Tag: Health

New Tory Govt crash and burn the price of the £

The beautiful political landscape of a democratic nation in a state of flux right now!

The new UK Conservative Government announced a load of tax cutting and borrowing policies this week that resulted in a crash of the pound against the dollar to an all time low as even the stock markets reacted to the UK government as if to say ‘what the hell are you playing at, doing that with your economy’.

When a governments or political parties boast about tax cuts to benefit your wallets, what there really saying in this day and age is their actually trying to reduce the amount of goods, services and support that they are trying to provide to you and others.

You might feel good to have a few pence or pound in your wallet each month but what there really trying to tell you is all those ongoing government problems that they have not solved concerning how to hire more doctors and nurses and reduce waiting times for health services for the one in five over-50s who have dropped out of UK workforce who are on National Health Service waiting list for treatment are not going to have an improved system of care anytime soon to help get them back into work and be healthy contributing members of society anytime soon.  

Over the first 46 years of my life I have had the support of my government at times its shelter and protection and healing as well as an opportunity to again be given the chance to stand on my own two feet and live, work and be free to make my own way in life once again.

I don’t expect something for nothing or to live off handouts. I work full time, pay for my own food, shelter and life expenses. But there have been times in my life where I have needed the help from the UK government to enable me to again be in a position where I can look after myself once again and be independent.

I don’t know where or how well or even if I would still be alive today, had my life not occasionally  been injected with some government support in order to help my become well again, once sick or fed and sheltered again when at risk of being homeless or unemployed and impoverished.

Benefits, health services and provisions of homes for the homeless are in no way god given rights in any country to any citizen and due to an inherent mental health condition that I was most likely born with, I will always be at risk of losing everything due to an illness that can trigger potentially at any time and under the right circumstance.  

I do my best to look out for myself, do all I can to keep my mental health stable and well but ultimately I am potentially blind to when or how I might become unwell again and whether or not my life will be structured with enough safeguards in order to come out of my illness on the other side at an as yet undetermined time in the future. Having a national health service really has kept me alive and mentally well. Had I been born in a different country or at a different time I just don’t know what support and assistance I would be able to have in order to maintain a good quality of life for myself.

I have personal lived experience of when a society decides to invest in its people rather than just its banking system, the huge gains and returns on that investment and I am very grateful for the assistance that I have received. At the very least I wish to vote, fight and advocate for others as well as myself to have a reasonable quality of life and social support in order to help them when they are down and not just help them to help themselves when they are rich and assume those that are not wealthy must just fend for themselves and hope for the best health, endure the worst poverty or die trying.

The Killers – Human

Mobilty Aids?

I really was not sure whether to try and come up with some sort of snazzy or funny title to my post, but not sure I can or want this time. My mum has been having trouble for many years now with her knees and although I know its causes her a great deal of pain we have not really had a lot of conversations about what can make things less painful for her or what solutions there are.

She has had professional support from our NHS saying about having a knee operation and such scary things like that but she is just not ready for that kind of thing and even something as simple as a walking stick has yet to be considered or used really by her.

So I started searching on the internet for possible solutions for her and oh boy the list is endless and I am not sure how or even if they will be able to help her either. It would be great to try and organise an occupational health appointment for her where they could measure up the right height for a walking stick or sticks for her, or show her how to use them or provide other alternative to sticks for her.

I looked all over the place and even had a quick look at mobility scooters for her and they were not cheap costing about the same as a new little motorbike or second hand car. One of them was described as sleek and sporty with top speed of 6–mph. (photo below)

Sleek and sporty number

Well zoom, zoom and all that!

In all seriousness though I do need to try and do a little more research for what is the right size for her height and what will be the best grip for her too.

I have found the following from the great mamouth of a shopping sight in the digital sky that is Amazon which looks like this.

I am worried though about getting the wrong thing though as I would not want her to have a fall while holding a stability aid that I had got for her. But the more I think about it I would not want her to have a fall because I had not gotten something to help her too.  

The search continues!

Dire Straits – Walk of Life

The weighting game

Train trip down to Cornwall

So I went on a train trip down to Cornwall, a couple of weeks ago, where I was able to celebrate Christmas, Easter and pubs reopening all in one week with my parents. I also even found time to get my hair cut for the first time in 6 months to ensure that I no longer look like I am in some kind of 70’s TV police show.

Haircutted April 2021!

I have also been trying to lose weight, since my diabetes diagnosis and its happening slowly but surely and I weighted in this morning and find that since I started reducing my intake of unhealthy foods, portion sizes and eating less carbohydrates and more vegetables I have lost about 1 and half stone in weight or 9.5 kg. I was a little worried about my weight this week because I went out on my first lads night on the beers for the first time in over a year and also had a meal out to. But I was still able to loose a little weight due to the healthier eating and drinking in the rest of the week.

I still have a heavy weight to loose and a long way to go but it’s all going in the right direction. My biggest risk to my physical health will be when the pubs open up full time and I want to go out and be social and have a pint and listen to live music. But if I do so once a week and keep on track with my eating for the rest of the week (and my life) I should hopefully be ok.

Gabrielle Aplin – Home
The Killers – Human – Live with Orchestra & Choir

Dyslexic diabetic

So since last Thursday that is what I can be boxed off and defined simply as a dyslexic diabetic and to be honest I have been called worse.

I really wanted to put something down on here but at the same time I wanted to absorb the new diagnosis of being a diabetic first and begin to try to understand more on what that definitional and diagnosis now means to me. I have been being tested for it for years and kept on coming back as negative and not having it but blood suger levels slowly increasing year after year and I knew my time would come. My brother had it and so did my Grandfather. My mum has it and so does my Grandmother.

The mental health medication I take also increases my chance of putting on weight and developing diabetes and it seems lockdown and my desire and ability to increase the amount of cakes I have been eating also increased hugely my chance of being diagnoses with diabetes this year, plus the sedentary lifestyle with working at home more and just not having many places to go or reasons to go to them, my chances of getting diabetes this year along with my blood sugar levels just sky rocketed up, up and away.  

It was like I was playing Russian roulette with a gun that had as many bullets in it as it had chambers to fire them out from.

Prior to the diagnosis I really was kidding myself that my health was ok, my diet was ok and my lack of exercise would change. I still don’t know if I am kidding myself but I am trying to get my head around this and make changes that will enhance my health. I have been for so long focused and dedicated to looking after my mental health, holding down a job and keeping a roof over my head that I really did feel there was not much time left to look after my physical health or pretty much do anything else and I am still not sure if this is true now.

So now I have had a wakeup call and if I want to have a good quality of life, I do have to make some lifelong changes to my diet and improve my physical health. I’m pissed off this has happened I see life like a big beautiful, messy and  complicated picture that paints a thousand words or life like a potential journey to a thousand places in a thousand worlds.

world keeps on a spinning

When some new negative words or views are added to my already complicated llfe bubble, one of those words being diabetes and the second being diagnosis it just feels like what was already a struggle to live as a life just got a little harder and it sucks right now.   

First Aid Kit – Silver Lining

Although I am already feeling much better now than when I had first heard the what felt like inevitable news and am beginning to get my head around it now somewhat more and implement some positive changes for myself.

I have signed up to get advice, be educated by and taught more about diabetes by a diabetes mentor of sorts, through our lovely National Health Service and I have stated keeping a photo diary of everything I eat and drink now for the diabetes dietician to mull over and tell me what I am doing right or wrong.

My Coronavirus antibody test results

A grim reaper of a covid milestone

Today the UK marked a grim reaper of a covid-19 milestone. We recoded over 100,000 people that had tested positive with Covid-19 prior to their deaths that then went on to die. One hundred thousand people are such a large amount of people that it is almost unimaginable. As a teenager in high school  we had a large sports hall that could fit around 1000 pupils in it for an assembly, so that is a way I could try and visualise the amount of people being 100 high school sports halls of people having died because of this terrible virus.

So far I think on a personal level I have not been as severely affected as many, many people have. I hope that that continues to be the case. I am not a huge social butterfly and so I don’t miss going out that much although it does feel like life is on hold sometimes.

With work I still get out to the office 3 days a week and so that is still taking place although I prefer working from home to going into the office.

I live on my own and covid-19 has not changed that I enjoy my own company and through new digital platforms such as this have continued to express myself and feel like I am doing something constructive or real. But it often just feels like I am typing a diary to myself for my memories and forget or don’t worry too much that others might read this too.  

I received a letter from the National Health Service a couple of weeks ago asking if I wanted to sign up to take a coronavirus blood test which will try and determine if I have had covid-19 in the past and whether I have any antibodies to Covid-19. This sounded really interesting and important research to help with so I signed up and got my testing kit today.

So I did the test not 100% sure if I made a mistake when doing it (which I told them about when feeding my results back). It looks like it might have come back as positive for having had it in the past, but I would prefer to take a second test to be sure.

I volunteered to have my test results shared with the NHS and also for them to be able to access and monitor my health results for the next 20 years should they need to, I am in no way paranoid about giving them access to my records and not that I need to but I am sure I could withdraw my consent at any time should I change my mind.

I thought I might have had a serious case of flue last January which I always thought could have been covid-19 and this test result simply backs up that case. I hope to not have again what I had then. It was the mental side effects that unrolled last year more than the physical that concern me the most.

Having been a person who has experienced severe mental health difficulties in the past and who now takes two tablets a day (possibly for the rest of my life) to prevent things like that happening again or at least to reduce the risks or chances of things like that reacuring. I cannot over state to you the joy of experiencing non negative or even positive mental health days and moments in time.

Amy Macdonald – The Human Demands