Now it is rare for two wonderful things to happen in one week. Last week was one of those weeks.
Last Monday I kissed Sarah goodbye and had an early night. Up with the lark, to Stockport railway station to catch the 7.24 to London. Time for a nice cup of coffee and before long you're in Euston. Except not today. Today Milton Keynes decides to blow a fuse. The signals have broken down. There will be no trains running along the west coast line. To get to London we have to catch the train to Sheffield (for goodness sake) then on to London.
Sarah is wonderful. We met a few weeks ago to discuss how the Primary Care Trust should prepare for the role out of a new drug for heart conditions. She is the pharmaceutical adviser, is beautiful and intelligent, and until recently, single.
7.30 on Stockport station is a pretty dismal place. One option is to go home, of course, but the Cardiac Network has already invested a lot in my train ticket, so I'm going to have to go for it. Besides they've sent a poster of the Heart Failure project I've been leading. We're going to the National Heart Improvement Conference 2010, and it's a sort of celebration of the ten years since the publication of the Cardiac National Service Framework. Everyone will be there including the Cardiac Czar and all the Who's who of the Heart world.
I'm sooo tired but eventually we get to London. Taxi to the hotel and then dinner. There are several from the Greater Manchester network, and luckily they've brought three of their patient representatives. These 'reps' have been down rather longer than the rest of us. They came down the night before, so by the time we meet up for dinner they are in good cheer. One of them is aware of my recent run-in with a local teaching hospital over stroke services, and so I am warmly greeted. Suddenly I notice that the three of them and me are the only men there. We need two taxis to get to the restaurant. The ladies get in the first one and the men follow in a second taxi. They are pretty well informed and we agree, in the safety of an anonymous cab, that arrangement of Cardiac services in Manchester is a complete mess. Really there should be one great big Centre instead of two squabbling ones. Dinner is Mexican, chili con carne and plenty of San Miguel. A whisky night cap with my new friends is inescapable, and then to bed. The 'reps' continue their networking.
Wednesday is the day of the conference. There must be five hundred people there or more. Two key note speeches by the NHS elite, including Roger B himself, then a break. In the coffee area are the posters. I decide I'd better have a look at them and find ours.
There, to my surprise and delight is a beaming picture of me. Along side me is an explanation of the project and two graphs showing the brilliant, if statistically not yet significant, outcome so far. 'Hi, Ivan' shouts over a man I barely recognise. Oh yes, he's the doctor from Hastings that sort of co-ordinated the Heart Failure projects. He comes over. 'Thought I'd let you know. I'm using you're slide in my talk later'. 'Er great, great thanks' I reply. 'Thanks, that'll be err great'. Several other people congratulate me on the poster, and some wonder if the picture has been airbrushed. Well no, but it was taken five years ago and I've had major facial surgery since then after my ski accident.
Back to the conference and my man from Hastings is giving his talk. He's presenting a flavour of the different heart failure project over the last ten years. Yes, and there is my slide, well our slide. How cool is that? A mention at a National meeting. Brilliant. I don't really hear much of the rest of the talk as so chuffed with the mention.
At the end there's a prize to be handed out to the best projects, then lunch. I am getting a bit hungry actually. Roger B is on the stand and Mark D is reading out the winners name. 'For the category of best contribution to a quality service' says Mark. It's like the flaming Oscars. Come on. Get it over with.
'The winner is' pause 'Central Manchester blur blur'. 'What did he say' I turn to the person next to me. 'Is anyone here from Central Manchester?' Oh my goodness, he called my project. Did he? Yes he did. Oh my goodness. I stand up and run towards the stage. I do a fake trip for a laugh, but no laughs. Never mind. I reach the podium. Roger B hands me the winning certificate. 'Well done, good work' he says. I make to go for the microphone, but a speech is not required. Instead I lift the certificate aloft. A loud round of applause and cheers, and I head back to my seat. During my run to the stage I dropped my phone and briefly loose it, but I don't care. I am on top of the world and can hardly believe it. This is the pinacle of my career so far.
After, I get lots of congratulations. 'You've been hiding talent under a bush' says one. 'Well no not really'. 'I didn't have you down as a Heart Failure person' says another. 'Well I'm not really, I'm a GP'. Still I feel great and continue to feel great so some considerable time. Nothing can top this, or can it?
Well yes it can, and it did. And all in one week. Sarah and me are now 'in a relationship' on facebook. I should have bought a lottery ticket.
Monday, 29 March 2010
Saturday, 20 March 2010
Mr Crystal and the Austrian Dungeon
The light shone right in my eyes when it suddenly came on, like the dazzle of headlights on a night time country lane.
'Here, put these on' she said, and handed me a pair of unfashionable sun glasses. 'Now sit back and relax' said the efficient, matter-of-fact man. It was my dentist, Mr Crystal. I trust him and he has always been very reliable. He has pictures of his family and Manchester United in his office, and plays music while he works on my teeth. My thoughts start to drift as I sit back and relax. The Americans call their surgeries their office, and to be fair my 'surgery' looks more like an office than a surgery, so I'm going to call mine an office from now on.
Something slips under my top lip on the right and he turns away. I'm not yet sure what he's going to do today. One of my fillings had fallen out a few weeks ago, a temporary filling had also fallen out and I was expecting another temporary filling, but really I hadn't thought it through. 'It tastes like chewing gum' I say. 'It's bubble gum flavoured surface anaesthetic' he replies, while fiddling with something just out of my eye line. It's difficult to be witty with your dentists isn't it? The situation just isn't set up for it. But I feel like I need something to lighten the occasion, for the word anaesthetic can only mean one thing. An injection. An injection and lots of drilling and things. Nothing funny comes to mind anyway, just a flash back to the Austrian cellar when last I had needles and drills and wires. Then I remember and smile.
'So relax, just a little prick' I smile and recognise his joke. I try to relax. In the dentists chair is rather like being in one of those spy movies when the hero is drugged and is being interrogated. Things are happening off camera and voices and noises just add to the sense of fear, uncertainty and surrealism.
'Before you go home you must have your hev you jaw stabilized' the Austrian faxmax surgeon had said on the morning when my ambulance was due to pick me up. My mind had gone back to when I had my skiing accident about two years ago. I had been laid up in an Innsbruck University Institute for facio-maxillary surgery for 11 days following my skiing accident and it was nearly time to go home. I had survived on a diet of soup and mash potato. Actually the mash potato was a luxury I'd only managed in the last two days. This was the ward of mashed up faces, and mine was one of them.
Eventually a rather overly happy-go-lucky person arrived on the ward with a trolley. 'Benett?' he said, 'you will come wiz me'. He was evidently proud of his English. I got on the trolley. 'Ve must go down stairz in ze lift'. My ward was on the fourth floor. We descend six floors and appear in a dark corridor. My companion presses a switch and the set lights up. In my mind I can hear the sort of film music that says 'something bad is going to happen'. I'm pushed into a small room and the door closes behind me. 'You vill vait here'.
I am in a mini operating theatre. There a sink, draws and cupboards, and instruments on a trolley. It is quiet, eerily quiet.
Suddenly from behind me there is a clang of activity and someone walks in. It is a middle grade faxmax person I guess. He presents himself to me, stands straight, almost clicking his heels. He explains in accented English what the purpose of the meeting is. Basically he wants to wire my jaw so that elastic bands can be attached to stop my jaw wobbling on the journey back. Oh joy. He turns away to put on a gown and mask while muttering in German to an attractive person in a nurses uniform. 'Is that a whip she's carrying?' No can't be. He puts his gloves on with his back towards me, then turns with his hands up. The operating theatre light is behind him making his shape into a silhouette and I swear the music of psycho strikes up.
'You hef hed injections before, ya?'. 'I guess' and nod meekly. 'Ve need to give you just four'. Four! That bloody woman that skied into me, I'll kill her.
My interrogator is clearly proud of his English. As he cheerfully administers the anaesthetic he tells me how much he likes England and how often he goes and of course, noticing I'm from Manchester, how impressed he is with the efficiency of Man U. There is little chance for me to engage in a conversation since my mouth is stretched open for most of the time. I make do with nodding occasionally, trying to think of other things and wondering when the wiring is going to start, and actually what the wiring actually means, actually. I have to remember to relax my muscles. I'm sweating under my arms and myheart is racing.
Then he gets some pliers and a length of wire. The psycho music starts up again. He turns to me again. The light at his back. His be-gowned and masked face a dark shadow, pliers and wire glistening. The shape advances towards me, clasping the pliers and pointing them at me. He leans over my helpless body. I can't move my arms. They feel as though they're strapped to the chair. I try to move away. Oh my God, I'm paralysed. The music reaches a crescendo.
And stops abruptly.
'You like Iron Maiden? I often go to England to see zem. It rreely rrocks dozn it?'....
Did I say surreal?
Since then I've never been scared of injections or the Dentist
'Here, put these on' she said, and handed me a pair of unfashionable sun glasses. 'Now sit back and relax' said the efficient, matter-of-fact man. It was my dentist, Mr Crystal. I trust him and he has always been very reliable. He has pictures of his family and Manchester United in his office, and plays music while he works on my teeth. My thoughts start to drift as I sit back and relax. The Americans call their surgeries their office, and to be fair my 'surgery' looks more like an office than a surgery, so I'm going to call mine an office from now on.
Something slips under my top lip on the right and he turns away. I'm not yet sure what he's going to do today. One of my fillings had fallen out a few weeks ago, a temporary filling had also fallen out and I was expecting another temporary filling, but really I hadn't thought it through. 'It tastes like chewing gum' I say. 'It's bubble gum flavoured surface anaesthetic' he replies, while fiddling with something just out of my eye line. It's difficult to be witty with your dentists isn't it? The situation just isn't set up for it. But I feel like I need something to lighten the occasion, for the word anaesthetic can only mean one thing. An injection. An injection and lots of drilling and things. Nothing funny comes to mind anyway, just a flash back to the Austrian cellar when last I had needles and drills and wires. Then I remember and smile.
'So relax, just a little prick' I smile and recognise his joke. I try to relax. In the dentists chair is rather like being in one of those spy movies when the hero is drugged and is being interrogated. Things are happening off camera and voices and noises just add to the sense of fear, uncertainty and surrealism.
'Before you go home you must have your hev you jaw stabilized' the Austrian faxmax surgeon had said on the morning when my ambulance was due to pick me up. My mind had gone back to when I had my skiing accident about two years ago. I had been laid up in an Innsbruck University Institute for facio-maxillary surgery for 11 days following my skiing accident and it was nearly time to go home. I had survived on a diet of soup and mash potato. Actually the mash potato was a luxury I'd only managed in the last two days. This was the ward of mashed up faces, and mine was one of them.
Eventually a rather overly happy-go-lucky person arrived on the ward with a trolley. 'Benett?' he said, 'you will come wiz me'. He was evidently proud of his English. I got on the trolley. 'Ve must go down stairz in ze lift'. My ward was on the fourth floor. We descend six floors and appear in a dark corridor. My companion presses a switch and the set lights up. In my mind I can hear the sort of film music that says 'something bad is going to happen'. I'm pushed into a small room and the door closes behind me. 'You vill vait here'.
I am in a mini operating theatre. There a sink, draws and cupboards, and instruments on a trolley. It is quiet, eerily quiet.
Suddenly from behind me there is a clang of activity and someone walks in. It is a middle grade faxmax person I guess. He presents himself to me, stands straight, almost clicking his heels. He explains in accented English what the purpose of the meeting is. Basically he wants to wire my jaw so that elastic bands can be attached to stop my jaw wobbling on the journey back. Oh joy. He turns away to put on a gown and mask while muttering in German to an attractive person in a nurses uniform. 'Is that a whip she's carrying?' No can't be. He puts his gloves on with his back towards me, then turns with his hands up. The operating theatre light is behind him making his shape into a silhouette and I swear the music of psycho strikes up.
'You hef hed injections before, ya?'. 'I guess' and nod meekly. 'Ve need to give you just four'. Four! That bloody woman that skied into me, I'll kill her.
My interrogator is clearly proud of his English. As he cheerfully administers the anaesthetic he tells me how much he likes England and how often he goes and of course, noticing I'm from Manchester, how impressed he is with the efficiency of Man U. There is little chance for me to engage in a conversation since my mouth is stretched open for most of the time. I make do with nodding occasionally, trying to think of other things and wondering when the wiring is going to start, and actually what the wiring actually means, actually. I have to remember to relax my muscles. I'm sweating under my arms and myheart is racing.
Then he gets some pliers and a length of wire. The psycho music starts up again. He turns to me again. The light at his back. His be-gowned and masked face a dark shadow, pliers and wire glistening. The shape advances towards me, clasping the pliers and pointing them at me. He leans over my helpless body. I can't move my arms. They feel as though they're strapped to the chair. I try to move away. Oh my God, I'm paralysed. The music reaches a crescendo.
And stops abruptly.
'You like Iron Maiden? I often go to England to see zem. It rreely rrocks dozn it?'....
Did I say surreal?
Since then I've never been scared of injections or the Dentist
Sunday, 14 March 2010
Atlanta Georgia
It's Mother's Day here in Atlanta, and everywhere else, but I'm in Atlanta. I'm in Atlanta and my phone doesn't work. So I'm hoping my mum has a look at her e-mails rather than think I'm a useless son. I'm in a room of the thirty five floored Omni hotel. It is a spacious bright room with a large double bed, en suite bathroom, and Internet access. Through my window in the CNN centre, yes Atlanta is the home of world wide news. When you turn on your TV anywhere in the world it will be being beamed from just over the road from where I am right now. Also staring at me from huge bill-boards are the white teethed anchor men and women of CNN news. As my friend and colleague Kathryn said, you almost see the little ping of sunlight glinting off one of those shinny incisors.
Sure we went for a meal last night, sponsired by our sponsor. Non-promotional, you understand. As the rest of the known cardiology world is here it would be rude not to network.
At our table was Mr heart failure and with his was Mr heart failure USA. Well heart imaging in heart failure. Well imaging the left ventricle in heart failure. Actually, for such an eminent guy he was pretty cool. For instance, he new that soccer was really called football, how cool is that? No eally he was self debricating enough to be likeable, which is more than you can say for my British colleague.
The clocks also went forward, which has completely confused all of us from Britain. It could be anytime within a two hour spectrum. Anyway, who cares what the time is. Well actually, at a congress it's quite important or you end up missing things.
I think I already missed Mother's Day, so what could be worse?
Sure we went for a meal last night, sponsired by our sponsor. Non-promotional, you understand. As the rest of the known cardiology world is here it would be rude not to network.
At our table was Mr heart failure and with his was Mr heart failure USA. Well heart imaging in heart failure. Well imaging the left ventricle in heart failure. Actually, for such an eminent guy he was pretty cool. For instance, he new that soccer was really called football, how cool is that? No eally he was self debricating enough to be likeable, which is more than you can say for my British colleague.
The clocks also went forward, which has completely confused all of us from Britain. It could be anytime within a two hour spectrum. Anyway, who cares what the time is. Well actually, at a congress it's quite important or you end up missing things.
I think I already missed Mother's Day, so what could be worse?
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Death, sex and relationships
Hilda died on Thursday. Peacefully.
It is strange being back at work. Apparently lots of people have been asking after me and wondering if I'm OK. Well now I'm back many of them have been to see me and have been very sweet about missing me. One of them, Hilda, had become very ill. She had gone into hospital after a fall and came out to die on Thursday.
Today is Sunday, a day of rest, reflection and renewal. I went to church twice. How about that? The theme of the week is sex. We heard from the newly appointed rector and the keen new curate who insists on wearing a 'T' shirt with 'cure8' on it. The rector seemed particularly troubled by pornography. He confessed to having a personal issue with pornography and seemed to think everybody else did. His sermon was however about self image, and was directed mainly at young members of the congregation, in particular the girls. He warned them, correctly in my view, about the dangers of being lured into believing that their physical attractiveness is a sign of adulthood, success and a goal in itself. It was wise, sensible, and pitched at the right level. It was addressing sex obliquely, implying that if you join the cult of fulfilment through beauty you were, more or less, flaunting sex and your availability for it.
The evening service was altogether more pernicious. The sermon was given by the naive cure8 and based very much on Paul's teaching to the Corinthians. Paul was no doubt a great man. He managed to bring Christianity to the Romans, and so made it a world religion. He spoke passionately about the morality of the times and about the rules of behaviour to be followed by first century Christian communities. I'm sorry, but that's it. Otherwise he is a self-proclaimed apostle who never actually met Jesus and who was clearly, apart from anything else, a misogynist. Surely no one these days agrees with his views on women. Why then should we think that his views on sex are any more correct for our day. Still more, he accepted and instigated the need to modernise social laws and norms and, for example, overturned the food laws and the need for circumcision. Why then should we think that these sorts of laws, which includes sex, should be fixed in time?
So the cure8 believes that sex should remain between a man and a woman within marriage. That sex outside marriage will lead to the abuse of women in sex through pornography, rape, unwanted pregnancy, and sexually transmitted disease. No mention of sexual abuse within marriage then Presumably as a women become the possession of the man, she should be quiet and obey her master, as Paul would have it. No mention of love, trust or respect. No wonder the teenagers of the church marry young then put up with unhappy marriages for the rest of their lives. No room for same sex relationships either in this church, not even a mention.
George and Hilda loved each other very much and it was my privilege to be with them in her last day. As she drifted away I was able to help her to come round sufficiently for her and George to have a final intimate moment. She smiled. Not her characteristic snorting laugh, which I can still hear, but a smile of recognition and love. They were married for over fifty years, but what mattered is that they loved, trusted and respected each other in all that time. The piece of paper was irrelevant.
It is strange being back at work. Apparently lots of people have been asking after me and wondering if I'm OK. Well now I'm back many of them have been to see me and have been very sweet about missing me. One of them, Hilda, had become very ill. She had gone into hospital after a fall and came out to die on Thursday.
Today is Sunday, a day of rest, reflection and renewal. I went to church twice. How about that? The theme of the week is sex. We heard from the newly appointed rector and the keen new curate who insists on wearing a 'T' shirt with 'cure8' on it. The rector seemed particularly troubled by pornography. He confessed to having a personal issue with pornography and seemed to think everybody else did. His sermon was however about self image, and was directed mainly at young members of the congregation, in particular the girls. He warned them, correctly in my view, about the dangers of being lured into believing that their physical attractiveness is a sign of adulthood, success and a goal in itself. It was wise, sensible, and pitched at the right level. It was addressing sex obliquely, implying that if you join the cult of fulfilment through beauty you were, more or less, flaunting sex and your availability for it.
The evening service was altogether more pernicious. The sermon was given by the naive cure8 and based very much on Paul's teaching to the Corinthians. Paul was no doubt a great man. He managed to bring Christianity to the Romans, and so made it a world religion. He spoke passionately about the morality of the times and about the rules of behaviour to be followed by first century Christian communities. I'm sorry, but that's it. Otherwise he is a self-proclaimed apostle who never actually met Jesus and who was clearly, apart from anything else, a misogynist. Surely no one these days agrees with his views on women. Why then should we think that his views on sex are any more correct for our day. Still more, he accepted and instigated the need to modernise social laws and norms and, for example, overturned the food laws and the need for circumcision. Why then should we think that these sorts of laws, which includes sex, should be fixed in time?
So the cure8 believes that sex should remain between a man and a woman within marriage. That sex outside marriage will lead to the abuse of women in sex through pornography, rape, unwanted pregnancy, and sexually transmitted disease. No mention of sexual abuse within marriage then Presumably as a women become the possession of the man, she should be quiet and obey her master, as Paul would have it. No mention of love, trust or respect. No wonder the teenagers of the church marry young then put up with unhappy marriages for the rest of their lives. No room for same sex relationships either in this church, not even a mention.
George and Hilda loved each other very much and it was my privilege to be with them in her last day. As she drifted away I was able to help her to come round sufficiently for her and George to have a final intimate moment. She smiled. Not her characteristic snorting laugh, which I can still hear, but a smile of recognition and love. They were married for over fifty years, but what mattered is that they loved, trusted and respected each other in all that time. The piece of paper was irrelevant.
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