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On the other hand, reading this list of questions what are the chances that coffee is the reason for all my ills?
That would appear to be at least 12 out of 14 and a score of just 7 yeses looks like the recommendation point when, "Removal of products laced with caffeine from your diet will improve your health considerably."
Nooooo, please, I’ve actually halved my consumption of coffee, but surely I’m allowed a little slack, because I’ve given up everything else.
Finally, yesterday afternoon, after around 11 years, I saw a doctor and to my utter surprise and enormous relief, he appeared perfectly happy to accept my opinion (that he asked for) that the symptoms I’ve been experiencing for the last 13+ years are those of fibromyalgia … to the point that he asked if I minded if he put that on my notes.
Frankly, I don’t mind what he puts, as long as he accepts that there’s something to investigate, because, in the exceedingly long story that has ensued during all this time, as I explained to him, the worst part (above all the considerable physical pain I’ve endured) is having been doubted and treated as a liar by my own family.
Better yet is that he gave me a piece of paper with the word fibromyalgia printed on it that I was able to wave under my mother’s nose. She sniffed at the paper with an air of suspicion then denied ever doubting me - like once before, when she said, "Oh I believe you, but I want backup." I’m sure you get the irony / contradiction. She still doesn’t, but lets see if that’s enough to satisfy her and if she’s capable of treating me any better now.
Anyway, the doctor wanted to get some basic information about me on that first visit yesterday - none of my notes have materialized yet - and he’s sending me for some blood tests; cholesterol, sugar, etc., but his intention is that we take a holistic approach (how I LOVE to hear that word from a mainstream medic), work out a management strategy between us and then tick off the issues one by one (as I’d made it clear that I have a list.)
Nothing is simple, of course, because I have to go to Lymington Hospital for the tests (on Monday), on an empty stomach. It will take two buses and a taxi, the least it will cost is around £20.00 return (for the approx. 5 mile journey) yet, because of the bus times (the first from here is 10 a.m.), the earliest I can be there is 11.30 in the morning. A bit late to be still starving as the nice lady at the hospital, who made the appointment, kindly pointed out!
The way she asked "Fasting or non-fasting?" sounded funny too, like "smoking or non-smoking" used to sound, when you had a choice on flights! 
Still, it should represent a step forward, provided I don’t faint on the way.
If people with health books had to be wary of misprints in Mark Twain’s day, then someone with internet access to Wikipedia should be doubly careful that they don’t kill themselves off twice as fast with misinformation today, but ….
The doctor also took my blood pressure (when I was younger, this had always been on the low side of normal), but yesterday, he said was a bit high.
Yes, I know that one relatively high result does not indicate hypertension, but unfortunately, both my father and grandmother had high blood pressure, so the chances it might also mean that in my case are probably increased.
Further, we know that hypertension is one of the risk factors for strokes, heart attacks, etc. And case reports have raised the hypothesis that nicotine patches may increase the risk of myocardial infarction (heart attacks to you), so it would appear (to my logic) that someone with hypertension who uses nicotine patches might have an even more increased risk of heart attacks.
(Yeah, yeah, someone with that predisposition who smokes would too.)
Taking that as so, this appears to support my theory that the chest pains I suffered last October when I used nicotine patches and that I thought might be a mild heart attack (I wasn’t sure I wanted to believe me, but that opinion was based on the fact that I was taught about the symptoms of heart attack (a sensation of tightness, pressure, or squeezing) when I passed (the second person ever to pass with 100%, I might add) a first aid course with St. John’s Ambulance), may indeed, actually have been a mild heart attack.
At the time, I put myself in the recommended half-sitting position with knees bent, tried not to panic and eventually the pain and constriction subsided and breathing became easier, but for a while there, it was damn scary.
What I didn’t do was to get professional help, because, as is usually the case when one is alone, once I was capable of picking up the phone to make the call, the emergency seemed to have passed and, it wasn’t until some time afterwards that I did the research to be able to put 2 & 2 together.
We shall see if there’s any evidence, but this would explain a number of other increased symptoms I’ve been getting such as; sweating, light-headedness, nausea, palpitations, breathlessness (now I’ve given up smoking, where I wasn’t before), weakness, and fatigue, so it’s a tad worrying.
‘Spose I could save the health service money and shoot myself first!
It’s been niggling me for years that "Pending" wasn’t quite the term I was looking for, for many tasks, things, etc., that weren’t in nor out, but I still couldn’t quite pin down in my mind what category they should be in.
This answers it, I think.
The Limbo File Folders by Bob’s Your Uncle (Via: Casa Sugar)
You Are the Greek Goddess Athena
"Athena is a very powerful goddess: Remember she was born fully-armed when she was extracted from the head of her father Zeus. She is also very wise and a talented craftswoman, but definitely not a girly-girl. She doesn’t like to have her competence questioned. Although not naturally indirect, Athena enjoys a bit of make-believe. Getting Athena on your side will get the job done."
Actually, the bit about not being a girly-girl is so very true that I had difficulty seeing myself as goddess material at all, but given the choices, I’m certainly happy with this result. Though I would not even dare to presume …
But I felt a tremendous sense of place and magnetic attraction, in Athens, maybe this is why? And back in the 80’s, added my support (moral, at least), to Melina Mercouri’s campaign for the return of the Parthenon Marbles.
(Whether my own marbles will ever be reunited, is another matter entirely!)
There is definitely something almost Freudian about Athena’s lack of mother.
"Not naturally indirect" made me laugh. That’s a terribly indirect, tactful, way of suggesting that I’m rather direct and straightforward, or what some might call lacking in tact and diplomacy. And I make no apology for it either!
Virgin goddess might be stretching the bounds of unbelievable a bit tho’.
Thanks to The Cats Tripe for picking the quiz out.
Some people get exactly what they asked for:
"… will really only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother."
Respect, because this seems, to me, to be better than hypocrisy.
Lifehacker report that "Google has quietly added another new feature to its basic search box–single-word translations between English and nine different languages, including French, Italian, and Spanish." Undoubtedly a useful tool.
Generally, I use Google to spellcheck in English (at which I suck) anyway. By typing the approximation into Google, it comes back with "Did you mean …"
When it comes to single word (or just a phrase) translations, Firefox users have a couple of other, even handier tools available to them. The first, using Google’s language tools, is the gTranslate add-on, with which you can translate any text in a webpage just by selecting and right-clicking over it. This is quicker than going to Google and even faster than typing "translate" followed by the word you want to convert to English, into your search bar.
Should it fail and, unfortunately it does, frequently, fail to translate the more "difficult" words, Wikipedia can often be used to come up with the answer.
The long way round to do this would be to go to the Wikipedia site of the language of the word that you want to translate from, search for the term, then look down the left-hand column, for where it says "English".
Provided there is an English version, this is a particularly good way of finding translations for words and terms that are not straightforward and that would be hard to find or may not have shown up in the standard dictionary.
There are less steps to this process if you have your Google preferences set to search for pages written in any language and have the Firefox addon, Googlepedia, which shows you the relevant Wikipedia article along with your search results automatically. Beats leafing through dead-tree dictionaries.
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