No April fool
Apr. 1st, 2026 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseOdd to think that it’s exactly ten years today since my health started to go dramatically pear-shaped. I was travelling up to Kendal for my birthday, and as I was crossing Manchester Piccadilly station, I fell completely unexpectedly flat on my face, causing me to miss the train I was supposed to have caught. I wasn’t at all hurt, but it was obviously quite embarrassing. I didn’t think much more about it at the time, but a couple of days later I almost fell getting up from a chair at my parents’ house, and after that my balance deteriorated quite rapidly. I saw a doctor when I returned to Sheffield, and they told me I didn’t have an inner ear infection, but they were at a loss to know what I did have. By the end of April I was getting around with one of those walkers disguised as a shopping trolley (I still have that!), and by May my guts were starting to go noticeably wrong too. I think it was nearly the end of May when I was finally admitted to the Northern General and promptly collapsed, so I had Sidney for almost exactly three years (he was finally replaced by Sibyl on 31 May 2019). Quite a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, but the biggest miracle is that I’m still here. To this day I can’t quite get over that.
They didn't know, and they still don't, whether or not the balance problems and the digestive problems are linked. Our NHS is absolutely amazing at dealing with individual serious illnesses - after all, they did save my life back in 2016, and it's a source of great sadness to me that a good many of the people who were involved in that have probably had to leave the country since then due to Brexit. What they're not so good at is putting things together as a whole. My dear friend Athos is an extreme example of that. He has so many things wrong with him that it's quicker to say what's right with him; his kidneys are fine. The rest of him is under the care of his GP surgery and no fewer than six different hospitals, each with its own particular speciality. (Having said that, his heart has stabilised so much that they may decide to take his pacemaker out once the battery packs up, rather than replacing the battery as normal, so that would bring him down to five hospitals. Even so, it's a lot, and one of those hospitals is the other side of the Pennines from where he lives.) Almost certainly at least some of his conditions are linked, because they all started around the same time; and they're not all complications of diabetes, either, because the diabetes wasn't the first thing to start. At the moment, thankfully, he's pretty stable, but most of his numerous conditions are the type that could potentially kill him if they took a turn for the worse. Well, if they're not investigating what's behind all that, they're definitely not going to be able to investigate whether or not my far less serious conditions are linked. My digestion is under good control now thanks to a fairly high dose of omeprazole, and the balance... well, it's not getting any worse, and it's not going to kill me barring a fairly freakishly unfortunate set of circumstances.
But for now, I can say along with Granny Weatherwax that I Aten't Ded, and consequently the world has a good deal more baby hats, string bags, calligraphy, stories, and poems than it might otherwise have done. And I'm equally happy to report that Athos also Aten't Ded... and consequently the world has a wise Athos. We need a few more of those.
They didn't know, and they still don't, whether or not the balance problems and the digestive problems are linked. Our NHS is absolutely amazing at dealing with individual serious illnesses - after all, they did save my life back in 2016, and it's a source of great sadness to me that a good many of the people who were involved in that have probably had to leave the country since then due to Brexit. What they're not so good at is putting things together as a whole. My dear friend Athos is an extreme example of that. He has so many things wrong with him that it's quicker to say what's right with him; his kidneys are fine. The rest of him is under the care of his GP surgery and no fewer than six different hospitals, each with its own particular speciality. (Having said that, his heart has stabilised so much that they may decide to take his pacemaker out once the battery packs up, rather than replacing the battery as normal, so that would bring him down to five hospitals. Even so, it's a lot, and one of those hospitals is the other side of the Pennines from where he lives.) Almost certainly at least some of his conditions are linked, because they all started around the same time; and they're not all complications of diabetes, either, because the diabetes wasn't the first thing to start. At the moment, thankfully, he's pretty stable, but most of his numerous conditions are the type that could potentially kill him if they took a turn for the worse. Well, if they're not investigating what's behind all that, they're definitely not going to be able to investigate whether or not my far less serious conditions are linked. My digestion is under good control now thanks to a fairly high dose of omeprazole, and the balance... well, it's not getting any worse, and it's not going to kill me barring a fairly freakishly unfortunate set of circumstances.
But for now, I can say along with Granny Weatherwax that I Aten't Ded, and consequently the world has a good deal more baby hats, string bags, calligraphy, stories, and poems than it might otherwise have done. And I'm equally happy to report that Athos also Aten't Ded... and consequently the world has a wise Athos. We need a few more of those.
