Health Issues

[wayneL]

Unfortunately, the merry-go-round of medical appointments will continue tomorrow. X-ray of the lungs again and an Echo scan of the heart has to be organised.
Today, wasn't the best of days with a prolonged effort on the bed, and the weather wasn't that favourable as well.
Hit 41c this afternoon.
Looking positively forward, thinking it can't get any worse than the past 3 weeks.

If it's the same as I had, I was pretty @#$&Ed for about 6 weeks.

 

[farmerge]

If it's the same as I had, I was pretty @#$&Ed for about 6 weeks.

Crippling to say the least. Feel OK one day then shyte the next.

 

[farmerge]

The effort of staying awake upright and casting a shadow have now taken its toll.
Off to the Slumber King for an hour's kip.

 

[farmerge]

And the health issues continue.
Had an eckocadiogram yesterday and there been any urgent phone calls to say hospital for you. Though a specialist appointment is booked for early February.
Blood tests again on Monday and then visit the GP for the review of what's what from the past week.
Feeling somewhat happier now and am hoping that with a short lay-off things will return to normal soon.

 

[Knobby22]

And the health issues continue.
Had an eckocadiogram yesterday and there been any urgent phone calls to say hospital for you. Though a specialist appointment is booked for early February.
Blood tests again on Monday and then visit the GP for the review of what's what from the past week.
Feeling somewhat happier now and am hoping that with a short lay-off things will return to normal soon.

Do you feel you are recovering well?

 

[farmerge]

Do you feel you are recovering well?

Certainly feeling a lot better now the prolonged coughing has ceased.
Will have a better idea on the value of the body after Thursday.

 

[farmerge]

Well, I feel up to it, might just wander outside and tackle a couple of light weight jobs.
Got a bit of tagastaste growing in the driveway and the couple of steers that are in that paddock have been looking at it for a few days now. A New Year's Present for them!!!

 

[JohnDe]

Well, I feel up to it, might just wander outside and tackle a couple of light weight jobs.
Got a bit of tagastaste growing in the driveway and the couple of steers that are in that paddock have been looking at it for a few days now. A New Year's Present for them!!!

Just remember to take it slow and easy.

 

[farmerge]

Just remember to take it slow and easy.

Did about 1.5 hours of a couple of little jobs that would normally take about half an hour, but it's a start.
Had lunch and now about to hit the Slumber King for that required Dagwood Nap.

 

[basilio]

Wasn't sure where to put this story but thought this thread might be appropriate. It is about health.

The kindness of strangers: I needed a place to take my burnout and my dog, then a woman I’d never met sent me an invitation​

A woman related to my memoir so much, she offered to lend me her holiday shack. When we met in person, we couldn’t stop talking

• Find the rest of our series of stories on the kindness of strangers here

Stephanie Wood
Tue 7 Jan 2025 01.00 AEDT



The email landed in my inbox late one Friday night in the middle of winter, 2023.
I was not cheerful. For weeks I’d been wrestling with a difficult article I should long ago have submitted to an editor. As a freelancer, the longer I spent on it, the longer it would be before another cent would hit my bank account. I’d been to the dentist that morning. I’d booked a vet appointment for my dog that afternoon; I feared she might have yet another ear infection.

I opened the email. It started:

This would be the first time I have ever written to a person in a personal context, without knowing that person. In your newsletter this week you said you were looking for a place to crash on the coast.

That was true. In the weekly newsletter I send out (reflections about this and that, links to cool and interesting stuff I’ve read) I’d asked readers if they could suggest a budget-friendly, dog-friendly place near the ocean where I might take my burnout and my dog and, literally, crash.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...he-world-but-i-am-anything-but-a-damaged-soul
After falling for a con artist, I lost trust in the world – but I am anything but a damaged soul
Stephanie Wood

Read more
The email was from a woman, I’ll call her Alex. She went on to say:

I’m about to get the keys for a shack I’ve bought on the South Coast. It is extremely basic, just a one-bedroom 55sqm Fibro Majestic, about 150 metres from the beach. I’m having it cleaned and painted but after that you would be welcome to stay there for a few days/week for a headspace break, gratis. I live elsewhere so you’d have the place to yourself.

I sat on the email for a few days. I thought about the reason Alex had given for wanting to share her fibro cottage with me. I thought about personal wounds and how, when they heal, the scar tissue can be beautiful.

She wrote:

Your book helped me through a traumatic marriage separation from my husband who had a personality similar to your ex’s, so I would be very happy to help you in return.

She was referring to Fake, the book I wrote to help me understand a traumatic relationship I had with a narcissistic fantasist who lied about everything.

My intention is just for my children and I to use the house and I want to let people who have helped me through the last few years have a nice time away too. There are a few special peeps I know who don’t have a lot spare in their budgets that I think deserve a bit of TLC/random acts of kindness. My personal sociopath-next-door was clever and successful, so a silver lining to the trauma is to be now financially comfortable. I have decided I would like to share some of that in a way that He Would Never – ie, for no ulterior motive or personal gain.

Alex and I met for coffee. Then, a couple of months later, for dinner. We couldn’t stop talking. We discovered common interests and oddly parallel lives; our paths over the years had almost crossed, then not, then nearly again.

Alex is gentle, softly spoken, an artist who has been dealt some blows in life. “Being a human is ridiculously hard,” she said.

My dog and I went to Alex’s fibro shack. We pulled in late one afternoon more than a year after she first reached out to me, retrieved the key from its hiding place, unloaded the car. A text message pinged. “Make sure you get down to the beach for dusk,” my new friend wrote.

The kindness of strangers: I needed a place to take my burnout and my dog, then a woman I’d never met sent me an invitation

A woman related to my memoir so much, she offered to lend me her holiday shack. When we met in person, we couldn’t stop talking

www.theguardian.com

 

[basilio]

Hope your recovering well farmmerge. I didn't realise this was the thread you set up covering your illness/infection.

I have a friend in hospital (ICU) at the moment trying to recover from a serious infection. He had serious joint aches which he first thought were the result of a change in medication. After a couple of deteriorating days we decided he had to go to hospital. Not sure how this will turn out. Sounds as if you are on the right road. Good luck.

Thanks heavens for a pubic health system that is working and a pharmaceutical industry that can identify and treat many infections and illnesses.

 

[farmerge]

Hope your recovering well farmmerge. I didn't realise this was the thread you set up covering your illness/infection.

I have a friend in hospital (ICU) at the moment trying to recover from a serious infection. He had serious joint aches which he first thought were the result of a change in medication. After a couple of deteriorating days we decided he had to go to hospital. Not sure how this will turn out. Sounds as if you are on the right road. Good luck.

Thanks heavens for a pubic health system that is working and a pharmaceutical industry that can identify and treat many infections and illnesses.

Thursday will be the day of reckoning. Appointment with the most caring of GP's in the afternoon. He will have all the relevant information and hopefully what's inside the body will have returned to normal.

 

[Knobby22]

I just had a good friend die of MND. Told last night.

He told me he had it just before Christmas the previous year. Absolutely horrible, you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.

 

[farmerge]

I just had a good friend die of MND. Told last night.

He told me he had it just before Christmas the previous year. Absolutely horrible, you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.

So sorry to see this post. Condolences to you.

 

[wayneL]

MND is an appalling disease.

There is a fantastic book, "Tuesdays with Morrie" which chronicles a former students conversations with his old college professor who is suffering ALS (similar to MND).

Recommended reading.

 

[farmerge]

The afternoon is young, the heat is tiring and sapping and the body is weary.
That's the trouble when not able or fit enough to contribute for the day in a physical sense.
The Slumber King beckons for the arvo nap.
Ce yar's later on

 

[farmerge]

Visited the GP this afternoon to be brought up to speed on the blood tests and eckocardiogram.
The lungs are just about right, but the heart continues to offer a problem.
Size has come back to normal, but there appears to be a little bit of seepage.
Next stop is a heart specialist on Feb 5 to find out what will be the next step.
GP reckons the severe coughing was the problem but the damage has been done.
He said that it was OK to take on board a little work around home but only limited time spans in the morning and afternoon.
That suits me as I tend to find an hour or two is more than enough at the moment.

 

[wayneL]

Glad to hear your on the up and up @farmerge

I'm going to have a health whinge here because my wife is sick of me bitching about it.

*Rotator cuff tears.... I've got two in the same shoulder.... @#$&ing agony especially considering my job. Not just having to wrangle @sshole nags, but having to lift in and out 100kg of gear several times a day.

Night time is the worst as I don't reckon I've had more than an hours sleep continuously for months now.

Otherwise, fit as a mallee bull

 

[farmerge]

Glad to hear your on the up and up @farmerge

I'm going to have a health whinge here because my wife is sick of me bitching about it.

*Rotator cuff tears.... I've got two in the same shoulder.... @#$&ing agony especially considering my job. Not just having to wrangle @sshole nags, but having to lift in and out 100kg of gear several times a day.

Night time is the worst as I don't reckon I've had more than an hours sleep continuously for months now.

Otherwise, fit as a mallee bull

@wayneL On the up and up but under the GP's starting orders which in our lingo means take it slow and easy for the time being.
Bung shoulders are no joy.
My left one is the result of the bull attack 5 years today.
Some nights the agony is unbearable.

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

I saw this on x.com just now. Unsure if it is true or not but worth considering.

gg