The difference in people - some stoical - some open and revealing their innermost feelings

Strange set of circumstances tonight (just after midnight on September 1^st – i.e. just after the end of August 31^st.), The shoulder and arm pain has been pretty bad during the day (31^st) so took two pain-killing co-codomil (never sure how to spell that) type tablets around 3 pm (actually at my GPs whilst collecting prescription medicines). This time it made me feel totally drained so went to bed around 5 p.m. and slept quite deeply until almost 9 p.m. and spent a while with my wife downstairs and she went to bed (knowing I’d be up very very late – so as to try to want to sleep again).

So, I knew I’d be doing a blog post.

I am as sick as you (the reader) about hearing about, and me writing about, health-related stuff. It’s alien. It’s what old people talk about and I refuse to accept that I am in that group (even though numerically I am).

This post will, I expect, appear in two or three labelled sections on my blog as I predict that I am about to talk about family and … maybe … opinions and so on (as well as health stuff). The arm pain is starting to kick-off again so if I take a pain-killer tablet maybe I’ll give up writing (tonight). We’ll see how it goes.

Family:

Let me first of all say that I think about my family, particularly my children when I watch a TV programme that I (and to some degree my wife too) am/are hooked on:

24 hours in A & E.

Let me explain the significance here …

• Many of the episodes are filmed in Kings College Hospital in Camberwell (south-east London, near where I lived for the first 20 odd years of my life). Some are filmed at St. George’s in Tooting in south-west London – another area I knew and had connections with and where my middle (grown-up) child, my son, who has Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC) has many consultations and treatments still.
• Why am I hooked on this TV programme (I am not hooked on any others)?
• It gets to the very crux of humanity. It shows people (patients of course), even hospital consultants at their most vulnerable and sometimes most emotional – quite apart from any physical considerations. It shows people dying (It did tonight), it shows people recovering against all odds. It shows people at the most tender and personal moments of their lives. It is all about people – not medicine – not injuries – not death – but people and how they interact with other people.
• Most episodes make me cry (tonight’s did) and although an elderly Vietnamese lady did die and it was touching to see her only attendee by her bed being her grandson in his twenties he stayed with her stroking her hair and talking to her in her native language whilst he translated for medics (and us viewers of course). – It wasn’t that part that was so touching – it was when a consultant bore his soul and talked about his 96 year old father and the silent moment that he realised that he as his son was changing places and becoming ‘the man’, the father-figure, the family head in his family as both father and son silently knew things had changed but no words were spoken. The consultant trying to talk about this was struggling to hold back his tears. He was a human being – not just the man we saw at A & E (the doctor) – he was just like us, vulnerable, emotional, human and with humanity.

I doubt that my words sufficiently capture what I am trying to convey here but I am doing my best to explain that what matters in life is humanity – not wealth, not status, not ego etc., but how we are with fellow human beings – especially at times of poor health and/or vulnerability – how we react with other people, maybe relatives, maybe even someone in our care.

Now this brings me onto me and how I react with others and how they react to me. Yes, relationships and, yes, family relationships.

There is always the question of what should and should not be discussed. I am an open person but most Brits revel in exhibiting stoicism – the ‘stiff upper (BRITISH) lip’. Most people want to not ‘wash their dirty linen in public’. Emotions, stress, angst, life’s difficulties, are ‘brushed neatly under the carpet’.

No, that’s not my way and the people that are the aforementioned ‘stiff upper lippers’ hate me for how I am; open, revealing my feelings, my emotions – what I care about and who I care for.

So here we are about to get into some nitty gritty stuff … and here I am about to offend many around me.

This post ends here and will be followed on by another (quite when I am not sure – maybe immediately, maybe tomorrow) but I need right now to reassess if I ought to be in bed asleep or tapping away on a computer or taking pain-killing pills or what – so sorry if anyone’s disappointed.