We did a year!

Thanks to all those that have persevered with my ramblings over 2012, it seems we have done well! According to my ‘annual blog report’ we have had readers from 23 countries, a total of over 1700 reads in all so give yourselves a pat on the back.

I don’t think anybody could have predicted where I would be at the end of 2012, its certainly not been an easy ride and I foresee more challenges in 2013. I remain committed to my plan and I will achieve the changes in life that would have, perhaps, been better achieved before the accident. I am nothing if not stubborn and hopefully this will see me through the coming year, they may be gaps, rants and silliness on here (same as this year) but I will continue to record my path.

I hope you all have a great evening to slip into 2013 and I look forward to confusing and entertaining you next year.

Incidentally 302 posts in year, not quite one a day but hey pretty close especially if you discount the period when I was not capable!

What have I learnt

24 hrs with a BP monitor, what have I learnt?

1 – don’t let inflatable pipes wrap around your throat whilst sleeping
2 – there is a whole world outside of charts
3 – 253 can be the first number in a BP measurement
4 – 40 can be the second!
5 – you ain’t gotta be an athlete to have 40 BPM

Lets see what my doctor makes of that bad boy!

Sneaky stats and funny numbers

The new WordPress statistics coupled with some questions lead me to believe that Jo had a big catch up yesterday, so well done for getting through so much rambling!

I have spent a night being bleeped and pumped by the BP monitor, thankfully when I had garrotted myself with the pipes and cables it beeped to warn me that it was not getting a reading. When you consider the pipe that it was pressurising was wrapped around my neck its of little surprise!

Readings calmed down to normal and healthy during the evening, I have no idea what they were while I was sleeping but this morning I seemed to wake up dead. Now there has been much debate over the concept of waking up dead, I can tell you it’s possible as my little box of electronics confirmed by being unable to see my BP/Pulse. I tried the normal things of straightening my arm and standing up and eventually we got some numbers, around 136 which is ok over 62 which is not!

I have many more experiments to do so that I can see how to guide the numbers back but I do think this will be another conversation with the doctor that starts ‘well this is all very interesting’

Anyone know a good hospital?

So far I have seen about 5 readings, they are only shown briefly, and the best (lowest) was 254/142 now I have no idea what that means so I consulted Dr Google! Oh I see it now Dr Google is no longer my friend, oh how he has turned with his graphs and statistics, none of which I appear on! Apparently they are not good numbers, well between friends they are actually quite bad.

Well I’ve considered the prospect of twice an hour ‘obs’ and how that fits my sleep pattern and have concluded a bottle of wine is well deserved. Investigation of the unit, its an engineer’s trait, reveals that it was due calibration in May 2012 so I’m thinking its out of date and the readings are not accurate but I think my test was flawed….. I wrapped it round the wine bottle for one test and the result was several error codes and no reading, its ok I won’t keep doing it and one miss read is to be expected!

My guess is it will, somehow, average ok and I won’t have the hassle of binning another set of drugs, high blood pressure indeed.

Bloody Cells!

For Christmas I purchased my daughter a blackberry as instructed, because she is blonde I set it up for her as well.

So I loaded credit and then I have to start the BlackBerry services at a cost of £5 per month on the orange, I refuse to call them EE, network. This simple task is achieved by sending a text stating ‘start BB’, I started to do this on the tenth of December. When the text response was a message telling me that the BlackBerry service had come to an end I called them and they explained it was a server issue.

Now for those that don’t know it costs 25p fixed cost to speak to an adviser on Orange PAYG and to give an indication of the success I have spent £2.75! The Indian call centre is very careful to explain that it can take up to 24hrs, despite me now being on day 18!!

It also transpires that there is a mechanical issue with the new phone so I ordered a replacement (gold star to phones 4 u, your advert is horrible bit ordered boxing day and arrived this morning). Replacement arrived with the sim inserted and registered so given I have had to buy £10 credit on the purchase I thought I would start the BlackBerry service on this sim and if it works she can keep new sim . . . .

No credit on the sim! I called the supplier who was very nice and told me it ‘can take up to 48 hrs’ is it me? Is it orange? Has India declared an unofficial war on us via their call centres?

Hmmmm

This afternoons task will be to research the affects of alcohol on blood pressure, not the long term health affects since these are doubtlessly bad I am interested in the immediate affects.

Getting 24 hr BP monitor fitted this afternoon so need to know if the pub is going to be a bad idea! If the pubs a bad idea where on earth am I going to find a healthy candidate to strap the bloody thing to? Don’t they understand that I don’t do pills, hence no painkillers!

When I was in hospital they checked my BP every 2 hrs and it was no inconvenience, what’s the betting that this thing will drive me mental overnight and stop me sleeping? My other thought was to attach it to a small animal for a short period of time since logic tells me that this should drive the average down quicker, although there is a risk that I look like I die for a couple of hours a day!

New methods?

Well I’m most surprised to find ten Christmas Day views of the blog, at first I had visions of challenging the Queen’s speech next year but then I realised the cause. I have no way of seeing what devices accessed the blog but my guess is it will include several new devices as the blog is explored on freshly unwrapped gifts.

I cannot write without an honourable mention to Dave who made my Christmas lunchtime pint with his story of rolling in drunk to his, first floor, flat at 2 am this morning. Having collapsed on the landing his irate wife questioned just what he was doing there, thinking in his feet or, more accurately, his back he came up with “I broke my back” . Now at this point we would all be hoping that some logic was reminding him that he is in his fifties and schoolboy excuses don’t hold the hope they once did but oh no not our Dave who valiantly answered “well how did you get up the stairs?” with “Erm hello Mum, Happy Birthday” yes you guessed it Mum’s birthday is in August!

A good laugh had by all and most importantly had with Dave, that is what makes community people.

Observations from the front

Since the cold, coupled with the season, has left me somewhat housebound the last few days I have revisited the observer status that I had when my arms were in plaster. For those that watch the Simpsons think Bart with broken leg in the swimming pool episode.

The observations made in the early hours of this morning revolve around those that no longer meet the standard family classification – separated parents. In a lot of households Christmas is divided at an agreed point notionally around midday so parent one gets Christmas Eve and parent two gets Christmas night, this seems an eminently agreeable way of scheduling the limited resource of children to me.

What I notice now is that this ‘traditional’ approach has been adapted by a generation that view separation as the norm to meet their own lifestyles rather than accommodate their children. So now the battleground is not the joy of the children’s faces on Christmas morning it is the battle of the Eve’s. Ex partners now use this as an opportunity to disrupt the social life of the ex with the argument that ‘for the sake of the kids’ whoever has them for Christmas Eve doesn’t have them for New Years Eve.

Since when has any child cared about New Years Eve? they care only for Christmas Eve and more importantly the day itself. The insanity of this is that the parent that ‘wins’ Christmas Eve child free will have a stinking hangover on Christmas Day with the kids and whilst both parents will be convinced that the other has the best night to socialise and form intimate pairings the truth is neither Christmas Eve or New Years Eve have ever been about this!

The only people that lose here really are parents, I know I will be chastised for not saying kids but in truth I believe that we are more nature than nature and your childhood, whilst to some a convenient excuse for failure, does not have a big affect on your life. The parents though are losing opportunities that occur only once and they are losing them because they are just not mature enough to be trusted with such an opportunity.

And here’s the rub, the older I get the more people I want to grab and yell “grow up”

Happy Christmas

Christmas….

Finally I am thinking that Mother Nature may have got something right! As a confirmed grinch I have a stinking cold, now tailing off, that should enable me to survive the day on little more than hot toddies, given all of the people that view this time of year as special it seems fitting that the illness that I have succumbed to is treated by the very intention that I had for the day!

In other news lefty has taken to incredibly sharp stabbing pains when I use it to text or type, I have considered the meaning of this, I have googled it and have drawn the conclusion that is in keeping with my medical training ‘its going to have to learn’. My theory is that if I give in to the debilitating pain then the injury, or this presentation of it, will have won so I shall continue in the same position until the pain gives in! So far I have had a couple of unintentional launches of the phone but again this is part of the learning curve.

Of course there are those that say pain is natures way of telling you to stop but they are just fools.

Social observations

I have a particularly unpleasant head cold so my evening yesterday involved an early retirement with the fantastic James Patterson for company (try cat and mouse it’s superb). Some of you will know, and some will recall from previous posts, that I not only live on the coast but I live on the route from the town to the traditional late night pub.

When I say that I live on the route what I mean is that I live at the point at which the distance between the pub and home seems insurmountable to most drunks and they decide to use their remaining energy fighting, shouting or vomiting. Interestingly, and perhaps not unconnected, the hedge outside my building is the choice of places to deposit stomach lining chips and supermarket purchased ‘preload’ alcohol on the way to the late pub.

And so it is that when there is a quiet night I am actually surprised to awake at 03:00 and realise that I have not been woken earlier by a drunken serenade, albeit a serenade aimed not solely at me but more generally the world.

Last night was not one of the exceptions to the rule, I was awoken around 1am to the theatre of drunkenness that is comfortably reaffirming of the decision to have an early night!

What set me pondering after the nightly display was the failed logic of a generation, not only failed logic but counter intuitive actions! Allow me to explain, our subjects who we shall call L1, L2 & L3 have met up several times in the week and debated their Saturday night plans. There will have been countless Facebook and text debates about where to go, where to start and what to wear all leading to the big night.

They will have met up at an agreed home where they will have preened into a suitable vision to attract attention from the opposite sex, at this stage they will have had a drink at home to ‘start the evening’ they will then have visited some pubs and walked or maybe even taken a taxi past me to the most popular house of the late evening.

Now arrived at their final destination, the place that they hope holds those that they seek to impress, they are well lubricated but still reasonably charming. Now it goes downhill as a reasonable blood alcohol content is driven to absurd levels with shots designed to provide rapid deceleration of sense levels. Now this is the counter intuitive part, your dressed up to attract the opposite sex but now your fuelling yourself far past any ability to be attractive!

Inevitably we hit closing time and our subjects are the worse for wear and have no money left and so no taxi home for them, oh no they get the bracing sea air walk home. And now to the theatre that is mine to behold as they leave the lights, music and fun behind and the cold night air draws them close, the insurmountable target of bed draws ever further so they stop and argue about who saw who first, who brought the most drinks, who was rude to who. There is an inevitability to the dark humour of this theatre as our subjects get louder and sway closer to each other until eventually the brawl starts.

Perhaps brawl is too strong a word for the drunken slanging match and close quartered ‘aggressive falling’ no real damage is inflicted probably saved by the combination of drunken aim and moving targets, but real damage is intended this is real aggression but carried through bodies and minds that don’t have the ability to act on it. And then the pantomime draws to a close, with yelled taunts and drunken threats, they part their ways and wobble back to sleep off the weekly consumption.

Anyone wonder on who our subjects were? Well L1,2 & 3 are not ‘Lads’ they are what passes as ‘Ladies’ it would seem, when they passed me at the start of the evening they would have been well dressed and happy young women. Worse still the numbers mean nothing, they could be any of dozens that I see carrying out this strange dance.

When did the young ladies of the world stop challenging the young men of the world to stay sober enough to attract? When did a good night out for girls turn into one that was evidenced by torn clothes and broken friendships? When did girls stop being girls? One odd thing I do notice is that I see less guys fighting in the street these days and this reminds me of working in Northern Ireland during the troubles. There was so little work then that the women with their part time jobs became the main breadwinner and with this came the right to pay day drinks, is that what’s happening in our welfare culture? Is the nighttime spectacle funded by welfare cheques?