BunnyFactor10

My life is hard

2013-05-02T15:32:00.001+01:00

OK, this is in Dutch and will be lost on most people. But after yesterday's blog post full of self-pity, I have been playing this song a lot to make me feel better. We all know people like this; people who constantly complain their life is soooo much harder than yours. Everything they do is difficult and a drama. I translated the lyrics but most of the fun lies in her performance. When she sings "Ik heb een heel zwaaaar leveeeen" it means: I have a life that is veeeerrrryyyy haaaard".

I have a very hard life
Yes, really very hard
Everything is very difficult for me

It is truly a very hard life for me
No, no, really, very hard
Life is simply incredibly hard for me

For me, nothing is ever just easy
So I am often tired
So many things are so difficult
That I just don't do them
And when I do do something
It is often not appreciated
And because of that
Many other things automatically go wrong too

I can often not help other people
Because I have some kind of pain somewhere
Which upsets me of course
Because I would love to be there
Of course I would prefer
To always be there for others
But they will just have to understand
That my life is really hard

I have a very hard life
Yes, really very hard
Difficult, difficult, difficult, difficult, difficult

It is truly a very hard life for me
No, no, really, very hard
Life is simply incredibly hard for me

I am quite often forced to cancel
Appointments at the last minute
When people have already made dinner
But hey, I am just suddenly very tired
I feel they should just understand
That I have a very hard life
In their life, the tide is always high
And for me it is mostly low

Sometimes I am at the check-out
Where everything is "quick, quick, quick"
When I realise I have forgotten something
And I have to go all the way back
People have to wait, which they don't like
But at least it gives them the opportunity to see
How hard it is to be me

I have a very hard life
Yes, really very hard
Difficult, difficult, difficult, difficult, difficult

It is truly a very hard life for me
No, no, really, very hard
Life is simply incredibly hard for me

I really do take life as it comes
But quite often it simply does not come at all
And I just sit there waiting, which makes me really sad
Happiness comes free and easy to some people
I don't understand why God has distributed it so unevenly

And later, when I am on my death bed, and when I am in my grave
Then I'll think: It was so hard, I am glad it is over
And people will say in their eulogies: It is true
Life for that poor woman was incredibly hard

Nearly two years

2013-05-01T14:07:00.004+01:00

May is here. The month JD died. By the end of this month, it will be two years. I have heard many times that the second year is harder than the first one. That in the second year, you are no longer numb and that the real emptiness strikes, the real loss, the realisation that whatever you had planned for the future with your partner is really not going to happen.

My second year was not like that at all. I started (and struggled) through my university course, I worked, I loved, I reminisced, I cried, I missed and I celebrated. I keep waiting for the Real Grief to knock me out with a sledgehammer. I am not saying life has been easy but in some ways I expected this to be different. Harder perhaps? maybe it feels easier because at no point in the first year did I stop myself from crying. Anywhere. If I felt tears, I cried them. No matter where I was at the time. In Tesco, on the street, in the delicatessen down the road, on the train, in my car. There has never been any bottling up of emotions.

Sleepy JD on ski trip in 2006

Maybe that is why I did not have the Second Year Hit. I have however lately noticed a general low-level sadness creeping back in about things. Where I have been listening to Matchbox 20 and Crowded House, JD's favourite music. Not sure why or what it is supposed to make me feel. maybe it is one of those things that helps me feel that my past is still part of the present. Because nothing is the same. Girlfriend is a fair bit younger than me and likes different music than JD used to. So not much 90s music around my house. Mostly 80s (strangely enough). This is not a problem but it is....I don't know. I am just used to having 90s music around, even if I don't care much for it. I don't know how to explain it. MB20 played in Manchester last month and 2 of JD's friends went. I had wanted to go too but in reality, I only wanted to go because it would have reminded me of doing something I might have done with JD and her friends. I mean, I like MB20 enough but it would not normally be something I would pay lots of money for. I would have spent the entire time crying for JD, rather than actually listening to the music. So why did I want to go?

Maybe it is searching for something familiar around me. Because everything has changed.

Girlfriend and I have moved in together this week. That feels a bit weird. I am utterly sure about my feelings for Girlfriend and it is wonderful to live together; she makes me very happy indeed. But it feels weird to do things like that with someone who is not JD. I had to get used to that feeling. Settling down with someone who is not JD.

I wish there was a script that widows follow so I know that I am within the 'normal range'. Is it normal to want to keep some things that belonged to JD? or photos? I mean, everyone has pictures from their past, right? Or letters from friends they keep. Or souvenirs. So why does it feel weird to want to keep those things from my time with JD? Maybe the music is important to me because, due to having moved house a few times since JD's death, I have not go many physical things left. No ornaments in the house, no photos on the wall, no clothes. And nobody really to share memories with.

Last year I organised a fundraising gig for the hospice where JD died. This year, I have decided I am going to scatter the rest of her ashes on the day she died (some were scattered at Warwick University already). I will scatter them in a place that was meaningful to her (and therefore to me).

At home a month before her death

One last thing... I wish that I could feel more sad when thinking of JD as she was before she was ill. Whenever I see pictures of healthy JD, I feel as if I am looking at my best friend who died, as opposed to someone I loved. I mean, I think of how sad it is that she is dead but I do not generally feel tears welling up. But when I think of JD when she was ill, I cry. Without fail. The thought of someone so young having gone through all that. Remembering how she was helpless. How that made her feel...It makes me incredibly sad, still. Physically sad. With tears and the lot. Does that mean I am over the actual loss of my wife and friend and am now just crying about the sadness of the illness process? Somehow I feel that that sadness will never diminish.

Anyway, this is yet another directionless post. Which shows that I just don't know how this works. I guess I am just having a whole bunch of unguided thoughts about JD tumbling around my head at random moments.

Should I tell my university tutor? I struggle to concentrate at the moment and I know this is partly to blame but it feels like an excuse to use...

In her soft wind I will whisper
In her warm sun I will glisten
'till we see her once again
In a world without end

In her soft wind I will whisper
In her warm sun I will glisten
And I always will remember
In a world without end
She goes on

A widow's dilemma

2013-04-24T23:38:00.002+01:00

When JD died, many people did not know what to say. Many people were very kind but many people kind of faded away. But everyone I knew at least got in touch and, for a while anyway, did their best to let me know that they were thinking of me or of JD and that they too were missing her. I understand that I was always gong to lose some friends and gain some unexpected new ones. I know that I may not have been as supportive as I could have been to some of my friends.

However...

Pretty soon I will be in the same place as a person who used to be a friend of JD and me but from who I have not heard a SINGLE WORD since the day JD died. Nothing. Apart from a Facebook message on the day of JD's death. But nothing since then. I don't even think this person came to JD's funeral. If they did, I did not notice them. I genuinely can not remember seeing them.

Either way, it made me angry at the time. And it is making me a bit angry again now. Should I have contacted this person? I was not very close friends but still, we went on holiday together a few times.

How should I behave when I see this person again? Pretend all is well? Let them know I was/am very angry? Should I let it go after nearly 2 years? I do not care to re-kindle a friendship with this person so I am not looking to repair relationships. I am simply looking for suggestions as to how to approach this person.

Help?

Gay Paris

2013-04-24T20:55:00.001+01:00

University is very stressful. So what can a girl do to relax? Indeed, a girl can take her lady to Paris. To celebrate our 1 year anniversary and her birthday, Girlfriend and I jetted off to the French capital for a well deserved break.

The weather was predicted to be a mixed bag so Girlfriend brought a pile of dresses and I brought my shorts. We managed to pack light so we only had hand luggage. A masterstroke from Girlfriend as it turned out. We sailed through customs and baggage collection (what with having no baggage to collect) and hopped on the train from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Montmartre where our hotel was. I had warned Girlfriend about the tiny Parisian hotel rooms and that it might not be as clean as she might like, with French cleanliness standards not always being the same as hers (or mine. or any other clean person, frankly). So we were very happy with our tiny but perfectly clean hotel room in Hotel Montmartre Jean Gabriel. I'd totally go there again. It was clean, cheap, close to the Metro on Place de Clichy.

Safely sheltered from the rain on the Rue Lepic.

On the first evening we walked through Montmarte towards the Sacre Coeur and Place du Tertre. It RAINED. It rained really hard so after 15 minutes, we were forced to have our first break and sit down safely at a Brasserie to shelter from the rain. It turned out to be the first of many, many glasses of wine that we consumed over 4 days. I think it is safe to say we were moderately pickled most of the time. We walked along the Rue Lepic, which I had read about on my handy TripAdviser app. It was supposed to be foodie heaven. And it certainly looked it. Fromagerie after Fromagerie. Fresh fish from all over France. A superb selection of meat at a variety of butchers and wine shops and brasseries galore. It made me wish I had rented a self-catering apartment so we could take it ALL home and just spend our time in Paris eating.

You can just make out the occipital bone

Anyway, it was all lovely. The next day we went underground to discover Les Catacombes. When the cemeteries in Paris ran out of space, they were cleared of 6 million bones. These bones were stored underground. And we can visit these vaults. AWESOME. Bones, bones, bones. Lots of skulls. I am sure I actually learned something about anatomy by staring at someone's skull or the neck of their femur. It was very educational. Right. And spooky.

We had a picnic int he park where we ate far too much cheese and drank far too much wine. And it was awesome. We saw the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, we saw the Eiffel Tower. In fact, we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I will tell you more about that on another day. We saw the Notre Dame and we hung a padlock on the Pont des Arts. Padlock? Yes.

There is a nice new tradition of locking a padlock to a bridge to symbolise your love and then throwing the keys in to the river. Only when you can find the key to your padlock can your love be broken. Being the ultimate romantic that I am, I prepared and bought two padlocks whilst still at home. I had our names engraved in them. There are two bridges leading to the Ile de la Cite where you can attach your padlocks. The Pont de l’Archevêché is where the padlocks go for your passionate love. The Pont des Arts is where you put yours if it is for your committed love. When we got to the Pont des Arts (with the help of my satnav and even then I fucked it up a few times...) we attached the padlocks to the bridge and had a nice snog. We are so cheesy. Two American gay guys minced up to us and offered to take our picture. They had seen us kiss and clearly felt a gay-kinship. They told us they were on their honeymoon so there were hugs all-round and we left feeling very happy. about the world and love in general.

Of course there was much more that happened. Girlfriend ate snails for the first time. We went to the Louvre (but only to shelter from the rain), we visited Pere Lachaise Cemetery, we walked, we walked, we walked and we had a cheese & wine picnic in a random park. Yes, there was a lot of wine.

It was AWESOME.

Margaret Thatcher is dead.

2013-04-10T18:59:00.001+01:00

Apparently we are only allowed to say nice things about the most hated politician in British history. When Glenda Jackson tries to add a note of discontent, she is met with howls of indignation. Go Glenda Jackson.

I am sock of people saying Thatcher was great for women. Yes she was the first female prime minister. But she hated feminism. And she did women a massive disservice. I agree something needed to be done about the power of the trade unions, but what she did still reverberates around the country now. Poverty, despair and heartache. I am not dancing on her grave but the outpouring of "she was great and to say anything else is disrespectful" makes me sick.

Medicalising Grief

2013-04-01T19:16:00.002+01:00

This weekend, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 30-minute programme about grieving. Or, more accurately, about using medication to 'treat' grief. The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM), written by the American Psychiatric Organisation now includes grieving as an abnormal mental state. This opens the door to pharmaceutical companies saying people need to be given medication to help them with their grieving.

In this world where we no longer accept anything other than perfect happiness, everything that stands in its way must be treated as soon as possible. Take a pill and it will all be better. And if an important medical text says that you have a DISORDER, then the threshold for prescribing that pill is severely lowered. The pharmaceutical industry stands to gain millions if all those grieving people were put on anti-depressants.

Grief makes you sad. Death makes you sad. That is not an illness. You have lost a person you loved. The sadness you feel about that is not depression. It is grief. Numbing that pain with medication that is designed for treating an illness, in my opinion, is wrong. You do not have an illness. Depression is often caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. It is an illness. It often has no particular event that causes it. People with a seemingly perfect life can be very depressed. Grief is caused by an event. It is caused by a loss. YOU WILL BE FEELING SAD! Duh. Apparently, according to this broadcast, people who experience a loss could fit the criteria for depression if they display symptoms of depression (sleeplessness, lack of appetite, poor concentration prolonged sadness) more than 2 months after the loss....2 MONTHS? Try a year.

My point is that profound sadness is not depression. If you treat your sadness with medication, you will not be able to fully 'go through the grief'. It will merely numb it for a while and hit you when you come off the pills. Because it is not an illness. It can not be cured. It is a reality you need to accept. You can not medicate it away. You can help yourself with grief therapy. And for some people, the grief is so all-consuming that they stop functioning as humans. In that case, medication might help. But that is not medication to 'cure' the grief. That is medication to help people function. Function so that they can address their loss and deal with the grief. If medication becomes the standard treatment for grief, people will never actually come to terms with their loss.

And in a completely unscientific opinion, I believe that if you do not come to terms with the loss, you will not be able to rebuild your life. It will hit you later on. And by then, you might think you are perfectly happy again and then it might actually lead to full-blown depression.

I grieved REALLY HARD for months. I cried whenever and wherever I wanted. In public, alone, in front of strangers, in front of friends. I did not hold back. I did not feel ashamed. I felt an all consuming sadness. Like a depressed person, I wasted hours, days, week in bed, staring at the wall, going through DVD box set after DVD box set. The difference? I knew WHY this was happening. There was a very clear reason. I had lost my wife. My life. My focus. Everything I thought my future was going to be was in tatters in front of me. I had 2 sessions of counselling and we decided that really, I just needed to do the grieving and that things would get better in time. And she was right. I strongly believe that diving head-first in to my grief, but with my eyes firmly on wanting to build a new life after I as done grieving, has made the pain much easier to live with.

I am not saying people should never use medication. Or that those who do are weak. My issue is with the premise that, as a starting point, grief should be treated as a mental disorder. This opens the door to pharmaceutical companies pressuring doctors to prescribe pills to people who really just need a shoulder to cry on. And it gives people false hope. That life will be better with pills, even though everything they loved has gone. That is simply not true.

Thankfully I am not the only one who thinks this is a dangerous direction. The Lancet, the world's foremost medical periodical, agrees with me and says it much more succinct that I ever can:

Medicalising grief, so that treatment is legitimized routinely with antidepressants, for example, is not only dangerously simplistic, but also flawed. The evidence base for treating recently bereaved people with standard antidepressant regimens is absent. In many people, grief may be a necessary response to bereavement that should not be suppressed or eliminated.

Building a life without the loved person who died cannot be expected to be quick, easy, or straightforward. Life cannot, nor should not, continue as normal. In a sense, a new life has to be created, and lived with.

For those who are grieving, doctors would do better to offer time, compassion, remembrance, and empathy, than pills.

The editorial is very much worth a read.

You can listen to the show here on BBC iPlayer until April 6th 2013: Medicalising Grief

A holiday of sorts!

2013-03-31T12:25:00.003+01:00

My first practice placement for university has finished. I think I passed. I think I did well. I have found it all very educational and I have learned loads. About the human body of course but also about myself.

I need to amend my communication style. I talk too much. I talk too much about myself and I don't always listen enough. Not that I like talking about myself but I was under the impression that sharing personal anecdotes with patients improves the rapport you are building. I have learned that this is true (many patients have praised my communication style and genuine interest in them) but I need to learn better when to apply it and when to just listen. Very common experiences do not need me sharing mine. (e.g. when they have a broken leg, I do not need to tell them about my broken leg, but when they talk about losing their partner it can be very useful for them to know their nurse has had a similar experience)

The next hurdle is studying for my anatomy & physiology exam. There is a ridiculous amount of work involved in this. So much that I find myself paralysed as soon as I open the book. I am convinced I will never remember what is in the book and my brain says: Don't even bother. I am trying to find a way around this but I have not found it yet. I live in hope.

Flying above the clouds is always spectacular.

I have just returned from a trip to see The Family in Holland. It was a bit of a last-minute decision to go. I completely forgot I had 2 weeks 'holiday' from university so I thought it best to visit my grandmothers who are both poorly. Girlfriend came along as I can not imagine spending a whole week without her. Yes, I am admit that was indeed the main reason for her coming along. It was Girlfriend's first time on an aeroplane and the look on her face was worth every penny of the ticket price. I loved it. Shame it was only on a cheap EasyJet flight and not the nice AirFrance flight we have planned for next month.

Dad made filled squid
and seafood pasta.

I had made it clear I would be mostly visiting family during the 4 days we were there so she organised herself a couple of gigs in Amsterdam! Brilliant, now she is officially an international performer. We had a lovely time with my family. We were extremely well-fed by my mum & dad; had a lovely day with my sister and her kids and a most wonderful night in Amsterdam. I even caught up with a friend I had not seen for the best part of 15 years!

Now it is back to work. But good times are ahead. Girlfriend and are going to Paris in 2 weeks. And when we return, we will start looking for a place for us to live together. Neither of us is finding living in different houses much fun anymore. Nice as our respective housemates may be, we just really want our own place, with our own stuff and our own future to build. I am all giddy and excited about this. I have been gathering all the things I own from my current house. More and more things are vanishing from the shared kitchen in to a box that has my stuff in it. When I have left, the girls here will realise that just about half of the things in the house actually belonged to me!!

There are some Jane-related things happening in my brain right now that are fodder for another blog post. But I think it is only fair that I discuss them with girlfriend first...

This is ridiculous: Love is threatening my future.

2013-03-06T15:15:00.002Z

I have been with Girlfriend for nearly a year now. Just writing that makes me giddy.

Love is the result of a difficult chemical reaction that happens in your brain. it affects your entire body. Everyone knows the problems of being in love:

Lack of concentration
Obsessing about the other person
Loss of appetite
Feeling sick
Bad sleep

First, here is a mini chemistry lesson.

New relationships go through three stages: Lust, Attraction and Attachment. Each of these stages have their own hormones that wreak havoc with your normal emotions. Lust is driven by Testosterone and Oestrogens. Attraction is fueled by Adrenaline, Dopamine and Serotonin. And when you move in to the Attachment phase, it is mostly Oxytocin and Vasopressin.

The Attraction phase is when you can not think of anything else but the other person. Not surprising since high levels of Dopamine are associated with heightened attention, short-term memory, hyperactivity, sleeplessness and goal-oriented behavior. Does that sound like AD(H)D to anyone???? But recently, scientists have discovered that people in the Attachment phase have the same low levels of Seratonin in their blood as those with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

So it makes perfect sense that all I can think of is HER. I can not concentrate on university work. I can not think of ANYTHING else than of how many hours before I see her again. And if there is the remotest chance of not seeing her at all during a day, I will just go to her house and steal a kiss on the doorstep and go home again (we do live on the same street so this is easy).

But seriously people, I would really like to move on from this. I have a university degree to think of. It is hard enough to make that work with having AD(H)D killing my concentration. But having something else on top of that to distract me even more is just impossible. I sacrifice work time to be with HER. I can not stop checking my phone if there is a message during my shifts at the hospital. I am unable to sleep unless I have seen HER. I can not look at HER with my brain going funny. It physically hurts when I think of the fact that we do not yet live together and that it won't be for a few months until we can be together on a permanent basis.

I am researching, I stray on the the DFS and IKEA websites and pretend I am looking at furniture for our new house. I spend hours looking at houses online that we *could* rent. Every stupid, trite love song suddenly has become deep and meaningful.

Don't get me wrong: I am not saying this love is better than anyone else's. I know everyone feels like this when they are in love. Or at least, they SHOULD feel like this. For a while anyway. But I just can not move away from it. I would like to be able to say: I am going to work for a few hours and then see HER. It is hard enough when I am not in love but having the promise of seeing HER ahead of me makes it impossible to get anything done.

So, here is a request to my hormones: I get it. my feelings for Girlfriend are SERIOUS. I am properly attracted to her. So can I now please move on to the Attachment phase. The one that releases Oxytocin, aka the cuddle hormone. Ironically, Oxytocin is released after orgasms and strengthens the bond between two people. So perhaps the best way to get to the Attachment phase as soon as possible is to have a lot of sex and release a lot of Oxytocin; the hormone that makes it possible to just sit next to her and do homework, instead of sitting next to her and just wanting to melt into one entity, one body and be closer than humanly possible.

Thank you very much on behalf of all the future patients who would really like for me to have concentrated harder at University.

Finally, if you think I am just moaning and should get on with things, watch this fascinating film about people in love, who are put in an MRI scanner whilst thinking about the person they love. Just thinking of their lovers changes their brain function and hormone balance.

PS: Yes, this entire blog post was just another excuse to think about HER for an hour and still feel like I have done something productive.

Ticking along

2013-02-13T21:24:00.001Z

I am currently on my first placement of my nursing education. I am not allowed to say much (read: anything) about it in public due to university rules and confidentiality stuff. University is shit-hot on people talking about university, be it negative or positive (but mostly when they say negative things of course) and I have already been told off for telling the world I was struggling with a f*cking assignment.

So I will keep it simple and say that I am learning lots and still struggling with the theoretical side of it all and the assignments and constant writing, reflecting and what have you. I am however ace when I am on the ward with patients.

In other parts of my life, things are going very well indeed. After 10 months together, I am still very happy with Girlfriend. I pinch myself every day that I have been so lucky to find such a wonderful person. We see each other every day (we live on the same street) and some people think that is weird. We think it is great. Living only a few doors away from each other means we can pop in for a cup of tea, even on days when we are both busy. So often I just drop by for a kiss and a cup of tea and then go back home to do some work or to go to bed early.

We are discussing our future together, too. We both feel pretty strongly that this relationship is really great and has loads of potential for the future. I like dreaming about the future. I like thinking of all the things we might be doing together in the future. It is wonderful to think of happiness in terms of being with someone and sharing hopes and dreams.

I am beyond excited about the trip we have booked to Paris to celebrate our anniversary and Girlfriend's birthday. It is not until April but we can not stop thinking about it. I have not been in Paris for more than 10 years and I very much look forward to going back there and doing all the cliche things such as walking hand in hand with Girlfriend, looking out over Paris from the Eiffel Tower and sitting on the steps of the Sacre Coeur. Yay.

All in all, things are pretty good. If only i could finish the next f*cking assignment....

Aaron Freeman on planning your funeral

2013-01-26T18:03:00.001Z

Sometimes things happen simultaneously that make me cry.

After a day of hard, hard working on my assignment, I suddenly burst in to a small flood of tears when a song by the Counting Crows came on iTunes. This was one of JD's favourite bands. No idea why this suddenly made me cry. I mentioned my crying on Facebook and tagged JD in my status update. This then lead me to go to her page where a friend had posted something very beautiful that I had not noticed before. My random crying lead me to JD's page for the first time in months and months. Normally I would have looked and read this thing my friend posted and not cried. I would have found it beautiful. But now that I was already sad, it just made me cry more. For about 5 minutes. And then it was over.

In the early days, this kind of crying would have lasted for hours. Funny how time heals.

Anyway.....what this friend posted on JD's Facebook page was a quote from Aaron Freeman. On a radio show in 2005, he discussed how you should have a physicist speak at your funeral. You can hear the segment here:

Below is the full text. I think it is beautiful. It feels spiritual and yet it is pure science. JD would have loved a physicist say something like this at her funeral.

"You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

"And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell them that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

"And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

"And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly.

"Amen."

Aaron Freeman

How to concentrate, ADD-style

2013-01-24T12:31:00.002Z

I have cracked it. I have cracked how I work best and how to get myself to concentrate on my wok for an hour or so and write my essays.

Unfortunately it is a very time-consuming method and it makes no sense to most people. Here is my feeble attempt at explaining it.

First of all: I can not concentrate very well. I am easily distracted and getting started on something is almost impossible. I have tried sitting in a pub, in my bedroom, in the university library...you name it, I've tried it. No success. Basically: Having Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD or ADHD) sucks. A lot.

So what works for me?
First of all: sitting at my desk does not work. That is a shame as I have a nice desk. But it is not happening. I spend hours at my desk doing everything but work.

Sitting on my sofa in my bedroom does not work. The sofa is simply not comfortable enough and I am constantly distracted by being uncomfortable.

What *does* work is sitting on the sofa in the lounge, alone, with the TV on. I sit myself down, have dinner & a cup of tea. Then I tell myself to start working. Which I don't. I open all the relevant documents and the links in my browser to articles that I need to read. But no work gets done. Because there is TV to watch. And news to read about. And Facebook to check. And links to follow.

So for about 2 hours, I tell myself to work but find myself unable to do actual work. The half-hearted concentration means I re-visit the stuff I have done so far and usually (because I can not concentrate and think straight) I think it is all rubbish and I start re-writing. But the re-writing is not very good because, remember, I am not concentrating very well.

Eventually I get so annoyed that I am being prevented from working by all those distraction things that I no longer find them a distraction. They are now starting to irritate me. Because I feel I have WORK TO DO and the TV is IRRITATING ME because I can not CONCENTRATE with the TV on.

When that moment is reached, I turn the TV off and think: FINALLY I am allowed to get on with the work I need to do. Finally I have managed to shut that stupid TV off.

It feels as if I have had a battle with the TV and the internet and after a couple of hours, I have defeated them! I am victorious.

And then, providing nobody else is in the room and talks to me, I can work. I can concentrate. For about an hour. I still am able to check Facebook every so many minutes. But I am able to check, and then get back to work. In that hour, I work like a demon and write pretty darn good stuff.

Last night I had *just* reached 30 minutes of good working when my drunk housemates came in and started talking to me. Although they wanted to tell me how great they think I am, I was very annoyed but I could hardly tell them to leave the room as it is their living room too.

So, to get an hour of work done, I need a lead-up that can sometimes stretch to a couple of hours. And I need the living room to be empty and no housemates to talk to me. And what are the chances of all those factors coming together all the time, every day? When do I have 3-4 hours to spare to sit on the sofa in the house alone?

Very rarely. So I get stressed. Because what if these spurts of concentration do not come to me? What if there is not enough time before the deadline?

Snow makes me happy.

2013-01-21T23:01:00.003Z

So after my little self indulgent moan about how hard my life is, I decided to give Captain Morgan another chance. So on Saturday, I drank a lot of Captain Morgan again, this time with Girlfriend. And to my surprise, it wasn't Captain Morgan who was to blame for my Friday blues. It was my own self-indulgence. Because on Saturday, with Girlfriend, Captain Morgan actually made me happy & tipsy.

Spent a lovely evening with girlfriend, had a nice sleep and on Sunday, WE PLAYED IN THE SNOW!!!

I love snow. Did I mention this? I LOVE SNOW. I get happy just watching it. I cheer up walking around in it. I adore the cold, white stuff. It makes me as happy as the arrival of summer does.

Girlfriend and I went to the park with my brand new sledge. We flew down a little hill, walked around and we made a snow child. We called it Humphrey. But it refused to float on the sledge. So we drowned it in the pond.

Then we went home and ate curry that Girlfriend's dad had made.

Not much more to say about this: Sunday was a happy day. A very happy day indeed.

All because of Girlfriend and I frolicking in the snow.

Captain Morgan made me write this

2013-01-18T22:22:00.002Z

I wrote this post below earlier this evening. And then girlfriend made me see I am a sad, self-indulgent fucker who needs a kick up the arse (although in fairness those are not the words she used). So I'm off to bed now and plan to begin a new life tomorrow. For the umpteenth time I am telling myself that I will be organised and concentrated from tomorrow onward and that everything will be different.

=========

I should be thinking of doing my assignment.

I worry that I am giving up on this degree already. Like, in my mind, I don't really feel any pressure to meet the deadline because I feel I am going to fail it any way.

Even the practice module, my placement, has so much paperwork involved that I don't see how I am going to complete it all. I need testimonials from patients, I need other nurses to sign off on things they saw me do, I need my mentor to see me do things but I am her first ever mentoring student and she is not very forthcoming and a bit shy so the responsibility falls all on to me to make ANYTHING happen, I need to complete action plans, write goals that are SMART, write reflections and write a reflective diary and read up on things I have learned during the day.

And that is just for my placement. Let alone the assignments I also have to do for other modules.

I am thinking I should maybe just give up and work as a health care assistant.

I am not cut out for working alone without supervision and support. And university is clearly unable to give me any. I need someone to bounce ideas of. A fellow student or a mentor who understands how I work. Even when I don't know how I work.
I always think in abstract concepts

I have thought about pros and cons of certain techniques. I have read about them. I understand the research. Why can I not have a verbal exam on it? Where I can TALK to someone and explain what I know and understand. Instead of having to write it down?

It is so frustrating to KNOW that I know these things and yet nothing comes out of my fingers on to the screen.

For every paragraph I write, I think it is rubbish, I need to start all over again. And I re-write what I have already written. And I get stuck and can not move forward.

or I suddenly have a bit of inspiration and I write a whole bunch of stuff. And then nothing for days. So then i start worrying about what happens if the next bit of inspiration does not arrive in time for me to meet the deadline? Well I might as well not bother.

Ugh. Enough moaning.

Captain Morgan made me feel this way. I hate Captain Morgan. (I love it, really).

Maybe I will feel better tomorrow, after playing in the snow. Which of course is no procrastination at all. Nope.

Happy New Year

2013-01-06T17:16:00.005Z

Let me be the first to wish all my (5) readers a happy new year....oh wait...what?

Well, how different this was from what I imagined it would be. Last year I escaped to New Mexico and I knew that this year I would have to face the holiday season without Jane for the first time. I was convinced it was going to be horrible. After all, on January 1st 2013, I would no longer able to say: My wife died last year. It would be 2 years by then. Two years. That sounds so long ago that I surely would start to forget about Jane.

But of course in hindsight that is not what happened at all. I have not forgotten about Jane. But mostly, what I did not know back then, what I could not have imagined back then, is that I would be happy with someone who has lit up my world and brought me back to life.

One of the things grief counselors tell people is that the hardest thing after losing your partner is finding yourself again. Having been part of a Couple for so long, you are no longer sure of your own role in life, in the world, when that partnership suddenly stops. Who are you? What are your hopes and dreams? How do you interact with people? How do people see you? Those things you stopped doing, was that because you no longer liked them or because your partner did not like them so they were sacrificed on the altar of your relationship?

It is that uncertainty that I have found hardest. I was myself with Jane. Or at least, I was someone I was very happy to be. How in the world was I ever to find a happy me again? I don't like doing things on my own. So doing stuff alone is no fun. Doing it with someone you love is great. So how the hell was I supposed to find out which things I really loved doing if I had nobody to find that out with?

I am one of those people who is just better in a relationship. Not because I am needy but because I thrive on sharing. I get ultimate happiness from doing something that makes someone else happy. I like thinking of others. I like being thoughtful. I like looking after someone. I like playing a part in someone's happiness. I guess I am to love what evangelists are to Christianity: I just want to share, share, share, share. Because sharing happiness is the most wonderful thing.

You know how many women say that it wasn't until they became a mother that they felt they were fulfilling their true purpose in life? Well, I know that MY true purpose is to be in a relationship that makes two people happy. It just is. I have accepted that does not make me needy or dependent or that it means I ignore my own needs just to make someone happy. Being myself, for me, means making someone happy in a way that matches my own feelings, opinions, beliefs, loves, hatreds and interests (just in case you were thinking I put someone else's happiness way way before my own).

Well, there she was. And the rest is history.

Aaaaaaaaaaanyway........ I was going to actually write about the awesome New Year I spent with Girlfriend. The whole "who'd a thunk" thing was only supposed to be a sideways remark. Oh well. As always, these blogs never are about the thing I thought I was going to write about.

However, I can understand you are now desperate for some pictures of my holiday. So, I'll keep it brief.

We went to Yorkshire. Stayed in a most wonderful place in Sedbergh, near Wensleydale, called The Moorcock Inn. If you like your landladies no-nonsense and typical Yorkshire, then there is no better place. In fact, I had such a great time that for the first time ever, I felt the need to write a review on Trip Advisor.

We had nice food, fun watching people get stuck in knee-deep floods, saw Wensleydale Cheese being made, visited a fabulous waterfall and had a most relaxing new year's eve. And all that whilst staying in a place that made us feel at home, rather than in a hotel. Niiiiiice. In fact, we liked it so much, we are probably going back there this year (which has nothing to do with the landladies inviting Girlfriend and me back so that Girlfriend could play a gig there....)

Yorkshire roads are pretty.

The Moorcock Inn is pretty.

Yorkshire waterfalls are pretty.

Our next trip is already in the planning. We are thinking Paris in April. If only I can find the time in my busy university schedule. Oh yes, university. Did mention that I am shitting myself with worry about passing this year?

Happy New Year everyone.

To Anonymous (You know who you are)

2013-01-02T13:01:00.002Z

Just to let you know: There is no point in leaving abusive comments about the Liverpool Care Pathway all over this website, even on old posts not related to it in any way. They will be not be published and marked as spam.

They don't upset me, I am just worried that you are wasting precious moments of your life leaving uninformed, rude comments when you could be doing fun stuff, like walking on the beach or help the homeless or visit a sick neighbour.

Happy new year.

Someone's missing at the Christmas table

2012-12-26T05:30:00.000Z

So Christmas has come around again. Last year was horrible without Jane and yet great with my friends in New Mexico. I thought: I am going to have to face a 'normal' Christmas without Jane next year and it will be HORRIBLE.

And here it was: Christmas Day. I spent it with my family in Holland. And I was sad to be there without the person I love.

But it wasn't Jane I was sad about. It was Girlfriend. The love that I did not expect to meet this year. (Or any other year because what are the chances of meeting someone as compatible again so soon. Or ever?)

Today I spent time on and off on Skype with Girlfriend, who stayed in England to spend Christmas with her own family. We pathetically opened a Skype video call and simply left the connection open 24/7 and just popped in and out of the rooms with our respective laptops and sometimes we were at the laptops at the same time and had a short little chat. We both did not want to be away from our families too much because it seemed rude.

Jane was not mentioned at Christmas today. I am sure we will talk about her over the remaining 2 days of my visit. Maybe my folks did not want to bring her in to the conversation since things were going so well and it was nice to have a relaxing Christmas once again. After all, the past 4 Christmases have all been pretty shitty.

In 2008, we were upset and scared about the imminent radiotherapy. In 2009 we were upset that the radiotherapy was not working. In 2010 we were grateful that Jane was still alive to have a Christmas with us and in 2011, I ran away to the USA because I could not face my first Christmas without her.

Does that mean I dodged the bullet of Horrible Christmas for Those Left Behind? If so, then I shall breathe a sigh of relief and count myself lucky.

It is not that I don't think about Jane these days. I did think about her today. But I just expected to feel very sad about my first 'proper' Christmas without her. And I didn't. Although, now that I am writing about it, it makes me feel sad. (Note to self: Write blog post about how weird it is that I don't get sad when thinking fleetingly about Jane but that I can get utterly distraught on moments where I actively make time to think about missing Jane and the pain she and I went through. And does that mean I SHOULD actively make that time to evoke such feelings and what purpose would that serve? Are they emotions that need to come out or are they emotions I am conjuring up in an artificial kind of way?)

I feel strange for not having been sad about Jane this Christmas. Is that callous? Does it make me a cold-hearted bitch that instead of being distraught about my first real family Christmas since her death, I am talking about how much I miss Girlfriend? And reveling in my little nieces asking me constantly why Girlfriend did not come from England to celebrate Christmas with us and can she please come next year?

How long is the 'right length of time' before it is OK to not think about your dead spouse and get all sad about the time you *could* have had together if only they had been present at a particular occasion?

I guess nobody knows what the right or wrong thing is.

In a REALLY weird way, I sometimes wish this was all much harder than it has been so far. Because I seem to have picked my life up again fairly quickly. And I worry sometimes that this only helps to keep the myth alive that losing your partner is not as gut-wrenching, soul-destroying and all-encompassing as people make it out to be. I worry that it will strengthen the thought that many people have that after a few months, people really should pick their lives up again and be able to move forward and get on with things and stop dwelling on the sadness of their loss.

I now know that the speed at which widows 'move on' is in no way related to the amount of love they had and the amount of pain their loss has caused them. The pain was deep. It was raw. It was frightening. It was worse than I ever imagined it would be. And yet, picking my life up has been much easier than I imagined it would be. Actually, I did not have any imagination of a life beyond Jane. I thought I would just be dragging myself from day to day in an eternal hell of loneliness and dullness.

But it isn't. Life is beautiful again for me right now. I am loved by someone with an incredible understanding and acceptance. I love someone with the same total abandon that I felt for Jane. That is not to compare the two. It merely to say that losing Jane has not in any way made me afraid to love someone else. Nor has it made me feel I should hold something back for fear of losing it again. I wouldn't even know how to do that anyway. It is all or nothing.

And I feel that this Christmas, it is clear that my life has shifted from Nothing to All again. Yay.

Merry Christmas.

*PS: This long ramble may or may not have been fueled by Bordeaux, Limoncello, Port, Bacardi Oak Spiced & Pepsi.

29

2012-12-02T00:33:00.001Z

Dear Jane,

You would have been 29 today. Nearly back in the same decade as me. We used to joke about it. When we started seeing each other, you were 19 and I was 27. When you turned 20, I told you I was happy that at least we were now in the same decade (at least until I turned 30) so the age difference no longer looked so big. You told me that once every 8 years, we would get to celebrate the event of you catching up with me, at least for a few years. We only got to be in the same decade once. You never made it to your thirties.

Would you be happy for me if you were able to know how things are going for me now? I would like to think you would be. You were always a generous woman. I seem to remember you once told me to grieve short and hard for you but then just get on with life and be happy again.

As life is settling down, I am thinking of you a fair bit again. Not in the sense that I am unhappy without you. I am happy with my life as it is. Girlfriend is wonderful. You would have liked her a lot. She looks after me extremely well and is the most understanding person I could ever have hoped to meet. You probably would have gotten pissed in The Racehorse together and laughed at the idiotic things I do. You would have asked her if I still interrupt people all the time. You would have laughed at Girlfriend rolling her eyes at that one.

At university, I learn more and more about bodies, health and dying. This obviously means I think about you a lot. How you were not healthy; how you died. How your body worked. How it did not work. What the medication and chemo did to you. I try not to think too much about how learning more makes me feel I should be able to apply that knowledge retrospectively to what happened to you. I did not know any better.

Did I treat you with enough respect when you could no longer make your own choices? Did you understand when I said: No more chemo? Did you want to shout: BUT I WANT MORE CHEMO, YOU ARE KILLING ME? Did you realise you were not drinking and eating? Did I understand you enough? Did I have enough patience to wait for you to form an answer in your head when asked if you wanted to die at home or in the hospice? You said hospice. Then home. Then hospice. Then home. Basically, did I listen enough when you were trying to tell me something? Out of all the things that happened, that question will forever haunt me. I know you were going to die. I think you knew it too. But did I treat you with respect. Did you feel I abandoned you and just sent you to a quick death? I know you would never have thought that I wanted you dead. But I hate the thought that you might have been angry or desperate to tell me not to give up on you.

Dammit. I was jut going to write you for your birthday. Because I never talk to you anymore. I did a lot just after you died. But I stopped feeling the need to do that.

I guess I just wish I could somehow tell you that I am happy. That I am doing fine. That somebody loves me. And that I can love somebody again with all my heart. But that none of that means I don't think about you anymore.

Today I am working with R. She looked after you when you were still home. Seems fitting that on your birthday I am working with the people who helped me to look after you and who helped me to be sure I wanted to go to university.

I went to the Birmingham Christmas Market today with Girlfriend. I remember when we went for the last time in 2010 when we were grateful you even made it to celebrate another Christmas with you. And last year I met Rachael and your mother there. I should speak to them more.

My folks came over from Holland last week. My dad said it was wonderful for both of them to see me happy again. Because all their previous visits in the last 4 years have been when there was a reason for them to worry about you or, after your death, about me. It made them happy that this time they visited me and found me my chatty self again. That this time there was nothing sad about the visit. That they could see I am happy. And this in turn made them happy.

I wish I could let you know not to worry about me. I guess that is as good a birthday present to you as anything.

X
m

BBC Newsnight discusses the Liverpool Care Pathway. And I cry.

2012-11-27T00:13:00.002Z

Tonight the BBC's Newsnight has a discussion on the Liverpool Care Pathway. The Liverpool Care Pathway is highly criticized by shitty news papers such as the Daily Mail who have no clue what they are talking about and yet still feel they have a right to send wrong and dangerous information in to the world that is untrue and misrepresents the fact. The Jobbing Doctor describes quite accurately how I feel about the Daily Rag and their 'journalism' in relation to the Liverpool Care Pathway: "The Daily Mail, in its own unique way, is a bilious hate-filled rag full of sensationalism and bias. Similar to the Sun, but for those with GCSEs, with slightly fewer pictures." But I digress.

The Liverpool Care pathway is a protocol that helps medical staff when patients are actively dying. It provides space for all active treatment to be revoked and focus ONLY of patient comfort and symptom control. This may (notice: MAY) include withdrawing artificial hydration. it does NOT say people should not be given drinks if they can still swallow. Nor does it say people should be dehydrated to death.

The main problem is not the Liverpool Care Pathway itself but the implementation of it. So communication is vital. But also, people are not supposed to be on the Liverpool Care pathway for weeks. So normally you will not be on it for weeks. But mostly just for days or even hours sometimes. It is for people who are ACTIVELY dying. Not just terminally ill. But when the body is physically shutting up shop. So if you don't give someone food and drink for days or weeks, it is not a good thing. But if they only have hours or a couple of days left, then it is not their main cause of death. It should be reviewed every few hours......

We could argue Jane was on it too long. She took about 12 days to die once in the hospice. By the time she went in to the hospice, she already was dehydrated for about 5 days due to no longer being able to swallow. So yes, Jane died of dehydration whilst on the Liverpool Care Pathway. In her case, the Liverpool Care Pathway hastened her death. And maybe she could have been given IV fluids. Maybe the Liverpool Care Pathway was not applied appropriately in her case. Because the fact that she took so long to die proves her body was not yet actively dying from the brain tumour. So the lack of fluids killed her. In a way, you could say she died because of the Liverpool Care Pathway. Which was wrong. I did not know this at the time and I had the impression Jane was pain-free.

But this may sound callous and harsh, she was going to die soon. I could have prolonged her life for weeks by giving her fluids and food through a tube. She would have slipped in to a coma eventually. But that might not have been for weeks. Or months. And she might have been able to communicate with me during that time. But most likely she would not have been able to make much sense of the world, hydrated or not. So we would have had a few more weeks but there is no way to measure what kind of quality of life that would have been for a young woman, fully incontinent, bed-bound, unable to understand the world around here or hold conversations of any kind.

I still think about it. Did I do the right thing? Probably not. I should probably have fought harder for getting her hydration sooner. The thing that is upsetting me more and more is the idea that I did not talk to Jane about it enough. I very quickly assumed the role of carer and probably very soon took over the decision making. I perhaps took away her right to decide too soon and did not put enough effort in trying to find out if she was still able to have thoughts about it.

But it was the way it was. She lasted longer than the doctors anticipated once she came to the hospice. And the problem with dehydration is that you can not, after a week of absolutely no fluids, suddenly decide to give loads of fluids again and say: oh, maybe this patient is not actually dying just yet, let's re-commence fluids. By then, someone may already be in organ failure so you are kind of on a path of no return.

No point in revisiting things. It wasn't as if she died unnecessarily from a curable disease. I think the best I can say is that she died earlier than she should have due to implementation of the Liverpool Care Pathway. However, the Pathway protocol itself ensured that her death was painless.

But then again, that is what thought then, and still think now, when I knew nothing about these things. The more I learn at university, the more angry I get. I did not know better. But doctors back then did, and did they do the right thing? Did I ask them enough questions?

I am afraid that learning more at university will make me re-visit and re-think the whole thing. And I am so scared that because of knowing more, I will have some belated trauma about Jane's death. I don't want that. I have accepted it and, mostly the way it went. If gaining knowledge about it means I am going to doubt every decision that was made back then, I prefer to remain ignorant.

PS: For those who are really interested in what the LCP *really* says, you can read the entire LCP document guidelines here. You will see that there is nothing wrong with the pathway itself and that the problems are its implementation.

Music Review by Truly Indie: Corinne Lucy - Black

2012-11-25T20:36:00.001Z

I just need to mention this for a minute. Because I like this very much. My friend Corinne got a lovely review for her song Black.

"It seems more and more common these days for young female singers to either "over sing" and lose sight of melody, or put on some kind of fake accent in a blatant parody of the popular singer of the day.

Every now and then something comes along and takes you completely by surprise. Someone with the imagination and talent to buck the trend... Enter Northampton's own Corinne Lucy..."

Read the rest here: Truly Indie: Corinne Lucy - Black

Now I might be biased because I think Corinne is pretty amazing, especially because she records all her songs in her own home studio, but it is nice to see other people agree. Here is the finished production of the song Black:

.

And here is an older acoustic version of the same song.

Like what you hear? Check out Corinne's website at corinnelucy.com. Or her Facebook page. For more videos, there is also her YouTube Channel.

On working. Kind of.

2012-11-08T18:21:00.001Z

So I have been at university for over a month now. So far the lectures have all been interesting and I really am enjoying learning stuff about how people communicate on different levels, how the body works and how disease impacts on the body. How a problem with your breathing can lead to heart failure. That kind of stuff. And some philosophical things too.

Ask yourself this: What is a definition of Healthy? Is it being free of disease? What about mental illness then? Is it being happy? What if you have diabetes that is fully under control so it does not have any impact on your life (think Steve Redgrave who won a bunch of gold medals as a diabetic)? You would say you were healthy eventhough you have a disease.

That kind of thing fascinates me.

On the down side, I still have not finished the assignments we were given a month ago. I now have only 2 weeks left to finish them and I am properly freaking out. I am struggling greatly with not knowing exactly what is expected of me. I am not the only one it seems so that is some kind of relief. Discussing it with others only makes it more confusing because people all seem to have a different idea of what is being asked of us. It appears that, as usual, I am thinking about this far too deeply, with others spending only a couple of hours on writing theirs and me spending hours and hours and hours reading interesting articles, only to then feel I have so much information that I can not longer make sense of it.

One of the biggest problems I have is not knowing what is expected of me. My course places a big emphasis on reflective learning, research and deciding for myself where the gaps in my knowledge are. This is an extremely confusing way of learning for me as I have no idea what is asked of me. It makes is nearly impossible for me to plan my time because if I come across a gap in my knowledge that needs more time, I have not planned for this and my schedule goes out the window. The fear of this is paralysing and makes it very difficult to concentrate on other work that I could be doing.

Furthermore, at the start of modules, we are told what the assessment will be but we are not (yet) told what exactly we are supposed to do for that. So they might tell us: a 3000 word essay to be handed in in 3 months on Topic XXX. I assume that we will be given more information later on in the module. But for me, this causes great panic. I need to know what I am supposed to do right away so I can give it a place in my head. Again, I panic and can hardly focus on the tasks at hand, due to fear of missing vital information about work that lies months ahead. This causes me great distress and makes me feel I am unable to handle the course even though I am perfectly able to reach the required standards.

I would benefit greatly from a tutor or study skills tutor who would help me by explaining exactly what is asked of me, right from the start of the module. So that I can relax in the knowledge that I have made a plan and that things are under control and that I am not missing anything vital.

I have bitten the bullet and have applied for Disabled Student Allowance. I don't know what this can do for me but apparently they might give me money (yay) from which the university can pay a personal tutor who can sit with me and help me organise things. It was very depressing to have to go to an interview and say: I have a learning disability, please help me. I am afraid that I will now have a sticker on my head that says: DISABLED STUDENT. I have never really seen my ADHD as a disability. It is just a part of me that I hate very much but hey-ho, there you have it. I guess I might as well ask for all the hep I can get and then see what is useful to me eventually. I might find things easier in the second year. No idea.

So here I am at 6pm in the university library, trying to do work. Instead I procrastinated and wrote this blog instead. Duh.

On a positive note: I went to Poole last week to see Girlfriend play a lovely little gig. Poole is a mere 3 hours driving from here. Luckily I did not have to drive. It was very lovely and of course Girlfriend was great. As usual. We have booked ourselves in to a lovely little old pub/B&B for New Year's Eve. Just the two of us, in front of a log fire in the old pub, totally ignoring time, probably falling asleep before midnight. It is in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales, almost in the middle of nowhere. Gorgeous. I can not wait.

Trois Vallees 2006 with Caz, Jane, me and Claire.

This morning, as I was watching The Gadget Show on Dave, I got a bit sad. They were snowboarding and testing gadgets. I felt a pang of sadness. I won't be snowboarding this year. I guess I could go if I really really wanted to but I don't want to go alone. Also, I am lazy. There is no driving force behind organising it so I am not doing it. And I won't have time. And I won't have money. And if I get injured when at university, I will have to drop out of the course until I can attend lectures again. I don't want to take that risk. It made me really sad. I fucking LOVE snowboarding. I would be extremely sad if I never did it again. Maybe I can sneak in to Milton Keynes indoor ski slope some time over the Christmas period and touch some snow. Ugh, totally unexpectedly just teared up. Friend walked in and said: what are you doing? I said: Looking through my pictures to find a nice one of me in the snow to go with this blog post. And suddenly I was all weepy...

Now I have procrastinated long enough to write this blog post. I must do some actual work.

Making a start

2012-10-08T16:16:00.002+01:00

So then, here I am in the library of the university. My second week of lectures has started and it is quite full on. Not so much with lectures but with homework. We are expected to write a Reflective Learning Essay of around 3 hand written pages for EVERY lecture we go to this module. Topics are different per lecture so I am expected to write individual essays about Hygiene, Aseptic Technique, First Aid, Basic Life Support etc. Eleven in total. And they need to reflect what I have learned as well as prove that I have done more reading on the subject. So it all needs to be referenced etc. To be handed in by the end of November. And that is just for the first module. A 'light load', we have been told.

I am finding this all a bit confusing. Unlike in school, they don't actually tell you what you are expected to know. You have a lecture and they give you recommended reading. Then in the Reflective thingy, I need to show what else I have learned. Surely this means all students learn different things? So how do I know I have learned the thing they want me to learn? This is a case of Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense:

"There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know."

So how do I know that there is something I don't know, if I don't know I should know about it? I guess I will have to accept that this is the way university works: You find your own learning.

Now for someone with Attention Deficit Disorder, this lack of clarity is extremely confusing. I need structure. I need to know what is expected of me. But the modern nursing degrees are all about self-reflection, finding your own way, discovering what you need to know.

Which is a pain in the backside. For example, here are some tips for lecturers on how to teach ADD-students:

It is helpful to give students written and oral information about their assignments; to be very clear regarding expectations; to provide examples of good and poor quality products; to be willing to discuss the assignments and look over drafts (class size permitting); and to offer choices whenever possible (e.g. oral presentations, essays, group format, etc.).

So basically the opposite of the approach my course is taking. And so for the first time ever, I have made an appointment with the disability student support people. I am not struggling too much just yet. But if I start struggling in the future, I can not longer say: But I have ADD, as they will assume I am using it as an excuse. So reluctantly, I am basically asking them to classify me as having a learning disability. I am pretty upset about that. Because surely if I can't study to be a nurse, then I can't actually BE a nurse either, right? It makes me feel like a fraud, that really I am just lazy and should get on with it like everyone else.

But then again, it turns out many of my course mates have not even started looking at the Reflective essays yet .Not put pen to paper at all. And I have. So maybe I am not behind at all. Maybe I am ahead. Maybe I am making too high a demand on myself. Maybe, therefore, the ADD is not a problem at all. Maybe, therefore, I am just setting myself up with an excuse if I fail. A nice and handy bit of protection. That kind of makes me callous and lazy. Right? And so we get back to the start: Just get on with it. It seems I have maneuvered myself in a position where I just can not win. Where my conclusion about myself is always going to be: not good enough.

Take today. I have spent the whole day at the computer. And maybe only done 60 minutes of actual work. Last week, I spent 4 hours on these essays. And maybe only did 2 hours of actual work. But if my output in those hours is higher than the output of other students, then surely this is not a problem? I guess not. But the way I see it, is that if I was able to use ALL these hours constructively, I would nearly be done already!

I have been looking for strategies that help me work. So far, it appears I can not work at home. I am too distracted and I get nothing done. So I have sat in pubs, bars & libraries. Not much better but at least SOME work gets done. Girlfriend is very helpful in listening to me discuss my lectures. I talk to her, she asks questions. She is helpful with strategies and ideas on how I could work more efficiently. I think in the end, I am glad I did not go to Plymouth, or even Coventry. I would have felt utterly lonely without friends and Girlfriend to fall back on for relief.

Oh dear, this is all a bit navel gazing, isn't it? That is the risk of writing as the thoughts come to my mind. Of having no structure or defined topic before starting to write these blog posts. Tough shit for you, dear reader. I suspect it will only get worse in the next few years.

A new start. Again.

2012-09-25T19:00:00.000+01:00

Today was the start of yet another new beginning. My first day at university.

I am able to do this course because of the money Jane left me. I am only doing the course because Jane died and I want to turn the tragedy in to something good. Jane always encouraged me to do it and we agreed I would start once she completed her PhD. I am finally doing the course I have been wanting to do since I was 18. I am scared I won't be able to do the course (what with having ADHD and all). I am scared I won't make any friends and that people will find me a pain in the arse. I am incredibly worried about not being organised enough and having missed something vitally important like enrolling for modules, time tables, whatever. So I am panicky. I am scared that Girlfriend will find me boring if I can only talk about my course.

All those things culminated last night in a highly emotional evening. I cried (and cried and cried and cried and cried, as the Invocal song goes). Thankfully Girlfriend was with me and all was well with the world by the time we went to bed.

I guess I underestimated the emotional impact of the whole thing. I am still not sure how to marry up missing Jane and crying over that kind of thing on important life events, and being utterly in love with Girlfriend. Most of all, I am still not sure how I can tell her that all my love is hers. That I am not holding some back for Jane in some way. But that it still means I cry about the whole thing at times. I don't even know exactly what the crying is about when it happens. I can only marvel at Girlfriend's ability to understand me. She is a bit awesome.

So, what happened on my first day?

Students kept talking whilst lecturers were talking,making it hard for me to concentrate and I nearly snapped at them.
I got impatient when some people were holding up the discussion by asking very detailed questions about their individual enrollment and Student Finance situation. With 150 students in the room, that is NOT THE TIME & PLACE.
The university intranet did not reflect our time table correctly and staff are so far unable to tell us where we are supposed to go for our lectures, which groups we are in and where the lectures will be.
Some people think it is perfectly acceptable to arrive 30 minutes late. (The girl got told she was not allowed in. GO TEACHER!)
Car travel to campus is discouraged so they charge £5 for the car park. FOR 3 YEARS! So I bought a pass right away.
I am going to lose SO MUCH WEIGHT due to cycling to university every day. I shall be thin & gorgeous once more.

So all in all not a bad day. Another introduction day on Thursday and hopefully on Monday, all niggles will be sorted out and things can begin in earnest.

Double Take

2012-09-01T23:51:00.000+01:00

Dear Jane,

I am pretty much used to the fact that you are dead.

In fact, I think I might even go as far as saying that I am over it.

Bold statement, isn't it.

What does it even mean?

Being over it is not the same as no longer feeling pangs of sadness. It does not mean no longer feeling sad when I think of you. It does not mean I have forgotten about you. It does not mean I have stopped wishing all of this never happened. It does not mean I don't think about you every day. Heck, writing this blog post is already making me cry.

Random picture of you and your sister at the 2008 V Festival

And still, I think I am over it. Not done with it. Over it.

I can live my life without you. I am happy without you. I am extremely sad about my past during the years that you were ill. But I am very hopeful and happy about the future. Whatever it may bring. I am happy with Girlfriend. I reckon you would have liked her. I admit that without Girlfriend I would be a lot less happy. (Right away a new blogpost springs to mind: What if I am only happy because I am with Girlfriend? Will I fall back into despair and missing you loads again if, God forbid, Girlfriend and I ever split up?? That is a scary thought)

I am grateful for the opportunity you have given me to go to University and do the thing you always told me I should do. If it wasn't for you, I would have had neither the courage or the money. So whatever I achieve at University, you made it possible. And for that reason alone, I will always remember what you gave me. Because everything I will do with my work, until the day I retire, will be a reminder of you. In a way, it will be in honour of you.

I remember one day, when we were watching the London Marathon, you turned to me and said: "Don't ever be stupid and run a marathon in my honour or memory. It is a ridiculous thing to do." Thank God for that. Mind you, not because you did not respect others who do that. Just the idea that someone as lazy as me would run a marathon in memory of someone who hated running with such a passion as you did made you laugh. I think becoming a nurse is a much better thing to do in honour and memory of you.

One again, this blog post started out as one thing and has become something else completely. SO let's get back to what I set out to say.

I think I am over your absence. Maybe not your death. Maybe not your illness. Maybe not the injustice. Maybe not the sadness. But my life without you is a good life. And reading back through some of the stuff I wrote right after you died, that is more than ever dared to hope.

But some days, I forget that you are dead. And I automatically think: I want to tell Jane. Or something happens to someone and I want to tell someone about it. Only to realise that the only person who would understand the meaning of it, is you. So no point in telling it to anyone else. They would listen and nod, but not quite be able to share the understanding. Simply because they weren't there.

Like today. With work, we have moved offices. We now work from the same office as the Out of Hours GPs. You and I both had the same GP so I have seen him a few times since you died. He is a friendly chap. But this morning when I walked in to the new office, who but Dr A. was sitting there, doing his weekend shift. We had a nice chat, but as professionals this time. I explained what we do for terminally ill patients, how we support the GPs and District Nurses and how I came to work for the very same people that he had referred you to for palliative care. And I felt such pride. For the things I have achieved. And I wanted to tell someone. I wanted to tell you. I could tell Girlfriend. I could tell other friends. But to them, it would just be a simple: "I work with my own GP now, isn't that funny."

They would, by virtue of being lucky enough to never having been to an appointment with you, not quite understand what it felt like. To talk to the man who saw me trying to get you to talk to him in his consultation room. They don't remember what it was like when I sat next to you and you did not understand his questions. What it was like when he ended up speaking to me instead of you because you were confused. And how that was painful for all three of us in that room.

He was part of your story. Of our story. And now he is becoming part of just my story.

So it made me do a double take. Because I could not share it with the only person who would really understand. Because my first thought was: I must tell Jane. Even if it was a split-second thought that I did not even articulate properly in my head. It was a fleeting thought. An incomplete impulse. Like thoughtlessly reaching for a cigarette and realising halfway that you gave up smoking weeks ago.

I think times like that are the times when I miss you most. Not so much when I am out shopping for food. Or when I am in the pub. Or when I am doing fun stuff. Because those are things I can do with other people; 'generic things' if you like. But there is nobody to share the exact understanding of those particular things with. Just like there are other things I share with other people that you would never have understood.

I guess I am saying that the things I did with you that I now do with other people are fine. I don't specifically need you for those things. I can do those things, be happy doing those things and even be happy thinking about how we did those things. Like going to the cinema. Meeting up for coffee at lunch time. Sharing drinks in the pub with friends. But the things I did or discussed or experienced ONLY with you; when I come across stuff like that, I can still get very sad. Because it reminds me of what I have lost. And of how awesome you were.

Geez, what a long and rambling post is this. Maybe I should employ an editor. Although, it is my blog. My letter to you. I can write whatever the fuck I want.

You're never going to read it any way.

Marieke
x

Olympic Fever

2012-08-03T23:03:00.001+01:00

A couple of days ago, I went to London to sniff up some of the Olympic atmosphere. I did not want to miss the opportunity to see something of the Olympics, the biggest show on earth. But having not put in any preparation or money, the only option to see any sports was the road cycling as this is free to watch for everyone who can find a spot along the route.

I went with Girlfriend and another friend. Girlfriend is not really in to sport so I was worried she might get bored. There was a lot of travel involved in getting to Hampton Court where we would be watching the cycling's Time Trial. We found a brilliant spot to base ourselves, got the Magners out and waited. The crowds were doing Mexican waves and chanting. It was great fun because the weather was brilliant.

We saw Bradley Wiggins win a gold medal! Wuhoo..completely underwhelming Hyde Park BT London Live experience. The place was as good as abandoned when we were expecting huge crowds, a party atmosphere and people watching big screens in their thousands. After a quick pee (no queue for the toilets, this should tell you how quiet it was), we left Hyde Park and made our way to the Piece the Resistance of the day: The Holland Heineken House. The HHH is THE place to be for Dutch fans during the Olympics. First introduced in Barcelona in 1992, the HHH is an awesome place. Every night, they have any Dutch medal winners on stage and we Dutch cheer them on. Usually it is a massive tent complex, but this year, the house is in the splendid Alexandra Palace.

Lucky for us, Netherlands had just won a bronze and a gold so there were 2 athletes to cheer on. Warmed up with some ridiculous Dutch music, the crowd was going wild. Girlfriend and our other friend looked highly bemused. I tried to explain about Andre Hazes but they did not seem to appreciate it. But the thousands of other Dutch people certainly did.

It was a brilliant night. I was so happy to have finally been to a Holland Heineken House. And so close to home. In reality, we did not catch much of the Olympic fever. This could have been a regular day out in London with a bit of cycling in the middle. Lots of my friends seem to be snapping up tickets to the Games at the moment. If I had more time off, I would definitely go back this week and try to catch some actual sport.

Olympic fever (It started out so well)

2012-07-28T08:31:00.002+01:00

When London got the Games, we were going to volunteer.

When you got ill, we were going to get tickets for the fencing.

When I was watching last night, I thought: You would have laughed your head off at the opening ceremony.

You missed it. I feel angry on your behalf. We were cheated out of some awesome sporty times together. We went to London to see the time trial at the start of the Tour de France. I lost all of the pictures we took that day. I'm off to London on Wednesday to see the Olympic time trial. I did not plan it that way. I was always going to go and see something of London during the Games, I mean as if I would ever stay away from such an awesome event. I'd go on my own if needed. Luckily I don't have to.I got tickets to get in to the Holland Heineken House and Hyde Park.

For years, your favourite hat was the Holland Heineken House slouch hat from the Sydney Olympics. Obviously I shall wear it when I go to London on Wednesday. Because when you were still alive, I never got the chance to wear it: you always nicked it before I could touch it! Ha! Finally it is mine again!

BTW, the probate solicitor finally returned all the documents to me. A pile of copies of our Civil Partnership certificate and your death certificate. Together with your Birth Certificate. Probate is now officially done and dusted. I guess that means I no longer have any legal ties to you. Don't know why that makes me sad. I miss you.

I am looking after a relatively young man with a brain tumour and his wife. I am far too involved. I know where he will end up. I know the road he has ahead of him. He is talking about getting better. About walking around the block. About maybe going on a last holiday. About coming off the steroids. Of starting his 3rd different chemotherapy drugs to try and do what the first 2 could not achieve. I know that none of these things will happen. His tumour will slowly rob him of everything he ever was and his wife of everything she ever wanted to be.

And once again, there is nothing I can do to stop it.

Oh fuck. Now I'm crying. Great. Not quite the post I had intended to write.