then.”
“God, yes, do you mean it? Don’t tease me. Are you serious?”
“Yes, it’s time. I want you.”
The next five days dragged interminably. Gordon could not think of anything else but their planned sexual encounter. His excitement was palpable but also he was fearful. Could he perform to Sally’s satisfaction? Her confidence scared him. Was she really a virgin?
New Year’s Eve found Gordon in a state of acute agitation and near exhaustion. He’d spent the previous day and all night worrying about Sally and whether he would measure up to her expectations. He’d had no sleep and felt like he had a cold coming on. He spent the day trying to find something to distract him but nothing seemed to help. By the time he presented himself at Sally’s house at eight-thirty, he looked like death warmed over.
“God, what happened to you?” was Sally’s greeting.
“I’m just a bit tired” he replied.
“Do you still want to do it?”
“Yes, of course I do” he lied.
“Look, it’s no big deal. If you’re not feeling up to it, we can take it easy and try another time.”
“No, I really want you. Please don’t make me wait.”
“O.K. come on then.”
They stripped, she pushed him back onto her bed and they started kissing and heavy petting, as before. Gordon started to relax a little and enjoy the stimulation.
Sally broke off kissing and panted into his ear “I’ll go on top the first time”.
She straddled his hips and guided his penis to her vulva as she sat back. He felt her warm and wet against his throbbing penis. This is it he thought and his every muscle stiffened involuntarily in anticipation. He was trembling with excitement. She still held his shaft tightly in her hand and started to rock back and forth. He expected to slide into her but instead he felt his cock being crushed, harder and harder as she pushed down upon him. Sally grimaced with pain but kept to her task, pressing down harder whilst manoeuvring his cock with her hand. Still he felt he was not inside her and, worse still, because of the mauling his penis was taking, thought he could not avoid orgasm for much longer. Then, in an instant, he was inside her and coming, but also squealing and writhing in agony. Sally climbed off him and turned to inspect the damage. Gordon’s frenulum, the tie between foreskin and glans (bell-end) had ripped open and was oozing blood into the stream of semen flowing from the tip. Gordon sobbed.

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Smile

04 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by Rob in Competition, expression, Fiction, health, Uncategorized, Work, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

life, musings, rants, thoughts, writing

bells palsyMy submission to The Inkwell’s monthly half-hour challenge, on January’s theme “Bells”:

A smile or a grimace? Ted Jones isn’t renown for his happy disposition, yet he seems pleased to see us. “Who are you and what have you done with the real Ted?” I think, though I don’t dare say it. The last three times Claire and I came to the warehouse to deliver training, Ted had been conspicuous only by his growl and then his absence.
“Oh, it’s you pair of plonkers again, is it? Well, you’d better set up in the meeting room like last time and stay out of my way. Some of us have got work to do.” Ted’s disposition hasn’t changed to match his new-found demeanour.
“You’re supposed to be managing this warehouse Ted. I’d like to know what work you consider to be more important than improving it.”
“We’ve got spares orders to pick, pack and ship. I’m bloody certain our customers prefer my lads doing that than sitting in your training sessions.”
“Your lads sent three parcels to the wrong place last month. What do those customers think about your attitude to training, I wonder?”
“Yeah, well the only folk who don’t make mistakes are the ones who do nowt. I’ll bet you don’t make many.”
“So do you think we should carry on as we are or should we try to improve?”
“I haven’t time for this. Deliver your training!” and he spins on his heel and marches out the door.
Claire rolls her eyes at me “Same old Ted” and unpacks the projector.

We don’t see Ted again until just before lunch. He struts past the training room looking very strange: unhappy, angry even, yet his mouth is twisted into a frozen smile. I can’t help but think that this facial aberration is for my benefit.

Mid-afternoon we hear a disturbance from down the corridor but think little of it. After our coffee break, Arthur comes back from the loo and tells us Ted has been rushed off to hospital in an ambulance.
“They say his grin got bigger and bigger, then he just flaked out at his desk” says Arthur in wide-eyed amazement “I’ve never heard the like.”
“I have” offers Kathy “my granny had the same. Her whole face went numb and contorted into a horrible grin. She looked like something in a horror movie. Turned out she had cancer in her saliva glands. It was bloody horrible till they sorted her out. Poor Ted: hope he’s alright. Bell’s Palsy they call it.”

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Diagnosis

24 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by Rob in health, Humour, joke, Life, Musings, Thoughts, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

health, humour, joke, life, medicine, musings, thoughts

The doctor said “You’ve got hypochondria”.
I said “Oh no, not that as well”.

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Dicing with…..

07 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by Rob in Age, death, Fear, health, Life, Musings, Thoughts, Uncategorized

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

health, life, musings, thoughts

A paramedic regards chest pain in much the same way, I imagine, as a Jack Russell regards a trespassing rat. It is something to be grabbed and hung onto as though one’s life depended upon it.

I knew I was not having a heart attack.  Persuading the rest of the world took fifteen hours of needles, electrodes, stethoscopes, prodding, poking and repetitive interrogation.  I’m feeling smug and vindicated but reassured and a little flattered by the thoroughness.

The night, though long and for the most part tedious, was not without its levity.  The old fella in the bed opposite was convinced that his angina was triggered by windy weather.  The Zimbabwean nurse who neglected to tell me her hands were always cold until after she placed one on my side and put me into orbit.

We discovered that I weigh 115 kg, and not 111 kg, as I previously believed.  I still don’t understand why a mere 4 kg or 9 lbs discrepancy should entertain my wife and the ward sister so.  They were as thick as thieves, like old friends, who understood my every fault and discussed them in stage whispers for the amusement of the entire hospital: what fun!

“Try to get some rest” they said, in a manner that suggested they knew it was a forlorn hope.  The lights don’t go out.  There are further admissions of folk throughout the night, who take their turns with the needles and interrogation.  Various electronic monitors sound alarms, only to be ignored for hours then switched off, as though whatever they were monitoring never really mattered anyway.  The bloke in the next bed had pneumonia, Parkinson’s and angina: he wasn’t a quiet sleeper.  The snoring chorus suggested that others were better equiped to cope (deaf maybe?).

At around 5 a.m., a different alarm sounded two beds down.  Lots of people came running, and all the bed curtains were closed, but our ears could still see what was happening.  Four times we heard the electronic voice “performing assessment: do not touch the patient” then “no shock advised”.  In my ignorance, I thought that sounded like good news.  Maeve was crying: she doesn’t deal well with loss, even folk she doesn’t know.

An hour or so later, the ward sister opened the curtains and asked if we were OK.  “Better than the poor sod two beds down” I thought.  There’s a bizarre irony in the way that someone else’s death makes you think about your own life.

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Bleach Ads

10 Thursday May 2012

Posted by Rob in Advertising, health, Humour, joke, Life, Musings, Thoughts, Uncategorized

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

humour, joke, life, musings, thoughts

Q. Mummy Mummy, can I lick the bowl out?
A. No, pull the chain like everybody else.

We are bombarded with advertisements for toilet cleaning products. Well, I’m all in favour of a clean loo. But there’s a theme running through that I find curious. They all make claims about killing germs. So what’s that all about then? Clean yes, but does your loo really need to be germ free? You’re not really going to lick the bowl out are you?

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Dr. Hedgeh

05 Saturday May 2012

Posted by Rob in health, Humour, joke, Life, Musings, Thoughts, Uncategorized, Work

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

humour, joke, life, musings, thoughts, work

Poor bloke: it doesn’t seem an unreasonable request.
Bet it doesn’t work though.

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Terrible Fear

26 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by Rob in Age, Dating, Fear, health, Life, Marriage, mental health, relationships, self-esteem, self-image, Sex, Thoughts, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

dating, life, love, marriage, musings, psychology, relationships, Self-control, self-esteem, self-image, sex, thoughts

I realise that I have a terrible fear. It haunts and gnaws at me.
When I’m too old or infirm to have sex any longer, what if I still want it?

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Public Industry

19 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by Rob in economics, health, Life, Musings, Politics, Thoughts, Uncategorized, Work

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

industry, management, musings, nhs, politics, public, rants, thoughts

I work in private industry. I have done so for my entire working life: that’s around thirty-four years. I don’t have a problem with entrepreneurs investing money and making a profit: that’s the world we live in and my livelihood depends upon it.

My gripe is with the way the public versus private industry argument is panning out. The accepted wisdom seems to be that private industry does things cheaper. Well, that may be true but, if it is, there is something seriously awry. Whatever the cost of providing goods and/or services, private industries must make a profit on top, in order to repay their owners and survive. So, it follows, private industry must be more expensive. Must, that is, provided public industry is as well run as private. And there is the catch!

Now, I know I can be a bit of a cynic at times. Well, quite a lot of a cynic most of the time really. When I’m faced with a problem like this, I ask myself “who stands to profit from this failure?”. So that’s easy: private industry clearly does. What is less clear to me are the mechanisms that private industry might employ to ensure that public industry is badly run.

A few corrupt politicians would be a good starting point. If you could force public industries to bid for work, that would put a huge burden on them, particularly if you could force them to break up their processes into smaller sub-processes, each of which could be subject to a bidding war. That might leave you with a fractured process and all sorts of interface problems that would, in turn, introduce further cost and inefficiency. In a matter of a few years, you’d have an unholy hotchpotch of public and private mixed, with the public carrying the cost. Then it’s so easy to justify a “major overhaul”, leaving just the parts public that private industry can’t make a profit on, giving as much as possible to private industry because everyone can see that they’re cheaper. Can’t they?

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Can we make things better?

Why do we put so much time, effort and money into making life difficult for folk? Isn't it time we challenged some of the "accepted wisdom" that makes this world tick? Is there a raised standard of happiness available to all from more acceptance of diversity and tolerance?

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