4 March 2011

As a result of my mentioning the feeding frame a couple of days ago, I received a comment, on my blog, from another MND sufferer asking if I had included a picture of this frame on my blog as he might well benefit from using it. I had to admit that I have not so far included a picture or video, although I do have both, of the fourth prototype. The reason being that I’m still hoping to find someone to mass-produce it commercially but at a price which can be afforded by anyone with weakened and arms who finds difficulty in feeding themselves, and, as I said before, if I do, hope to have it available in hospitals, care homes and private homes, for the thousands of elderly people suffering through malnutrition as a result of not being able to feed themselves properly and having no one to help them. If I get nowhere with my enquiries I will eventually include a copy of my prototype on the blog but this one is made from stainless steel and would be expensive to reproduce. What I have in mind is a mass produced, preferably biodegradable, plastic version which can be disposed of after a few uses. In the meantime I suggested to the reader that he contacted his local branch of the MND Association and see if they would be prepared to provide him with an armrest, such as  I have, from Able2.

Today, is the day that the Dental Association informed me that they would be holding the Hearing concerning my complaint against the NHS dentist who claimed to have carried out work on my teeth which he had clearly not done. (See 26 July 2010 entry). No doubt I will hear the outcome in due course.

Yesterday I recounted ‘my lovely’s’ admonition about making a fool of myself in a restaurant when I got the fish bone stuck in my throat. It reminded me other another occasion where she made an absolutely classic comment when I injured myself. I quote from my autobiographical notes and the chapter entitled  Let me show you my scars, which covers all the various illnesses and operations I’ve had throughout my life – hopefully recounted in a reasonably light weighed fashion
…..in the late ‘60’s.  I was working in the garden on the espalier from a ladder, some 8 or 10 feet above the ground, when I toppled backwards.  At the time Alice was in the breakfast room and just happened to be looking out of the French windows. She  witnessed the accident. Apparently I arced over in a reverse swallow dive and landed on my left hand. In doing so  I snapped off the end  of both the radius and the ulna bones. I yelled as I was in  considerable pain. Alice came rushing out and then, sensibly leaving me when I lay, called the doctor. Before he arrived,  some 30 minutes or so later,  Alice me told “to stop making that noise, you will  frighten the children” — not very sympathetic. The ambulance arrived and I was bundled unceremoniously into it.  No orthopaedic stretcher or neck brace, as would be the practice today.  Clearly I was lucky because  it was later discovered that I had a hairline fraction in one of my vertebrae which, had it be more serious, could have had dire  consequences. 

I arrived at Addenbrookes hospital and after a lengthy wait was wheeled into the corridor outside the x-ray room.  There was one other casualty in front of me – a man with a broken leg.  After we had been there for sometime a head came round the door and yelled  “Next” and disappeared. The ‘broken leg’ looked perplexed. A minute or so later a  more impatient  “Next”, was heard., so ‘broken leg’ eased himself gently from the stretcher and, apparently in severe pain,  hopped his way into the x-ray room. Shortly after it was my turn. Now, I should explain that having been working in the garden in my oldest clothes I probably resembled a tramp. Not surprisingly then the first thing they did was to hack off my favourite Norwegian sweater. A quick diagonal cut right across the chest accomplished this before I could protest.. All the while I was clutching my poor, very painful, wrist.  Asked to place it palm up under the x-ray camera I took so long that the nurse grabbed it, and in the one swift movement planted it onto the table. I nearly fainted with pain. From that day on I was determined to wear something a little more up market when working in the garden, in case I ever got into the hands of this butcher again.

I’m glad to say that Addenbrooke’s Hospital has obviously improved since those days 50 years ago and, although my wife’s comments made her sound rather heartless, the reader will have gathered, from all the nice things and I have been able to say about her in this blog, that she is extremely kind and caring and what she said was  more to do with the British stiff upper lip then being unkind.