Pulmonary embolism makes me feel awful

 The last couple of days have been awful. I am as weak as a lamb and sleeping all the time in fact I may sleep at the end of this word! Sleep 💤 🛌 😴 

Blood clot on the lung an Ulcer plus Pneumonia

I told you I had been into the  UCHL for some fettling of my Baclofen Pump. Whilst there it was discovered that I had Pneumonia a Blood Clot on the Lung (Pulmonary embolism) and an Ulcer so my Baclofen Pump increase was put on hold until all the other problems a sorted    

I have been very unwell and even now after a couple of days at home I an feeling a long long way from better. Evidently the PE (Pulmonary embolism) will take three to six months to disperse and the blood thinning tablets are to be taken with care. The Pneumonia has had some super strong antibiotics and my breathing is improved but not perfect because of my blood clot🤨. I need to have a camera down my throat to check out the Ulcer and some other Gastric stuff, all in all I was jolly lucky 🍀 to have been in hospital when all of these things combined to do me harm. I finish five days of twice daily injections from the district nurses tomorrow and start taking the blood thinning tablets on Monday. They are the modern replacement for Warfarin   

Our youngest daughter summed up the last few days by saying “if you were a cat you used up one of your lives”

No photography today. Must do better tomorrow

 My camera 📷 lay unloved in the cupboard today ☹️ I try and use it almost every day but today was my first full day home from hospital and I was weary. My visit had been very eventful for all the wrong reasons. I discovered I had a Pulmonary embolism a cyst and I even developed Pneumonia in there. Thank goodness I was in there! Photography to me is a very special therapy. It allows me to escape away from the trials and tribulations of everyday life, it’s pure escapism. I love slowing down and waiting whether it’s trying to get a photo of a bird out of the window, I have a wheelchair and there’s steps down to our garden so window photography it’s then for me. Heather gets me photos of the flowers she grows form. I play around with them, I just crop or convert to black and white. I don’t like photoshop as in my mind it’s messing up the photo.

Just had a few days in the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery UCLH London

The UCLH (University Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery Hospital) is some place. I under went spinal surgery 17 months ago (see previous post)

My visit was to sort out dosage and ensure the catheter wasn’t leaking. The marvellous staff at the Molly Lane Fox unit were there to care for my every need and the food weren’t bad either.  My visit would’ve been sorted in clinic normally but then COVID-19 reared it’s ugly head and as with the whole world 🌍 things got sidelined. 

During 2020 I came to clinics to have my pump refilled and dose changes. Medtronic makers of the pump have made an amazing job. It’s done by placing a reader over the pump and then my nurse could read the amounts used etc and more importantly for me make any changes in dose. 

Back to the reason why I am posting and that is to give a big thumbs up 👍 to staff and nurses on the Molly Lane Fox unit who cared for me. The unit deal with all sorts of brain 🧠 surgery and I have met people who have undergone some marvellous marvels of modern surgical techniques. All cared for a in a ward with a history dating back into the mid 1800’s when a woman sought brain surgery for a family member. That woman was Molly Lane Fox. She was a one of the founders  of The UCLH (University Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery Hospital) here endith tonight’s lesson on the history of brain 🧠 surgery it may not be the perfect historical reference you will ever read but ‘twas written with love ❤️ for the care I have received and the marvellous things that happened at the UCLH .

Sorry not been posting Multiple Sclerosis and life got in the way.

My last post was pre COVID-19 so it is ages ago but with all of the lockdowns and waves etc it seems an eternity since I last posted. Much has happened, I have finally got my Stoma done it’s a Colostomy and has transformed our lives. I’m no longer sitting on the commode for four or five hour’s everyday. Son in that respect life is better. Because of Heather changing the Stoma bags the bed needs to be moved which involves relocating the ceiling hoist and that’s due to happen next week 👍 . My other major news is that I now have an intrathecal baclofen pump. I had it inserted last February prior to the first lockdown . To find out about Baclofen Pump click here 

This pump is a brilliant piece of kit. Inserting medication direct into the spinal cord via a catheter from the pump inserted in the front of my stomach. 

 So lots going on but I haven’t wanted to share this with the 🌍. Now I have shared it so maybe more posts to come.

Article from The Guardian about Earth day

 Today is Earth Day, which should provide us with an opportunity to pause and confront the awful predicament humanity faces. We eat microplastics, breathe pollution and watch other life-forms decline to extinction. We face intersecting poverty, health, climate and biodiversity crises. Our global predicament is that consumption by the wealthy is driving us towards planetary disaster, yet billions live in poverty and need to consume more to live well. In this cycle, any version of “success” only hastens catastrophe.

Solving this conundrum requires much more than merely reducing the impact of high-consumption lifestyles. Similarly, if we focus on increasing efficiency this tends to increase resource use: make cars cheaper to run and people drive more. The core of any response that truly rises to this challenge will be interlocking policies that drive society on to an equitable and sustainable path.

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Here are four policies that work together to maximise people’s welfare and freedoms, drive essential technological innovation, and allow society to operate within Earth’s limits. At their heart is human dignity coupled with breaking the dynamic of ever-greater production and consumption. Together they could quickly reorient the doomsday machine that is today’s global economy.

The first policy is universal basic income (UBI) whereby a financial payment is made to every citizen, unconditionally, at a level above their subsistence needs. UBI is needed to break the link between work and consumption. Critically, there is a constant awareness that we all need to be ever more productive at work, otherwise someone else will take our job. In response we have all said: I work hard, so I deserve that fancy meal, new gadget or long-haul holiday. Increased consumption is the reward for being ever more productive at work. Indeed, it makes little sense to curb our consumption when we know we will have to be ever more productive at work, regardless of our choices.

Fears that UBI may lead to laziness are unfounded: small-scale trials of UBI show people work hard and are typically more entrepreneurial. Crucially, those UBI recipients had lower anxiety, stress and health problems. UBI allows people to say no to undesirable work, unless it is well-paid enough. People can also say yes to opportunities that often lie out of reach, as they can study or retrain. And clearly there is an immense amount of work to do, from caring for others, to producing what we all need to live well. With UBI we would increasingly choose work that we thought mattered, rather than working ever harder to consume ever more.

The second policy framework is what I call universal shared services – others have argued for universal basic services, but what’s needed must be far beyond basic. Many countries have some of these, from healthcare to education. These are the services everyone needs and their delivery has society-wide effects. Core are health, education, energy, housing and leisure services. Providing these universally lowers financial costs due to economies of scale, and can substantially lower environmental costs. Such universal services make societies more equal and drive them towards more sustainability if two further policies are enacted.

The third policy tackles the climate emergency via legally binding ever-declining carbon budgets. This framework exists in the UK, following the 2008 Climate Change Act. The government must reduce UK carbon emissions to within a carbon budget. These five-year budgets decline to a zero allocation by 2050. This act also created an independent statutory body that analyses data and advises the government on how to achieve each successive carbon budget. The advice results in new legislation for specific sectors and drives technological innovation as the zero emissions long-term destination is clear. As a result the UK is world-leading in reducing carbon emissions.

The fourth policy uses the same declining budget principle, but tackles material use rather than energy generation. Similarly, declining “plastic use budgets” can set society on a pathway to eliminating plastic pollution. The same principle can tackle metal use to limit the damage from mining. A budget for the total amount of land used to produce the food a country consumes can limit the footprint of agriculture, central to halting biodiversity loss. As with carbon emissions, scientists can now track the production and use of plastic, metal and food. Scientific monitoring and new “declining budget” policies could keep material use within Earth’s limits.

These four policy goals together would drive people’s welfare up and our environmental impacts down. They are not new, nor are they very radical. We already, for example, assure incomes for pensioners in many countries, healthcare is universal in a number of countries, and declining carbon budgets are being used to help drive today’s energy transition.

But how to pay for it? The first response of the powerful to change is to argue that the costs are too great. They rarely are. After two decades of arguments about the high costs of tackling climate change, consultants to big business McKinsey now report that the cost of Europe reaching net zero emissions by 2050 is itself net zero. The investments literally pay for themselves. Revenue-raising options should also help to implement the four policies more cheaply; these could include taxes on rentiers financial transactions, and high energy or material use. Of course, without pressure from popular protest movements and political parties, nothing will change.

Yet systemic thinking on how to respond to global problems is increasing. The Covid-19 pandemic has produced a new seriousness by graphically revealing that there actually is no “outside” of society or the environment. When there’s no such thing as “outside”, the neoliberal mantra of avoiding taxes and regulations to keep wealth to yourself makes less and less sense. With political pressure and smart policies a new universality that breaks with centuries of exploiting people and the environment could be within reach. This is undoubtedly a very tough task, but we can’t afford to fail.

• Simon Lewis is professor of global change science at University College London and 

• “Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd 

  IUniversity of Leeds

Flowers blooming bulbs growing

 We have had loads of daffodils blooming for what seems an absolute age but as they start to recede other bulbs are appearing. First off it was the Snakes Head Frittilary and now it’s a question of what is going to be next? This is a voyage of discovery as a few weeks back we (Heather) planted 200 spring and summer bulbs.