Assorted things.

There have been some rollercoaster days of late, it’s been that sort of week.  I read in the newspaper that people are complaining of boredom.  I never seem to get the chance.

Midweek I got a very helpful letter from the hospital.  The consultant had perused the results of my radioactive drink and CT scan and had discovered that I have a hernia.  These can come about as the result of surgery and when I looked it up online, my symptoms were textbook.  As the problems began two years ago straight after surgery and have continued unchanged since and I knew there had been problems with the surgery, goodness knows why it has taken so long to diagnose.  I was very sceptical of the diagnosis of  ‘just’ adhesions, especially when the chap doing the colonoscopy said it was very challenging and suggested the problem could be cured by drinking kefir.  I kept wondering if I was going bananas and then having another dreadful day in the bathroom gasping in pain and trying to tell myself I was imagining it.  But no, a hernia, which is part of your guts poking through a hole in the muscle wall, explains things perfectly.  I feel, at last, two years after surgery, that maybe things will start to get better. I have a face to face meeting with the consultant on March 31st.  You shouldn’t wish your life away.  I am, at least God Speed the Plough (other constellations are available) until the end of March.  A hernia is fixable by surgery, you poke the loop of intestine back through the hole and sew up the hole in the muscle.  How a hole got into the muscle of a person who has worked out muscles every day for twenty years, during routine surgery, is another question.  Which I may decide not to ask in the interests of positivity and gratitude that I am being seen at all in such troubled times.

I rang the private hospital where I am going to have my cataracts done and was told they are not doing them any more at present.  The whole hospital and three more private medical facilities in the county have been turned over to care of NHS cancer patients.  I think this is excellent and should have been done sooner.  Our local NHS hospital up the road has only two wards not stuffed full of Covid patients currently, poor souls.  Separating them and the cancer patients sounds like a wonderful, life-saving idea.

Mid week the OH took delivery of a small car to get him to and from work in the Mega lab.  It is only six miles away but he will be travelling to and fro early and late.  I was not keen about him leaving the lab in clothes in which he will have been testing thousands of Covid samples and getting into my car, which I would then get into to do the shopping.  The car he has chosen is a demonstration model which will be maintained by the garage who sold it to him, who will buy it back off him at the end.  Since the makeover we have two bathrooms; I hope one each will lessen the chances of me getting Covid from his work.  Time will tell.

The OH has been trying to cut down a lot on drinking, consequently has been so short of temper that when I appeared downstairs in the middle of him watching a film on TV he attacked me violently verbally, at length.  I will not use the language here but I did write it down.  Today has been a very silent day.  How will someone who has spent every night for fifty years in the pub cope with ten hour shifts and no pub at age 70 this year?  How will he manage to take all the pills that keep him going every day if he is working, when he usually forgets them here when it is the only thing he has to remember? What will happen when another employee annoys him and he explodes?

It took a couple of hours to stop my heart hammering enough to be able to go to sleep.  I kept telling myself that there are children shut in with abusive parents, who are in a worse position than I am.

Can you remember when life was easy, or fun?

I’ve had ten years with a person suffering increasingly from an addiction, five with a demented person, two broken arms, cancer, a hernia and three significant deaths.  Oh it’s all going terribly well.

Currently what helps me is watching videos online of Buddhist monks making beautiful sand mandalas. When they are finished they enjoy them for a moment and then sweep them away while chanting ancient chants about the universe.  You will find these videos easily with a search engine.

Hold in your heart the knowledge that the only constant in the universe is impermanence.

I believe we are going through the birth pangs of a new beginning for humanity.  They are the start of better values, including caring for everyone, knowing that the world is one, and living and being present in every moment of your life, as it changes and passes.  Even the bad ones.

Of course, some religions and some wise people, not necessarily the same thing, have been saying this for a long time.

Tomorrow I will be sufficiently recovered to go back to making little pieces of transitory art, in cardboard and sending them to people I miss.

How are you getting on at learning the art of life?

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