Poorly Daz

Prayers please for a close mate of mine, Daz, aka Bigsheff1 who is in intensive care with kidney failure and other problems following an operation on an infected thumb.

Am I right?

I made the mistake of trying to talk to someone, in person, while they were chatting on Facebook yesterday. I was pretty annoyed when I was at first blanked for some time, then got "tut tutted" and scowled at.

Since I was courteous enough to allow them access to my network, I tapped a few keys on my machine and blocked them. They swanned out in a huffy. Was I extreme? I don't think so. Because in my humble opinion Facebook taking precedence over someone sat a few feet away is the hight of bad manners, bloomin' ridiculous, and more than a little disturbing.

Email, chat by internet in its hundreds of forms, is so totally cool, and often necessary. But it does not in any way replace good, hundreds of thousands of years of face to face communication.

Am I right?

Bonsai - no, hang on....

Neighbour visits with dog.

Neighbour fails to mention his dog hates cats.

We have three. His dog has never met cats such as ours.

They ain't gonna take no crap from any bleepin' dog, especially since it's taken them two years to train ours to roll over and say "Yes Miss".

Cue a real life Tom and Jerry cartoon.

On the first circuit of the room, furniture, windowsills, neighbours dog, 'Tye', five times their size, assumed he was chasing them.

By the second, he dimly began to realise they were behind him.

By the third, he was looking seriously worried. Fourth, he was snapping snarling and yelping and trying to shake off the two clinging to him.

Ornaments flew in all directions, the Christmas Cactus, who had only just realised it may have just missed Christmas and was making up for lost time, found belatedly it was related to the Wright Brothers.

Neighbour went all red and flustered and yelled a lot. Yeah, right. That was gonna work. It's going to cost me a small fortune in Germoline for those scratches on his shiny pink head.

Viking Ornaments Eric The Viking (naturally), Gertrude, Ian & Mary, and ummm, the other one, flew through the air, obviously thinking " Valhalla at last ! ". Shattered dreams, bless, alas.

The last I saw of the lot of them was a yelping blur heading down the back garden pursued by three balls of fury and my neighbour. Pets, that is. Not disappointed Vikings.

I think.

I haven't laughed so much for ages. Christmas Cactus will now have many, many offspring. Valhalla, thanks to lots of Araldite, will have to wait.

Where, you may ask, was my Woofler? Under the coffee table with his paws over his nose.

The Wuss.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Jammin'

I'm orf to walk to the shop later, with Bear, walking the woofler across a nearby field for a bit of ball chuckin. It's a man thing.

Mind you, I'll get The Bear chewing my ear. "Dray, watch your feet. Dray, mind that, Dray, the bench is there, stop and rest, yer wobblin', Dray......" Bear? "What?" Nothing sweetheart. Ceinture jusqu'à . I'm more worried my trousers will fall down.

That'll keep the Sun's Benefit Cheat Reportline busy. Walking. Not the trousers. Gosh, how dare I move? Apparently, the Sun is Britain's biggest selling newspaper with estimated sales of 2 to 3 million. Hmm. By my reckoning that's about 78 million to go.

Thinking of daft stats, I've read in various papers that there is a 14% risk of early death if you eat red meat. Uhu. I can confidently predict that everyone has a 100% risk of death. No one dies early. You just go and do it. I know, I've been there a few times, and spent a lot of time with people who managed to do it while I was chatting to them.

But just for once, wouldn't it be nice if a headline said "Good News !! You have an 86% chance of living longer if you eat anything" Not going to happen soon, is it? Maybe because the dear departed don't pay taxes or buy newspapers. Or am I just getting cynical in my old age?

Charlie Chat.

I'm sorry I had to go back to 'Captchya' on comment moderation. Within 12 hours of disabling it, I went from zero, ever, spam - to 20, 15 of which avoided Googles spam moderation. If it's any any consolation I find Captchya - aka word verification - difficult to read too.

I find it useful to hit the reset words button (on the right of the words) until there's words I can read. Sorry :(

~~~~

Grand daughter sitting again today.

Well, Nan, as little 18 month old Charlie Girl (Not Charlotte, just Charlie) calls her, will keep her busy. Granddad is Biz Biz (always busy) she says with a laugh.

This house is definitely no longer baby proof. Little monkey is into everything. I'd almost forgotten how curious and inquisitive they are at that age.

Little Charlie has a profoundly deaf cousin aged eleven who lives with her other grand parents, who also Charlie-sit. At a year and a half old, being around her cuz, she's picked up signing quicker than talking, and the two of them sit giggling signing to each other.

The nice thing is that when grand daughter chats to her nan and I, she signs as she speaks, which really helps us understand her.

She doesn't know anything different. It's wonderful. I'm determined that she doesn't lose that ability as she gets older.

Now then. How to get her to tidy up after herself ?

Spook

I DID have a doppleganger !

I was beginning to wonder if I was cracking up. I've not been told much, which I appreciate, because he has a right to privacy too, but it seems the chap has the same first name and surname as me, and his wife's first name is the same as the Bears. They live about a mile away. And he's a bit of a Mr. Grumpy.

Other than the above, all I'm told is that their much older than us, and he had a bit of a fall out with the podiatry services some years ago. As a diabetic, I have my feet checked once a year.

When I was effectively banned inexplicably from podiatry services, I negotiated with my doctors to have that dealt with at my T2 appointments.

Unfortunately, that coincided with a transition period in podiatry services, where they switched from surgery based, to sending a worker from a central base to surgeries, then to centralised city centre based, then to some outreach based edge of the city offices all within a short time. So paper 'index-card' records were being transferred here, there and everywhere and transferred to various 'experimental' computer systems.

I managed to squeeze out of them that some complaints were made against him by some podiatrists, and somehow it filtered to my GP. Luckily, a practice nurse said something along the lines of "Nah, that's not the Dray I know" and it's now sorted at the surgery.

Now I have that info, to sort out the hospitals.

Oddly enough, he's not a stroke survivor......

Naturally, my view of the NHS is a bit dim at the moment.

I'm somewhat suspicious of the so-called 'Diabetic epidemic' that's supposed to sweeping the country.

When I had my first stroke, as part of the battery of tests I was tested for diabetes, because the symptoms of hypo, or low blood sugar, are very similar to stroke. The docs decided I was stroked, and a type two diabetic, partly because there's a historical family tradition of type one diabetes.

A type one diabetic needs to inject insulin to survive. Insulin isn't confined to type ones. Sometimes it's used in a combination with diet and other medication where for whatever reason someone's blood sugar levels are poorly controlled.

I'm a type two. My blood sugar levels are controlled by medication. In some sections of the press, that implies my diet is poor and that I'm obese. Not so, at least in my case. I have a decent, if scant diet, and I'm certainly not obese. I don't, and never have eaten anything high sugar.

I take a tablet called Metformin. It has side effects. Fluid retention, possible weight gain, and it's not for nothing on the diabetic forums called Met-Fartin.

I often correspond with other type 2's, who are 'skinny's' like me, but like the occasional bun or chocolate bar, sweet or three. They're asked to refrain.

Earlier this month, for various reasons, I spent four days without the meds, and chatting to other diabetics. But I checked my blood sugars regularly and they remained in the normal range. As if I was taking the meds. That's 12 tablets. And four days without all the side effects.

And though I'm back on them, I'm beginning to wonder - my quality of life off them is much better than with them. The sweet stuff bit doesn't bother me. I like my savoury.

But going without a little bit that you enjoy for many is a reduction of their quality of life. I'm beginning to wonder whether that unless someone is overweight, has liver or kidney problems or has problems with slow healing, eyesight, ulcers or lack of sensation? Say to the doc, hey, that's cool. Can we leave it a month and try again?

Because I'm not convinced that the loss of quality of life and the strict responsibility that comes with type two diabetes is always appropriate long term - because it is long term - is appropriate for everyone.