Headache

So I spent most of the afternoon in the hospital, with a migraine, they’ve been getting progressively worse the last few months been going through normal painkillers like crazy not all that many though only 24 in two weeks. As I’m not like some the painkillers are there for when it hurts not to be downed like a two cent gum drop.
There was a time when you had a migraine that you got a nice quick injection and were sent on your way, after all there are more serious patients to see, ones that are bleeding or yelling and screaming.
Hospitals have a rule if something is coming out of you; you get to be seen faster than someone else, which basically means, bleeding, birthing or brown bagging.
there weren’t many there today, an older lady who was yelling and screaming in pain, I could hear every word that was said and heard that she had broken her patella, that’s a knee cap by the way the doctor said if she was younger they would possibly do surgery but because of her age and the fact that she wasn’t a marathon runner it wasn’t worth it.
Another much older man was getting loaded into an ambulance taking him to a nursing home, heard his son talking to someone on his phone outside.
Another man came in about ten minutes before I left, he’d run out of tablets but as getting in to actually see a doctor at the doctors surgery here is near impossible he’d gone into emergency instead, the nurse told him try the next town which is only 30 kilometres away, see its’ a two month waiting list here, which is fine if you aren’t really sick just want a check up or you pre-book say if you are having a baby or something but otherwise you’ve got Buckleys chance.

Course you spend most of the time in the Emergency Department waiting, waiting for the doctor to see you in the first place waiting for the drip to start peeping that its finished.
So had a really good look at an old piece of medical equipment, an emergency room procedure bed very nicely made of stainless steel with a black vinyl padded cover, foot pedals and rotating handles all made out of stainless steel the bottom half painted green with a plaque saying A+H.
See I couldn’t lie down on that particular bed as it didn’t have drop sides, so spent the entire time in a chair staring at the back end of this bed, old and worn in places the foam stuffing appearing at the corners, an old relic of the medical past yet it still serves its purpose in our country hospital.
Who knows how many, young children with broken arms from falling off the jungle gym have sat on it, their crying faces looking around the room waiting for the doctor.
Who knows how many have had stitches from who knows what accident whilst laid on that bed.

We don’t have enough doctors here, yes very nice multimillion dollar doctors surgery, with attached blood testing facility but not enough doctors. If you run out of tablets your best option is the Chemist, they’ll do you a prescription for a cost.
The hospital is meant to be getting an upgrade too maybe that old bed might be replaced and maybe we might get some more doctors..maybe.

My Mother

As some of you may know, my mother died in May, so I get to sit here using her computer as it is much, much flashier than ol’ Frankenpooter who is currently sitting on the dining room floor under the table. Keeps going into sleep mode without warning which is actually something my mother did all the time, only you could wake her up easier. Mum was 81, she’d had a fall got a brain aneurism which was removed but after that she just went downhill forgot to look after herself properly, last time I was down

,

I arrived at her house no one there, her bag was on the chair, gates to the drive wide open, lucky side door was unlocked or I wouldn’t have been able to get in. I worked out quite quickly that she’d been carted off to the hospital, see her toes from being diabetic had gotten infected the nurse had come around for the home visit to dress them and called the ambulance.

I couldn’t find the keys for the car so had to walk 3 kilometres to the hospital, I was down for the week mum spent all of that time and most of in fact all of the time after in one hospital or another.
At one visit my sister and myself where in the hospital room with her, and mum needs to pee of course she can’t walk the nurses have to stick her on this wheelchair thing with like a potty seat on it, the entire thing person and all goes over the toilet. Mum really wasn’t with it and she says “why are these nice girls taking me upstairs?”

My sister and I just looked at each other and laughed, neither of us ever worked out where mum thought she was, but it was so funny, this little old lady ok so not all that little mum was never “little” with grey hair, her nightie pulled up in the wrong places being wheeled away on the potty chair and this posh, dressed up going out to dinner voice says that.

My mother well, she was hyper intelligent much more intelligent than some of the teachers at school, she told me once “teachers are not so smart” of course both my sister and my niece are teachers which says a lot about them.The car keys did eventually turn up by the way, they were in mums pocket typical she leaves her handbag on the chair and takes the car keys with her, funny thing that she wasn't allowed to drive had her licence taken off her because of the brain thing, mum never had much balance anyway

When she was younger around 10 or so she used to get really bad ear infections, so you say what’s so bad about that, well this was the 1940’s remember (The first safe antibiotics were invented in 1945 by British scientists Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain)

When I say really bad ear infection I mean really bad explosive going into the brain type bad! So what could they do? The doctors removed the infection that’s what they did, feel up behind one of your ears feel the bump there the hard bone bit my mum didn’t have that on one side made her 98% deaf in that ear, a 10 year old now would have antibiotics or a cochlear implant or a hearing aid, mum had a hearing aid, she never used it “it keeps falling out” she would say and then say “pardon? Did you say something?”
Of course she wasn’t only deaf in that ear but had hardly any balance, your ears give you balance, mum couldn’t ride a bike, well ok she could kind of wobble around on one, and she would spend more time pushing a bike than riding it, which is how she met my dad the first time. She was pushing her bike he offered to help she said “its fine” and he said “oh ok” and that was it till later. Thinking about that now she probably didn’t hear a word he said and just said its fine like you do when you don’t quite hear someone.

Mum had a computer back in the early 80’s old DOS thing, green screen monitor the kind were you had to type in commands like RUN and GO, a load of her older stuff is here on this computer, it has on it a pile of files all of my mother’s stories, not short either some of them, just opened one up and the counter at the bottom of Word just took off like a train, it stopped at 312 pages! That particular one is one that I haven’t read yet, looks like it may be difficult to read as well, the formatting is crazy, its typed in red and all crossed out, should try I suppose.

See what happens with Win 7 and Word 2007 is they can read the old stuff the old original Word 2.0 files but as I've found out they get a little scrambled formatting wise, readable but I’ll have to fix before I can print , hmm do I really want to print 312 pages maybe not.

Anyway I’m getting sidetracked yet again, that is a worry in itself mum wasn’t all that good even before they discovered this aneurism, the reason she went in for a brain scan because she was going “funny” no not clown funny, funny peculiar the “I can’t remember” type of funny
She went from hyper intelligent, extremely organised to leaving a pot burning on the stove, no wait she was doing that in the 70’s , which is what I tried explaining to the doctors when I was down there, she was never all that capable my dad did the pot rescuing, the turning off of heaters too close to the clothes airier and the taken your medication type of stuff, he did dishes and vacuuming too.

Mum wrote, went to meetings and talked in a posh voice on the phone organised who got what card at Christmas, who sat where and who did what, she always did but towards the end with Dad gone (my dad died two years ago) she was lost, lonely and confused
It was hard for her, she could always do things, like write. Her typing speed was amazing in the 80’s her hands were just a blur on the keyboard %100 accuracy too but she got so she wouldn’t make a new paragraph, her emails where a chore to read just one long sentence and she’d go off on a tangent she knew what she was on about but no one else did. When we were down for Dad’s funeral I had to type for her, as even though she blamed the keyboard it was my mother who just couldn’t get her former proficient touch typing fingers to hit the right keys.
She had problems with Win 7 too when I first booted this computer up there were files all over, empty folders and scanned pictures done numerous times because she just couldn’t find were they’d been auto saved and couldn’t seem to learn that Win 7 has Libraries, it took me ages to sort them out of course silly me sorted after I’d gone and scanned 2000+ photographs should have done it before as I found a few more, not many only a few of the dog but they should have gone on the disk that I sent out to family along with the pictures that mum took with her digital camera, ones of the ceiling, her feet, of the desk and her EYE !

My Mother wrote and published two books

These links don’t really do much just show you that they have actually been published, the actual books are both available at the Birdwood History Centre“Tales from the Dunny” and Blumberg - Birdwood: A History 1848-1998

Ref : When Antibiotics where invented

Note: I do have a brother as well ...he is NOT a teacher , he writes computer programmes