A not for the faint hearted. A fun, Round Robin Christmas message.

( We hasten to add that the following bears no resemblance to anyone we know either alive or dead. If you recognise them, let us know and we can do our best to avoid them…)

Dear Friend
Well, it’s a while since we sent out the familiar Christmas update. In fact, it has been a whole year hasn’t it? And what a year it has been! So much to share about the Cook household. First, little Johnny passed with honours his grades, 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 in trumpet.

Johnny and his trumpet... Bless.

We are so proud. And on top of that, for his school project Johnny chose to travel to Libya (all on his own!) to train as a freedom fighter and single-handedly captured Colonel Gadhafi’s chief bodyguard. We are so proud. He came home safely, albeit having lost an eye, but hey, it was for a good cause and he has another and we give thanks for that.

Mike has also had an excellent year, after gaining an A, B, a pass in P.E. he was offered a place at Oxford. We are very proud and he very much enjoys being part of the team at the Oxford High Street branch of McDonalds. Not that it’s been all work and no play, Mike spent a fascinating four weeks working holiday in Pakistan, where he formed a tight network of friends and has since shared his experiences in the training camp there. Now Mike is taking a night class in chemistry and has grown a beard that looks quite fetching. He has matured so much this year he is like a different person. He has become a lot less materialistic and for Christmas only requested a large rucksack which we were

Mike, cycling back to Pakistan with his new rucksack. So proud.

happy to purchase for him. At last he seems to have found his way in life and we give thanks for that.

Sharon has very much matured this year. You would never think she has just turned sixteen. Sharon made some wonderful socially challenging friends in Tottenham this summer and we were so proud when she appeared on the Ten o’clock news! Imagine our delight when she came home the next morning with a wide screen TV under her arm, and a wonderful new boyfriend called Clyde. Clyde is very responsible and at age 35 a little older than Sharon but we think he will be a responsible influence as he often helps the police with their enquires and all the police in the area know him. We are thrilled that Sharon has this year landed

Our Sharon, looking good.

on her feet, she is really blooming these days and in the past three months has gained quite a bit of weight and has finally recovered from her sickness bug.

In April we did manage a wonderful week in Japan. It was so exciting and exhilarating. We had no idea it was such a busy place and was an experience of a lifetime. We both came back with such an amazing sun-tan, which we still have now. And for that we give thanks.

The view from our hotel in Japan.

We are very excited as In October Lynda was approached via email by a wealthy Colonel in Africa. It transpires that she is to inherit a large sum of money from a recently deceased dictator. It seems that her past good works have paid off. We took out a loan to pay the expenses that they required and are now waiting for the funds to be transferred to Lynda’s bank account which should happen any day now. And we give thanks for this extraordinary good fortune that has come our way. We will be donating a large sum to charity of course.

Sadly Uncle Jack passed away this year after a bout of MRSA following his overnight hospital stay with a severe migraine (hangover). At age 46 he had had a good innings and we give thanks for that.

Our last picture of Uncle Jack. He will be sadly missed.

Mother is doing very well after her fifth amputation, second triple bypass, liver transplant and Botox surgery. She is looking forward to her skiing holiday in January.

Mum, having fun as usual.

Andrew was promoted this year to work under the COE following his PhD after HR (AKA the CTO) realised his potential. However in March he contracted ADD when a close friend was given an ASBO, and was AWOL for some weeks. His BP went sky-high and he lost his GSOH eating nothing but BLT sandwiches. After a lot of TLC from Lynda he was back at work ASAP.
We hope you have all had a year like ours and wish you a very merry Christmas and best wishes for 2012
Love Lynda and Andrew
xx

NHS? No thankyou

Losing someone very close to you is terribly difficult at the best of times. It is made even harder when they are very sick for some time before. So, is it really necessary for things to be made even harder by medical staff? It was not until my father in law was hospitalised some weeks ago that we did, indeed, come to learn just what that word overstretched actually meant. For my husband and his family it literally meant the over stretching of their nerves and an abundance of stress right up to the moment their father died. It made me wonder how many other people are suffering this literally as I write this. We could not fault the nurses who were caring and considerate or the doctors who were obviously stressed and probably as those wonderful words express, over stretched. But the system is what let us and my father-in-law down. Red tape, forms and an abundance of incompetence.
For us it began when ‘Bud’ (my lovely father-in-law) entered hospital. He had kidney failure and was admitted to a renal ward. We were allowed to visit whenever we liked and the first thing to perturb me was the fact that he was always in bed when he was quite capable of sitting up. The curtains were always drawn, even on the most beautiful summer’s day. Does being over stretched mean that nurses cannot pull back curtains and brighten a patient’s day with a bit of sunshine? We would find him in bed every visit and often asleep. Come to think of it I imagine I would have been inclined to sleep if my room was in darkness and I was in bed. The few times we did find him in a chair we took him outside in a wheelchair. As the weeks went on he seemed to be more and more docile when we arrived for the visits and we became concerned why this was. On one occasion we arrived to find he had been moved. Bud seemed unable to give us an explanation for this, so we inquired and were told that he had an infection and needed to be isolated. We then presumed his sleeping was due to the drugs as no one gave us any clear answers. Our fears began that if we did not get him removed from there he would develop further infections. This spurred my husband, Andrew and his brother and sister on to get him out as soon as possible. However, this was to be more difficult than it sounds. My mother-in-law had had a breakdown and felt she could not possibly continue taking on the responsibility of helping her husband with his dialysis. He was not capable of doing it himself anymore. At eighty seven, he made mistakes and often forgot to perform important tasks relevant to his dialysis. We had a big problem. So began the journey of daily dealings with the system. It all seemed so simple. We would arrange for carers to come to the house and take care of all that was needed. Then we encountered the first issue, that of cost. It was not possible to sell their house as my mother-in-law still lived there. So began the filling in of forms and more forms and of course more forms to get the financial help needed. Only to learn that we were unlikely to be eligible for financial help as my in-laws owned their own home. This felt like something of a penalization but the battle commenced. Meanwhile, Bud seemed to be slowly going downhill and mostly slept through the whole of our visit. The plan to have carers at home seemed very unlikely especially as we would need them to be experienced in giving dialysis. Then, the idea of getting him into a nursing home seemed a possibility especially as they said they would get one of their nurses trained in dialysis. Mother-in-law seemed happy with selling the house and moving somewhere smaller and the owner of the home was happy to take part payment for father-in-laws stay until such time the house was sold. Then, there were more forms and we were told that he was likely eligible for funding but we would lose it if we took him out of hospital before the decision was made.

Lovely Bud

I cannot even begin to explain how Occupational health works and social services but It seems sufficient to say that they seem to make it as difficult as humanly possible and my sister-in-law seemed at the end of her tether some days. Meanwhile, Bud had gone a little downhill and when speaking to my husband the doctors suggested in the nicest possible way, of course, that maybe dialysis should be stopped!! We were appalled. This was five weeks before he died and I hasten to add it was not of renal failure either. His family made it quite clear this was not an option. The man on his good days was sitting up in bed joking with us and they suggested pulling the plug. It is still deeply offensive to us that this was even mentioned by anyone. The battle to get him home continued. We told the hospital that we had a place for him and we were then told that occupational health and social services, at least I think it was that way round, would fast track everything. As far as I know, it got done and finally came together to be put in place on the night of the morning he died! Finally, the wait became so agonising that Andrew, normally not known to show stress, slowly began to reveal the signs. By this time, his father who had entered hospital slightly unwell was now very unwell and the thing we had dreaded finally happened. He caught a chest infection. Again the doctors said it would be best to stop dialysis and that the doctor would talk to him about it. A stranger would talk to Bud about ending his life? My husband said no! If anyone would ask his dad how he felt about that it would be him and if he should choose to continue treatment then he had every right to do so. The drive down to the hospital that day was torture. I could almost hear Andrew’s mind whirring with what he would say to his father. Luckily, he never had to. They had taken blood tests which had showed his kidneys were functioning reasonably well on their own now that he was less active. He could come home without any worry about who would do his dialysis. Except, of course, it was never going to be that simple was it? There was the bed to organise. We had to get a full time nurse. The time for a carer was now past. Bud was at a stage where he needed full time nursing. So, began the phoning around again. Then, Bud took a turn for the worst and we rushed to the hospital. They said he was close to dying. Bud rallied round and stayed with us. It was now a rapid race to get everything in place to get him home. Not back home to get well but back home to die. Hospitals it seems do not always make you better.
We hired the most wonderful nurse and I think we will all thank whoever it is you thank every day of our lives that we found her. Bud came home at last. There the story ends you think. No, sadly it doesn’t. Our lovely nurse, who we will simply call J, worked well over her hours, staying up until late because the Marie Curie nurses it seemed could not make it. Or they seemed to be coming and then did not. Most nights a member of family stayed with him as by this time he could not be left alone at night. Bud was only home five days before he died. We did not hire another nurse for night time as we were assured Marie Curie nurses would come. In total 30 different district nurses visited in the space of four days. Bud never saw the same one twice. If we had not had J, I think Bud would have been terrified by all the different faces. The stress on everyone was overwhelming. The morning he died, J was excellent as were the district nurses who came in to certify the death. I think I would have felt fine about how the district nurses handled everything if the district nurse had not come up to us and said in a rehearsed voice.
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ Five words I heard her repeat several times before she left. I can’t help wondering if the minister for health is also sorry for our loss. It was not the nurses fault. It is how she is trained. But I could not help wondering how many times she has said that in the past month to other bereaved families. Maybe the NHS did not actually kill him but they sure as hell did very little to prevent it, so maybe they should be sorry for our loss.

Waiting for Jack Bauer (In the meantime making do with Andrew)

I never in my wildest dreams, and I have some wild dreams, I can tell you, imagined I would be frantic to find a Betterware catalogue. But a week or so after someone had pushed it through my letterbox I am desperate to trace it. Somewhere within the pages is an item I now cannot live without and no one else seems to sell it. The latter probably is not strictly true but the I can’t live without it part, most certainly is. Of course up until a week ago I really couldn’t have cared less if I had one. After all I had Andrew (my husband) then. Ah, yes, that has got you thinking and wanting to read more. What has Betterware got, you are thinking, that can replace a husband? You are now thinking, could you use one, in fact, you are probably wondering, if perhaps you may even need one. In my case it was a culmination of things really but throwing Andrew out of the bedroom is the primary reason it is needed. Good god, I hear you women cry as you reach for the Yellow pages to search for your local Betterware representative. Although, of course, in this day and age of Technology, you are probably reaching for your Blackberry’s and searching on Google to find the item that can replace a husband in the bedroom. Why is it though, when I do not want a Betterware catalogue or any of their goods do I continually fall over the damn thing until the rep finally collects it? But when I do want it, it miraculously disappears only to turn up in the most unlikely place? Anyway, I found it, and there on page five is the item I covert. Of course, none of this would be necessary if I had a perfectly good thyroid and no they don’t sell perfectly good thyroid’s at Betterware but they do sell the next best thing. So, you are wondering what my thyroid or lack of one has got to do with all of this.
Last Monday, I had a second dose of radio iodine therapy. This in very simple terms means I am radioactive for 12 days. The lovely lady who administered the dose, well, if you call handing me a capsule in a long tube, administering. I rather think I performed the dirty deed actually. Yes, come to think of it, I remember they had all legged it before I had even brought my head back up. Anyway, she was quite stern about all the precautions I needed to take. The worst part is that you feel perfectly fine for the first forty-eight hours while you are spewing radiation everywhere. The power is quite intoxicating. The temptation to walk into Tesco and shout, ‘Step away from the Mackerel’ is overwhelmingly tempting. But of course, I didn’t. Instead I went straight home to a very happy Bendy who purred around my legs.
‘Go away,’ I cried. ‘Shoo, go next door.’
Not the usual greeting he receives. Of course, he ignored all my efforts to keep him at bay and has done for the past week and for some odd reason he seems to be more in love with me while I am potentially killing him then he ever was before. I phoned Nuclear medicine three days later in a panic.
‘What is the procedure regarding pets. After all they are very small and I have had a double dose.’ Anyone overhearing me would probably wonder what kind of double dose I had contracted. Dear me, one dreads to think. Accept no one is likely to get close enough to overhear for fear of death by radiation.
‘There is no legal requirement regarding pets, so he is ok.’
I tried to absorb what she was saying.
‘But it was a double dose.’
‘There’s no legal requirement.’
What she means is, If I kill him, I will be quite safe. The RSPCA can’t touch me. I continue with my shoo shooing to no avail. I even go into a massive panic when the pigeons fly into the garden. I don’t want to be the cause of a mass pigeon slaughter. I struggle to keep my towel separate from Andrew’s but he keeps mixing them up. I shout at him when he gets closer than an arm’s length and order him to the spare room at bedtime. This may sound easy to most of you but in our case the spare room is not even in the house! And no, I haven’t banished him to a hotel. Our spare room over the past few years has slowly become an office. So, we built a good size summer-house which converts into a very nice spare room but it is in the garden! Every night, we say a miserable goodnight to each other over the phones intercom. Of course, for many women this might be a dream come true. However, take a few seconds to consider the usefulness of your man, apart from the obvious, which we won’t even go into, except to say that when you are radiating radiation, it puts something of a damper on your libido. In my case, he has reluctantly become the spider catcher. Just five seconds of me screaming hysterically, while standing on the bed, usually after knocking over a glass of water in my trembling frenzy, is enough to have him grabbing a pillow and squashing the thing to death. Why don’t you kill them with radiation, I hear you ask. Well, they are hardy little suckers, these spiders. But the big problem right now is that Andrew shows no signs of rapidly turning into Jack Bauer in the near future. By the time he answers my frantic intercom ring, gets dressed, comes into the house, climbs the stairs and leisurely enters the bedroom, of course, the damn monster has gone. I spend the night lying in bed a quivering wreck. So, the answer is the spider catcher. At five pounds fifty pence, it is a bargain. The question is will I be able to get close enough to catch the spider? Watch this space.