health

Scare tactics

21 Jan 2016

4 Comments

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Age spots waiting to happen

Yesterday I did my own head in. Since my own mind is susceptible like no other to my mental obfuscation, it is easy to put one over myself. It takes mental discipline to not allow it to happen. It is still singularly disappointing when my own mind turns on itself. In the long lead in time from referral to appointment for a skin check up, I had convinced myself that my failure to comprehensively comply with skin safe/sun smart/cancer avoiding routines, meant that I was harbouring multiple deadly skin lesions. My Celtic genetic pool has blessed me with the kind of freckly, pale and easily burnt skin that doesn’t belong in a country with no ozone layer. I haven’t been sunburned for a long, long time, but I still have some sun exposure in the garden, at the pool, in life in general. I am pretty good at wearing hats and sunscreen and I don’t seek out the sun. I have many freckles and significant ‘photo ageing’. Most of this damage is a result of my childhood exposure. The 70s were not great for Slip, Slop, Slap compliance. Aside from the childhood persecution that I received from the freckles, I am now more prone to age spots (excellent!) and other skin lesions. So far, so cheerful! Read More

By: Category: Adventures, The rest of my life Tags: , , , ,

My achievements today #blogvember

12 Nov 2013

2 Comments

IMG_3109My achievements today including getting out of bed. I do get out of bed every day, eventually. Usually when I get out of bed, my throat does not feel like I have been gargling razor blades and gravel with a fine sandpaper jus. Today it did. Aches and pains do not come close to describing the feeling. Getting out of bed, that was a big achievement.

My next big achievement was getting dressed. Arguably more difficult than setting my feet on the floor, getting dressed involved lifting my arms. There is lymph in there you know. Nodes. Swollen nodes. Pains and suffering. But I did it.

After all this, a load of dirt is delivered. Vegie mix, I believe it is called. The truck driver helpfully delivered it across the footpath and half our driveway. My achievement was that I didn’t say a word. Not one.

My next achievement was almost, but not quite the ultimate achievement for today. I listened to bad, really bad commercial radio for just over an hour while at the doctors. By the third hit from 1982 I couldn’t see straight anymore. The second ad for tiles I was in a stupor. When they played What About Me, I almost lost the will to live. Luckily, the nice man next to me didn’t mind that I rested my head on his shoulder. He didn’t even mind when I drooled on him. Maybe that was the nice fantasy dream I was having at the time while I willed myself to just collapse to the floor.

My real achievement, the crowning glory of my day, was sitting impassively while I received the lecture entitled “when you turn 40 you have to stop taking the pill” from my extremely thorough and well intentioned GP. Really? We are having this conversation today? Really? I want to die and you want to talk about my reproductive health? At this minute I am never having sex again, so I am not sure why we need to continue with this. In fact, I am just going to go home, go to bed and stay there for the foreseeable future. Do we really need to talk about this now? I calmly outlined the previous issues and solutions that didn’t work, hence still being on the pill and yes, I do know about the increased risks. Can we just talk about time off work and codeine now please?

By: Category: Adventures Tags: , ,