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2018 Health Archive 23: Moving on …

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Stiletto Wheels Heart Rate

Having moved into 2019 off the back of a fairly average year, healthwise, for me, I was thinking, do I really need a health update this year or should I, for the first time in my chronic ill-health journey, give it a miss?

I did have the usual couple of relapses (and hospital visits) to deal with – my ‘normal’ year – but my biggest health crisis has occurred in the last several weeks where I caught a cold and then came down with what with my GP calls ‘proper flu’.

Cue immediate alarm because I was bedbound and began to get the usual kind of skin problems that you get when you can’t move or maintain your usual skin protection regime – this is now something that frightens me to death given the pressure sore problems that struck me down in 2015 and continue to haunt me.

Happily, today, I am feeling pretty much back to normal – a bit weak and the skin is still looking vulnerable in places but I managed to get through the six weeks maintaining my existing fragile  skin areas and without developing any further problems. So far. Phew. Wipes sweat off brow.

Of course, as I shook and shivered, with my temperature spiking over 40°, I felt stupidly sorry for myself. And, melodrama, much, I imagined the spectre of death looming large before me – caused by both fever and the recent death of a very close friend, G, at the ridiculously young age of 61. Okay, I accept not young for anybody under the age of 30 but definitely young to anybody over the age of 40.

The spectre of death having receded for me, I continue to mourn our wonderful gentle friend, finishing here with my words to G’s son who had commented on how sad it was that his dad’s life seemed, with hindsight, to be one unfulfilled by early promise.

G had been a professional dancer, always a short career. After his dancing career ended, he never really found his niche in life and he was such a bright, kind man:

… there is a lingering regret of unfulfilled potential about G and his life and it was something that we did discuss because the circumstances of my life meant that my own, and by association D’s, career/life aspirations were curtailed, albeit for very different reasons.
 
I think, over time, we were all able to set some of the anger & frustration aside and pragmatically recognise that life has no level playing field; that we can make choices only from those we are aware of which, at various stages in our lives, take us in certain directions, sometimes with irrevocable effect; and, that sometimes events happen outside of our control which propel us toward the entirely unexpected, welcome or not.
 
Ultimately, through good and bad, we can only do the best with what we have and accept responsibility for the choices that we do make, limited as they may be, and deal, with as much grace as we have in us, with that which affects us but is outside of our control.
 
That is, of course, so simple to say and so hard to do – grace dealing with the bad stuff doesn’t come easy – but that’s life  – it’s hard, messy, not always what we would like it to be, certainly, it’s not fair but it is what it is for each of us.
 
All we can each do is survive it, hopefully, with a few laughs and a lot of love on the way. And, I really do think that G did this. The outcome may not be what he would ideally have wanted of his life but, let’s be upfront here, most of us won’t get to an ‘ideal’ life.
 
The huge number of people that turned up for his funeral and service indicate how loved and well thought of G was. D and I remember laughing with him about having so few friends that nobody would turn up to our funerals. I can only fondly imagine him laughing about now, looking at those numbers in disbelief. ‘Show me your friends …’ indeed. I’d like to laugh with him, if only he were here.
 
We miss him and will always remember your dad, G, with love and fondness …
 

RIP with love always, my friend.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

the rubaiyat of omar khayyam – quatrain 60 – 11th century

Stiletto Wheels Heart Rate

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