One Year Older, Still Alive and Kicking

Posted in Modern life, Pills by carolcooper

On my birthday just recently, I experienced a disconnect between the joy of being the birthday girl and the reality of being, frankly, older than I’ve ever been before. One day, I’m scoring goals in the back garden. The next thing I know, I sit down with an audible Oof! at every possible opportunity.

If you’re anything like me, you don’t always appreciate how fast things are changing until something pulls you up short. Like the photo that shows how short you are compared with your children. Or a birthday card like this one.

What presents might be heading my way? Another pair of slippers, maybe, or a voucher for Specsavers. Material gifts lose some of their appeal as the years slip by, as does blowing out candles on a birthday cake. I don’t have that kind of puff. Or a fire extinguisher to hand.

But I’m not a grumpy old thing who pads around in her gardening clothes and moans about the passing years. On my birthday I dressed up in my new shoes.

Along with a top from Help the Aged. Don’t tell me the shop is now called Age UK. This purchase goes way back.

I didn’t fancy going out for a celebratory lunch. Not when we have so much in the fridge, and the tarragon on the patio is doing so well this year that it’s a shame not to use it. So risotto it was.

The old joints may be creakier than they were, but I can’t complain. Getting older is a privilege. Give me a head of grey hair and as many laughter lines as Mick Jagger (though, come to think of it, nothing is that funny).

Health problems become more likely as the years pass, but then ill health can strike at any age. Having worked in paediatric rheumatology, I can see just how challenging mobility issues can be at a young age. And of course there are many other conditions that can become limiting.

That’s why I’m delighted to get behind the new campaign from Sport England. It doesn’t have to involve a sport. #WeAreUndefeatable aims to help the two thirds of people with health conditions increase their physical activity in any way they can.

I’d need a really long blog post to cram in all the benefits of moving more. Instead, watch this lot living every moment. The clip lasts just 30 seconds.

If you have a long-term condition, or know anyone who does, please take a look at some of the inspiration at We Are Undefeatable.

29Apr2018

A Family Doctor’s Casebook (part 1)

Posted in London, Pills by carolcooper

General practice partnerships are like marriage without the sex, muses Geoff as he installs himself at his consulting room desk. He knows that kind of marriage. Shoving aside the piles of letters that need answering, he begins tending to the sick of North London.

Geoff is a GP from my novels One Night at the Jacaranda and Hampstead Fever. Despite his problems and hang-ups, he’s everyone’s favourite. Geoff is a firm believer in the NHS, but the changes he’s seen in the 15 years since he qualified frustrate him immensely.

1 The first patient is a three-month old baby with the Lexus of pushchairs and a Yummy Mummy who reminds Geoff of his ex-wife. She begins by complaining about the 20-minute wait, and the perennial parking problems within a mile of the health centre. All this is extremely inconvenient as she’ll now be late for her Pilates.

Geoff asks what he can do for her.

“It’s Alistair’s head,” she throws down like a gauntlet.

She’s right in thinking her baby’s skull is a tad asymmetrical. Plagiocephaly is common now that babies all sleep on their backs. Geoff reassures her that it’ll right itself in time, once Alistair lifts his head and becomes more mobile.

Yummy Mummy is sceptical. “Doesn’t he need one of those special helmets?”

Geoff explains that there’s no evidence they help.

The mother seems unconvinced. She’ll probably go and splash out thousands of pounds on a contraption that will only cause discomfort and inconvenient. Still, she’s now ready to move on to the next symptom. The practice has a new policy of one symptom per consultation, which Geoff routinely ignores. It’s demeaning to patients and wastes everyone’s time in the end.

The rash on Alistair’s buttocks looks like a common yeast infection which should soon respond to the cream Geoff recommends. This pleases the mother, until Geoff asks her not to leave Alistair’s dirty nappy in his consulting room bin.

“I don’t want to stink out the car,” says Yummy Mummy.

Geoff eventually persuades her to take the offending object away, even though he thinks she’s likely to dump it in the waiting room on her way out.

2 Next it’s Mr Legg in his nineties, with an aching left knee. Sometimes it’s his right knee, and sometimes it’s both, which is no wonder since both legs are badly deformed by arthritis. He attends the health centre every couple of weeks, yet refuses hospital treatment. As he puts it, “I don’t want to be a bother. There’s plenty of younger folks who need it more.” Mr Legg adds that he doubts it’s arthritis anyway. “It’s probably just down to the shrapnel what got me during the war.”

Geoff asks where the shrapnel got him.

“In a little village near Germany, Doctor.”

3 It’s a relief to see that young Mohammed’s eczema is improving. For a long while, his mother believed that a mild steroid was totally unsuitable for a three-year old, but the cream, along with emollients, has made a huge difference. Mohammed sleeps well now that he doesn’t scratch himself to ribbons. All in all, he’s a happy chappy, apart from a streaming cold that’s not a problem until he flings himself at Geoff and plonks a kiss on his cheek.

Geoff usually washes his hands between consultations. Today he washes his face as well.

4 Now a young man sits before him. Unemployed, with a squat nose and tats up one arm. “Pain in me bollocks,” he says.

Might be a torsion. Uncommon in adults, Geoff knows, but, unless treated promptly, it can lead to gangrene of the testicle.

“Right. I need to take a look,” Geoff says, pulling the paper curtains across.

As he waits for the fellow to undress, he wipes the photo on his desk with a tissue. It’s Davey, aged four, at the beach in Norfolk. Happy days before the divorce.

“Ready yet?” Geoff calls out, increasingly aware of how late his clinic is running.

“Yeah. Course.”

Turns out the man is sitting fully clothed the other side of the drapes.

Patiently, Geoff explains what he needs to examine. Another three minutes pass while the man undresses.

On examination there’s nothing abnormal about the patient’s tackle, apart from the stink. Geoff peels off his gloves and flings them in the bin. “Hmm. All’s well there. When did you first get the pain?”

The man shrugs. “Maybe a week ago. But I ain’t got it no more, like. Not since I pulled that bird the other day.”

“Fair enough,” says Geoff, even though there’s nothing fair about it. The ugly, unemployed fucker gets laid just like that, while he, Geoff, has been celibate for ten months and counting.

***

Coming up soon, Geoff deals with a very personal problem. Meanwhile you may enjoy one of these posts:

How to Alienate Your Doctor in Ten Easy Steps

What Your Doctor is Really Saying

or, on a more serious note, an overview of sepsis in The Disease Nobody Knows About Until It’s Too Late.

20Sep2016

Twelve Snapshots from Freshers’ Week

Posted in Family life, Places by carolcooper

Freshers’ Week is a bit like the 60s – if you can remember it all, you weren’t there. So these glimpses will have to do:

1 Mists and mellow fruitfulness.

2 Not knowing where anything is, and trying to get there by bike, if you can remember which one’s yours.

3 Existentialist conversations with a swan.

4 Signing up for everything at the Freshers’ Fair.

5 Blood-red Virginia creeper.

6 Smiling at everyone in case one of them becomes your best friend.

7 Buying lots of instant coffee and biscuits for all your new friends.

8 Ridiculously cheap booze at the Freshers’ Disco.

9 Kebabs and puke.

10 Reinventing yourself (because you can).

11 Staying up till 3 a.m. (because lectures haven’t started yet).

12 Getting a meningitis jab (because it’s really important).

So many new beginnings, but for some things it’s an end. Goodbye, Strachey Building. I won’t be there on Friday when the wrecking ball comes for you and the Porters’ Lodge.

23Apr2016

What You Can Do for London’s Lungs

Posted in London, Pills by carolcooper

Take a nice deep breath. For thousands of people living in London, that’s a luxury.

With its plethora of parks, our capital may be one of the greenest cities. But it’s also one of the most polluted. For the last five years, London has been in breach of EU safety limits on NO₂.

I’ve noticed it getting worse. For an instant lesson in air quality, head for the outer reaches of one of the Tube lines and see how fresh the air feels when you step outside.

Pollution isn’t just an irritant to the throat, nose, or eyes. It’s damaging to health, increasing the risk of lung cancer and chronic lung disease, and driving up hospital admission rates for those with pre-existing lung or heart disease.

Children’s lungs are most vulnerable, yet around 330,000 London kids go to school in areas with illegal levels of pollution.

Pollution has also been linked with damage during pregnancy, including low birth weight and pre-term birth.

I’ll cut a long story short: at least 9,500 deaths a year in London are linked with air pollution.

We may not have the pea-soupers of the 1950s that smothered London in soot and sulphur dioxide for days at a time. But we have a haze of small particles, especially PM2.5s, along with the toxic gas nitrogen dioxide NO₂(not to be confused with laughing gas because this one isn’t funny).

PM2.5s are fine particles, less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter. They come from things like motor vehicles, power plants, and wood-burning, and they’re harmful because they’re small enough to reach the deepest recesses of the lungs.

Nitrous oxide comes largely from diesel cars, lorries, and buses. It follows that pollution is worse near busy roads, which is often where less advantaged families live. But even short-term exposure to air pollution can damage.

Why am I banging on about it now?

Because on May 5, London elects a new Mayor. As a parent, a doctor, and a Londoner, I whole-heartedly support The British Lung Foundation’s #Londonlungs campaign. It calls for the next Mayor and Assembly members to prioritise lung health.

So much could be done, from tree and hedge planting schemes to improving transport strategy and extending the ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) eastwards – where there’s a lot of deprivation and air pollution.

You too can help by getting on board and asking all the mayoral candidates whether they pledge to protect Londoner’s lungs. You could also share the campaign on social media with the hashtag #Londonlungs.

What else can you do?

There are obvious individual steps to help protect the lungs and heart, like not smoking.

Driving less, for instance by sharing cars or using public transport, helps drive down vehicle emissions. If you’re buying or leasing a car, choose a low-emission model.

Take the longer route on foot or cycle via a less polluted area if you can. You may be interested in the Clean Space app.

The British Lung Foundation has some great tips for when air pollution levels are very high. You can find them here.

7Sep2014

What Happens When Writers Meet?

Posted in Writing by carolcooper

Writing is a solitary life. It’s just you and the page, though, all being well, some words eventually show up. If you write novels, you may fashion some wonderful characters, but you still don’t see other people.

Going out in public once in a while is a good idea but it takes an effort. It might even mean getting dressed and putting a set of teeth in.

It’s totally worth it because, as you know, everyone’s fascinated. Mention you’re a writer and people invariably say “How interesting.”

Sadly, the interest rarely lasts. Those same people want to tell you all about the novel they have inside them (it’s often the one that shouldn’t get out). But all a writer really wants to do is talk about their own work. After a while, few can put up with us because we either bore them to death about our books flying off the shelves at the speed of light, or bore them to death because our masterpieces are Superglued to the bottom of the Amazon rankings.

It’s sometimes the same with significant others, so the writer skulks off to the shed or spare room to keep out of the way. At this point SO usually gives a look that suggests you’re engaging in solo activities of an adolescent nature.

But it’s good to get out. A sedentary lifestyle is linked with back pain, constipation, low mood and worse: obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, and even breast and bowel cancer. It’s estimated that globally lack of exercise causes 5.3m deaths a year, which is roughly the same as smoking.

There’s a lot to be gained by meeting other authors. It’s really not the same as communicating online, as fellow indie author Kevin Booth points out in a recent blog post. When we meet, we can learn a lot from each other, in a casual, friendly and effective way.

We’re not all introverts. Writers are often outgoing. As Kevin says

There’s a particular chemistry that seems to engage when a group of writers get together over a glass of something. If people find it difficult to stay on-topic, it’s because they are sparking creatively off each other and raising new questions that they hadn’t previously considered. I don’t think the online experience has yet been able to replicate this.

Some like meeting to critique, but other authors hate talking about their work in progress. I sometimes worry about Schrödinger’s novel. Let even a chink of light in, and the book dies. While it’s still safely in the dark box of the mind, it could be either alive or dead.

Schrödinger’s cat, you’ll recall, is based on quantum physics. Until the box is opened, the cat could be either alive or dead, or indeed, a touch of both.

Personally, I don’t have many doubts about the cat. If you can’t hear it inside the box, scrabbling to get out, then it’s probably dead. Cats may like boxes, but they want to choose their own. Nobody should ever put a cat into a container without food, water, ventilation, and a clean kitty litter tray.

But back to meeting other authors. Do writers bitch and argue when they meet? Hardly ever. Apart from the fact that we’re a nice bunch of people, or so I like to think, we’re also mighty relieved to find like-minded company. We enjoy each other’s books and don’t mind saying so. And, when someone is super-successful, it’s inspiring to remember that it can happen to people not so very different from ourselves. We can celebrate other writers’ triumphs, just as we commiserate over setbacks like paltry advances or poor sales.

There’s no place for petty jealousy. Out there are many millions of readers. No one author, not even one several times as prolific as Barbara Cartland, could produce enough books to keep the whole world happy.

If you write but don’t have a writing group nearby, why not start one? Self-published authors might like to join the Alliance of Independent Authors.

ALLi (pronounced ‘ally’, appropriately) is a global non-profit association of author-publishers. They offer connection and collaboration, advice and education, and, importantly, also campaign to further the interests of self-publishing writers everywhere.

I come back from local ALLi meetings with a spring in my step. Here’s more of what Kevin Booth has to say on the ALLi blog about face-to-face meetings.

Every reason for getting up from your desk, then.

10Aug2014

Is Beatles Music a Health Hazard?

Posted in London by carolcooper

Exactly 45 years ago, photographer Iain Macmillan stood on a ladder and shot the iconic image for Abbey Road. Tourists from all over the world continue to come to London’s most famous crossing. They gawp, revere, take selfies and generally mess about, taking no heed of cars, vans or the 189 bus. This was the scene yesterday.

Now Westminster Council is considering the use of a lollipop lady to keep people safe. I hope they recruit a lady or gentleman who looks the part in period 60s gear.

On that August day in 1969, did the Fab Four realise the poor example they might be setting for future generations of fans? I think not. If they had, they’d never have larked about as they did. And Paul would have surely kept his sandals on. It’s madness to walk around London in bare feet.

Pretty much everyone (not just Charles Manson) has their own interpretation of Beatles lyrics. While most people focus on the drug references, the songs may contain other menaces to health.

Sleeping in the bath is something I’d never recommend, yet that’s exactly what happens in Norwegian Wood. Luckily John doesn’t drown. But what does he do when he wakes up? He burns the house down. OK, so he was a Beatle scorned, but arson does seem a tad over the top.

There’s another fire hazard in A Day in the Life. The track opens with John’s graphic reminder of what happens if you run a red light. But in a later verse Paul dices with death when he nods off on the bus with a lit cigarette in hand.

I feel like shouting the B-side of Can’t Buy Me Love (in case you don’t remember, it’s You Can’t Do That).

Paul survives his bus journey. He still hasn’t kicked the tobacco habit two years later, though, because there he is holding a ciggie on that album cover. But the USA did some unauthorised airbrushing and removed the offending item from posters.

Other risky lifestyle choices advocated by Lennon-McCartney:

One night stands in Day Tripper
Coming in via the bathroom window in a track of that name
Sticking 50p up your nose because you can’t find a ten-bob note like Mean Mister Mustard.

The Beatles will always be my favourite band, but as a doctor I’m concerned about an already over-stretched health service having to extract coins from noses, bandage injured feet and give whatever medical help is needed to those mugs who take their oeuvres too literally.

On Revolver we’re even told that you can call Doctor Robert day or night, he’ll be there any time.

In your dreams, John and Paul. Not in today’s NHS.

The thing that worries me most, though, is on the White Album. Yes, hotel rooms cost money, but doing it in the road is the ultimate in unsafe sex. Nobody’s watching you! So you’re even more likely to get killed by some motorist who wasn’t expecting to see people bonking on the asphalt.

I’m really hoping Westminster Council will be wise enough to install appropriate signage.

30Dec2013

Six Characters in Search of a New Year Resolution

Posted in Dating, Family life, Pills by carolcooper

There’s something refreshing and renewing about making resolutions, especially as it happens only once a year. Here’s what six characters I know have resolved to do.

Ex-con Dan lost a lot of life behind bars, so he wants to make the most of the new year. Resolution one: he’s going to get a job. Doesn’t matter what at this point. Two: he’s going to learn a new word every day. Useful words to help him go up in the world. There are plenty of those in the dictionary he just bought. Three: he’s going to find someone. It’s a long climb from where he is, but hey, one day at a time. One word at a time.

Her boyfriend may be perfect (he often says as much) but Harriet needs to get her own act together. First, she’s going to hone her negotiating skills so she gets decent money for the articles she writes. Second, she plans to break into the broadsheets. Third, she’ll try to win her first ever journalism prize. Hopefully this year there won’t be too many entries for the Carrot Consortium awards. Then again, maybe she should just concentrate on resolution four: staying in the black. She sighs and shuts her notebook.

GP Geoff is tired of New Year resolutions. His patients never lose weight or stop smoking. From January 1 he plans to focus on his own wellbeing. As every medic knows, erectile problems are often a marker for heart disease or diabetes. These days his dick is as limp as a lettuce, so he’s obviously on borrowed time. Fuck it, that’s his resolution sorted. He’s going to write a will so his ex doesn’t get it all if he snuffs it.

Laure has money, looks and brains. Still she doesn’t feel beautiful inside, her home looks unloved, and there hasn’t been a man in her life for two years and three months (she doesn’t count Martin from the commercial property department). The resolutions are writing themselves:

Find someone special
Stop being so critical of myself
Make flat more welcoming.

This may take a while. And a few more self-help books.

Karen has big plans for the coming year. She’s going to get out more. Find a job (one that fits in with term-times). Get her kids to stop fighting. Buy from more upmarket shops (isn’t there a new Oxfam in Stanmore?). Karen throws another Lego pirate into the box. And meet a nice man, of course.Sanjay has whittled his resolutions down to one. Beating cancer for another 12 months will do just fine.

If you want to know how it turns out, you can find out by reading One Night at the Jacaranda.

Have you made resolutions for 2014? I’d love to hear what they are.

Pills & Pillow-Talk

Carol Cooper – trained to observe, born to write.

Tag Archives: Health