On Perspective

Today I got a bit of grief for not understanding a joke.
It goes like this:

So the main thing is that I have never heard this myth that people having olfactory hallucinations during strokes smell burned toast.
It really helps if you've heard the story the joke is dependent on. But I still don't find it 'funny' unless you factor in that burned toast in the ocean is just soggy bread. And that's not exactly hilarious either.

Perspective is a huge thing too and strokes aren't especially funny. Illnesses, diseases, medical conditions in general...problematic. It's one thing to watch a disabled person make jokes about their own condition - people are allowed to poke fun at themselves, it's when people poke fun at others it starts to get difficult.

So, having seen this do the I retweeted it with the following: 

I've seen this one do the rounds several times and it's no good

I have to ask... WHY IS IT (allegedly) FUNNY?

Probably just me being *sensitive*

but I don't find anything about strokes funny.

The @thelifeofsharks twitter account retweeted me with the (partial) comment: 

We’re sorry you don’t understand the joke.

We’re not for everyone.

Wow, 'I'm sorry you don't get the joke' is such a non-explanation for why you're 'joking' about a very serious issue. 
Another tweeter replied: 

i found it funny, and ive had strokes before. it's set up well,

and uses the toast thing effectively to make a joke

that even i can laugh at

Look, I'm happy for you. I don't know what kind of strokes you had or why but I see from your bio that you're pretty young - maybe that has enabled you to make a good recovery or maybe you're just in a really good headspace to accept what happened to you because, again, perspective is a pretty important factor.

This, for example, is MY perspective.
When I was 6 years old my grandad had a stroke*. They didn't have MRIs or whatever in those days and there's no good way of defining different severities of stroke anyway. He lived another 16 years pretty much in one room like a prisoner in his own home. He had a poor quality of life; he died in 2000 aged 91 - of complications from the catheter he'd had to use because of the stroke.
His wife died less than 3 months later, also of stroke, but then she was 95.
Their youngest daughter, my mother, worked her ass of all those years to keep them in their own home - doing all their groceries & laundry, doing the middle-of-the-night call outs when he fell. My dad did all their gardening and DIY.
My mum had her stroke* on 16th April 2018 aged 73. She has been affected far worse than her father was - he could stay in his own home with assistance, meals on wheels, carers in twice a day... My mum has to have someone with her 24/7 which is me (with a little help from my daughters & dad - when they're available).
See, this doesn't just wreck the life of the person it happens to. I had to give up my own life, my hopes & dreams to care her. And if that sounds callous I don't much care - I did not have a happy childhood and I never had a great relationship with either of my parents. I hadn't long graduated, my youngest kid was recently off to uni - I was finally gonna get my life back. Unfortunately, for both of us, I'm an only child and my mum's partner wasn't up to the job. So now I'm stuck at home being a domestic drudge on zero income living my worst nightmare. The things I have seen and done in the past year and a half...
*We're fairly sure both had subsequent strokes (I think they were confirmed at autopsy in my grandfather's case; my mother is terrified of all things medical so we've pretty much nursed her through the 'episodes')

So yeah, I'm glad that the stroke-survivor who responded that they found it funny is in a position to do so. But that's far from true for all. For many people the position is utterly devastating. You won't find my mum laughing about her funny incontinence or the fact she chokes when she eats or drinks or the million other shitty things she has to endure every damn day. I'm not laughing either, I cry myself to sleep most nights wondering what I did to deserve this karma.

Brain damage* is horrific however it happens but somehow I think it must be a little easier to accept if there's a terrible accident or something. The thing with a stroke is that there's not an outside cause, your body can just do it to itself. My mum was watching TV for heaven's sake! If she hadn't has a partner to phone and raise the alarm...well, she'd have ended up like Michael.
Michael lived down the road from us. Back in the spring his neighbour called his ex wife (my godmother) because she was concerned...he'd been dead a considerable time. I hope to God he dropped dead of a heart attack or something but he could've had a stroke and just lain there 'til he died of dehydration. Maybe there was a reason no one cared about him in life but it's a horrible way to imagine someone going.
*Only in the past couple of weeks did I become aware that there's also such a thing as a spinal stroke - so you can end up permanently and completely paralysed for no damn reason.

I'm certainly not gonna say I speak for any stroke survivor when I'm not one myself; I'm not even gonna claim to speak for any other person whose life has been affected by stroke. Maybe I am being an over sensitive snowflake but this is my reality.
For some people a stroke is little more than a TIA - a 24 hour scare. Some have more serious experiences that require a longer recovery time. Some people will never fully recover; some don't even get a partial recovery but remain seriously impaired as long as they live. Some will die. And they're all called stroke, regardless of whether you can live a fairly normal life, go back to work etc...or whether you're left catastrophically disabled. Lumping all stroke-survivors (and their loved-ones) into one category like that is just nuts when it's a ridiculously diverse set of circumstances.

• Dead within 28 days of stroke - 28%
• Dead within one year of stroke - 41%
• Dead within five years of stroke - 60%

Source: https://www.saebo.com/stroke-statistics/

• Around 2% of the UK population is a stroke survivor.
• Stroke is the UK's 4th biggest killer (1 person every 13 minutes) and the leading cause of acquired disability.
• 1 in 8 deaths worldwide is caused by stroke.

Source: https://www.stroke.org.uk/sites/default/files/state_of_the_nation_2017_final_1.pdf

I find the statistics pretty hard reading though:
About half get a brain scan WITHIN AN HOUR of arriving in hospital, almost 9 out of 10 patients have a brain scan within 12 hours. At 18 hours in they were still insisting it couldn't possibly be a stroke and finally agreed to do a scan 'just in case'.
In Scotland 8 out of 10 people are admitted to a stroke unit within 24 hours. We're in England, my mum waited a week for a bed to become available.
And then the shit about therapies and rehabilitation - everything stopped dead as soon as she was discharged. No physio, no speech therapy, nothing.

So yeah, forgive me if I don't find it funny.

Espantapájaros

So today (03 April 2013) I got a new tatdoodle - my second.  Did I ever post about my first?  I forget, so here it is just in case...

It's my own design, the top symbol being based on something my mother once designed and my dad built into the family home...it's an O, J and H overlaid (O for Owen - my dad, J for Janet - my mum, H for moi - the only child) and, in my version there's a little nod to the family cat as well.  The second symbol is similarly an E and K for my kids.
I agonised about it forever (that is obviously a slight exaggeration) and finally got it inked in the summer of 2011.
The new one was a much quicker process - about 6 months in the planning, which by my standards is a rush job!  In fact, I booked the appointment the day I finalised the design.  As the meaning behind it is kind of 'carpe diem' it seemed ridiculous to agonise about it so I seized the day and went for it...made me nervous as hell!!!
So here it is...

'Espantapájaros' is Spanish for scarecrow...it was initially inspired by the My Chemical Romance song of the same name - I found a video on YouTube with Spanish subtitles and I just thought it was the coolest word ever (^_~).  But there's a lot more to it than "ooh, funky foreign word!"
To me, this is all about fear.  Scarecrows are kind of scary even if you're not a crow but for me it's about the fear of being a scarecrow - rooted to the spot, unable to move, watching the world pass me by.  I've spent a lot of time feeling like I'm standing still, constrained by circumstances or afraid to take a chance.
It's on my left wrist...'left' is 'sinister' in Latin.  The second 'a' is an open heart-shaped padlock - emotional vulnerability being a fairly obvious fear.  The star over the 'j' is a nod to "reaching for the stars" - being afraid of failure tends to lead to not aiming high, or even setting goals.
The inclusion of the Fearless Vampire Killers fangs logo was a more recent tweak; the 'o' was originally going to be Frank Iero's 'Fun Ghoul' logo and actually only got scrapped at the last minute.  I'd been trying to work the fangs in for a while but it was just getting too big...and this is not a subtle design. I don't have dainty wrists and this wraps around so you can't see it all at once (I don't want to make it too easy for anyone to read me!).  On being asked about the bandname FVK stress that they aren't fearless...

Ideally this tat will eventually have a 'sister' on my right wrist - it's emotional counterpart.  I haven't figured out a design yet but it'll be "te mantendré a salve esta noche" which is again Spanish and a line from the same song - specifically "I'll keep you safe tonight".  To me that's the polar opposite to fear - having someone to hold your hand and tell you it'll all be okay...and yes, maybe I'll be saying that to myself but what the hell.  Just as this tat features the colour red the other might have green.  That was an idea my eldest just came up with today, so don't hold me to it!

I know this tatdoodle isn't the best doodled tat ever but at least it's personal and unique.  Maybe I'm a bit of a control freak but I'd rather do my own than pick something generic.  Having a super-arty friend would be seriously handy of course *sigh*
I have to admit it hurt a good bit, nothing unbearable but a good few deep breaths and a bit of eye crossing.  Wrists are pretty sensitive.  The two ends - the 'E' and the fangs were the worst, and for some reason part of the padlock...although that may have been as it went over an old burn scar?  I'm not too much of a wimp, I hope - I have had two kids and a good number of painful experiences over the years, and like all things it passes.

Mid Term Update

So...I started studying with the Open University earlier this year.  The late start AA100 course (The Arts Past and Present) runs February to September making this pretty much the mid-way point.
It's certainly proving to be a challenge but I think I'm doing pretty well so far.  I've done four out of seven TMAs (Tutor Marked Assignments) with the scores - 67%, 80%, 83% and 82%.  In fact I'm well on my way to passing the course.  I've enrolled to take A297 (Latin) and A251 (Archaeology) in the next academic year.
The friend who got me studying with the OU has sadly dropped out after being diagnosed as severely dyslexic.  It was a blow to her but thanks to the OU she now has a diagnosis.  Although it is perfectly possible for someone with Dyslexia to study at University level, she felt she couldn't continue at this time - who knows, maybe once she's learned to manage the condition she can try again?  Mind you, she wants to be a children's author and six years of study with little opportunity to write wasn't perhaps what she really wanted after all.
For a while there I felt really guilty.  She'd inspired me to study, I'd been a copycat and got my paperwork within 24 hours of her!  And, just for a while, I felt as if I'd stolen her dream.
But I didn't take this on to be a copycat, to try to keep up or go one better.  I'd never really imagined going to Uni, mostly because I never believed it could happen, but I desperately wanted to improve my life.  Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to have a job and it's not that bad - but I have to get something full time in a couple of years or so...right now my options are really limited.  I really hope studying will help.  If nothing else it's making me feel better about myself and my situation.

Mi Familia

I don't suppose anyone is remotely interested but as I've mentioned my sort-of-step-dad a few times on Twitter lately I felt I should clarify the situation for future reference.

First to explain my parents - they are two of the most screwed up individuals I have ever met. They were screwed up before they met and succeeded in making each other worse. They are difficult enough people individually but together...let's just say my childhood was decidedly odd.

My mother got pregnant with me...this presumably seemed like a good idea at the time but backfired on her spectacularly. Just like me, my mother wouldn't recognise a maternal instinct if it jumped up and bit her on the bum - like millions of other women throughout history she thought she could win my dad's affection this way. My dad (who I also call Pogsy for no adequate reason) never got over his resentment of this; my mum never got over the disappointment and I got well and truly screwed up being caught in the middle.

Strangely, my parents actually got on quite well for people who despised each other. This only served to confuse me even more! They developed a kind of friendship from being stuck with each other.

My parents split up when I was about 25. I was rather disappointed they couldn't have done it 20 years earlier...or better yet, before my conception therefore avoiding a lot of trouble.

My dad is still single - he will fall for married women... My mum has had a few boyfriends and for several years now has been with Neville bringing us back to the sort-of-step-dad issue.

My mother has no interest in getting married again (my mum and dad never married but she had been married before) or even co-habitting again. Admittedly she spends an awful lot of time at Neville's but I think she's happier knowing she has her own place to go back to if they start getting on each others nerves. So Neville is not legally my step dad or in a common-law kind of way either. However, he's a great guy and definitely part of the family so far as I'm concerned. Even my mum had a Freudian slip recently where she referred to both in an anecdote; calling Neville as my dad and my dad by his Christian name.

Years ago I told my mum that my dream boyfriend would be a long-distance lorry driver. Someone I could enjoy being with but wouldn't be under my feet all the time. But it was my mum who got the lorry driver in the end! Well, technically it's a white van and he's semi-retired but who's being pedantic?!

When they first got together Neville was travelling all over Europe couriering (sp?) stuff around. It wasn't long before my mother was tagging along. My mother who had insisted she was only going to stay in comfortable hotels in future CHOSE to camp in the back of a delivery van...nuts!

Often it was just random boxes of documents or supplies for pharmaceutical companies but sometimes it was working for popstars... One day my mum rang to say they were doing a job for "a group you'll never have heard of...Violent Femmes" I rather put her out because I had heard of them! She never once managed to catch me out: Morcheeba, Chicane, Hot Chip, Tori Amos... That seemed to bug her somehow. You'd think she'd actually have been pleased...

Anyway, in late 2008 I started harbouring a secret fantasy...that Neville would get a job for the European leg of New Kids On The Block's tour and let me tag along instead of my mum! It wasn't to be. The company he drove for went bust ahead of time. Never mind...

Neville with Smokey Robinson

Keep Out Of Reach Of Children

Six little words, so often noticed on everyday household items yet so rarely understood, let alone heeded.

So many people foolishly think the warning refers to the item on which the words appear - that the batteries, lighters or whatever are to be kept away from children. Wrong!!! After all many things are dangerous to children but do not carry such a warning. For example - a bottle of vodka would be hazardous in the hands (or stomach) of a child but it it is more likely a harrassed parent, driven to the edge of sanity, will be the one reaching for the bottle. For a parent to see that warning all too painfully late might be the last straw which sends them in a swan-dive off the nearest multi-storey car-park. Therefore no "keep out of reach of children" message appears on the label of the vodka bottle.

The words are, in fact, a warning to the reader to keep at a safe distance from children. Children are dangerous to your mental and physical wellbeing; they drain your resources and destroy your property.

Men take this well-meant advice far more than women. A man at the first hint of a child will often flee - literally! A woman tends to go all sappy and often doesn't realise the error of her ways until the child is a teenager...by which time the woman's hair has prematurely greyed from stress.

I can't stand children. Never could, even when I was one! How I ended up with two of the little blighters I am still not entirely sure about. "Hormones" had a lot to do with it, and a persuasive ex who subsequently fled in the best time-honoured tradition.

There are no maternal-instincts in my family. My own existence is similarly a confusion to my own mother - and she has had over 32 years to ponder the question. Perhaps instead of maternal-instincts in our genes we have a kind of hereditary insanity that causes us to have children despite despising the little beasts?

Thankfully my little monsters are not so little now; in fact I am well past the halfway stage! I hope and pray that by the time I turn 40 they will have flown the nest and I will be in peace at last...although the way things are going that peace might be more of the "eternal rest" variety... A friend of mine has rug-rat commitments until the age of 52. Rather her than me!

Can you tell I have been having some trials and tribulations with my offspring? Stealing, lies, fighting, cheating, betrayal of trust...and that's just the last 24 hours! Some days I really wonder how come I have managed to not kill them...

Long Hot Summer

I'm a strange duck I know but I'm dreading the possibility of a scorcher. I've never much liked the heat; especially since I was caught in an Indian heatwave back when I was 11. February was supposed to be one of the coolest months of the year and we got 108 in the shade!

India, 1990

On top of that I burn badly; pasty, non-sparkling vampire that I am. In Venezuela a couple of years later I burned so badly I blistered and had to spend about a week stuck in a hotel room.

But apart from the usual dislike of warm weather this year poses an extra challenge. At the grand old age of 32 it will be my first working summer.

When I left school I got a job in the Prison Service as an Admin Assistant. It was only a temporary position running from November until the end of the financial year - at which point my job was getting phased out anyway. After that I was a full-time mum for near enough 15 years.

I couldn't work when I was pregnant because of a condition called Hyperemesis Gravidarum - excessive morning sickness - I could barely go anywhere or do anything almost the whole way through. When my eldest was born in 1996 there really was no option but to go on the dole unless you had a high-paid job and could afford childcare...or else you had family to take up the slack. Neither applied in my case so I fell into the benefit trap.

Earlier this year after six months of searching but only getting two interviews I finally got a job. Not my dream job but there weren't many options. Going back into admin proved impossible without current experience, references and buckets of confidence (which after a decade and a half trapped at home I was severely lacking) so I became a cleaner.

To work the requisite number of hours to qualify for the variety of top-up benefits my family would need for survival I had to take two cleaning jobs; at opposite ends of the day. My jobs run 0545-0745 and 1700-1900 most days. Getting up at 0430 and, being a night owl I'm rarely asleep before 0100. Fortuunately I grab what sleep I can in the daytime. Even at weekends a full night's sleep is rarer now that when I had a newborn in the house because my body-clock is so messed up!

It has been a physical struggle. For a woman my considerable weight I have always been active if not actually fit - but walking 8km just to and from work every day has been agony. Four hours physical activity on top of that and I live in a permanent state of near-exhaustion.

I don't mean to complain - so many people need jobs desperately now and I know I'm lucky but it's hard adjusting. A lot of my co-workers are younger, slimmer and many have cars. Listening to one teenager b**** about her car being in for repairs so she had to walk was almost beyond my endurance! That said, one of my co-workers is 75 and I have no idea how she does it...

So I've been at this for over three months now. The aches and pains are easing but I'm not losing weight unfortunately. Leaving the house at 5am is far, far easier now it's daylight. But, as I said to begin with, I am dreading a long, hot summer.

Already I'm catching the sun on the walk to work and sweltering in the heat. I fear passing out of heat exhaustion and losing my job. I know that I shouldn't worry about things I cannot change but it's hard knowing there is nothing I can do.

Last winter we had the coldest snap for 30 or more years but that eventuality can be tackled. I can carry a change of clothes against the rain and snow, I can buy thermal undies and a thermos flask for a hot drink.

There is nothing I can do to help with the heat. I have invested in a patio set and a barbecue to 'tempt fate' but still the mercury climbs...wish me luck!

Hello world...welcome to The Heggie Zone - world of weirdness and general rambling!

This pic is of my elder daughter Erin, then aged 6 months, with my grandmother Winifred, then aged 91. I've been thinking of this photo a lot lately...getting retrospective. My grandma died 24th December 2000 so she's been gone a while. Erin is 14 now...she's getting scarily grown up and is significantly taller than me...not my 'little' baby for a long time now. Not that she ever was particularly little, weighing in at 9lbs 11!

I'm starting to look back on the past with a new eyes... I look back on my kids' younger days and wish I hadn't been so tired, stressed, young and generally barely able to cope. I look back on my relationship with my grandparents and wish I had been mature enough to get to know them...and less afraid. There's something quite scary about old people when you are young I think. A fragility that seems at odds with youth's understanding of life.

There is nothing that can bring back bygone days; to take hold of missed opportunities but I look at this photo and think how I'm going to try not to miss any more.

I will though... We cannot see what might have been, what we ought to have done until the moment has passed. Which is why history is important and why hindsight sucks! All we can ever do is live in the moment and do what we can. So I look at this photo and think - I'm glad my grandma is at peace and I'm glad my daughter has grown up strong and healthy and then I move on. Back in the present, back to what is really important.

:-)