Category: Health and wellness

At the moment, I’m moving very slowly with a limp and occasionally emitting a whimper of pain. It’s all my own fault.

 

The sequence of events was set in motion about six weeks ago when Martin decided that he’d like to throw open access to the garden to members of the public. He’s a keen gardener, and very proud of what he’s achieved in the garden here in just over a year. So he joined Groei & Bloei, the Dutch association of amateur gardeners; the local chairman came to inpsect the garden, and gave Martin the go-ahead to open the garden. Martin picked next weekend as the date, and thus the garden will be open to the public next Saturday and Sunday afternoons.  

 

Of course, Martin wants the garden to look its best, so we’ve both been working hard to get it ready. My tasks are generally mowing and hedge trimming. This last week I trimmed all the box hedges and yesterday I started on the hornbeam hedge. This is a tall hedge, and requires me to use a ladder.

 

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

 

I’ve got one of those multi-purpose aluminium ladders that can be locked into a variety of shapes. I had it in the form of a raised platform, with a plank of wood laid across the rungs to form the platform. Standing on it, I could tackle the top of the hedge, using the electric hedgetrimmer.

 

Now, I’ve always understood the elementary physics of fulcrums and levers, and I knew that it was important to have the plank of wood laid carefully across the rungs. The ends of the plank, in particular, had to be resting on rungs, otherwise the plank would tip up if I trod on the end section. I knew this. And yet, about halfway through cutting the top of the hedge, I moved to the end of the plank and suddenly had a very bad feeling.

 

I looked down, and saw the the end of the plank was no longer resting on a rung. My right foot was standing on the ladder frame. However, my left foot was standing on the end of the plank that was now free to tilt downward through the ladder, which is precisely what it was doing. Everything progressed in slow motion. I remember thinking that I was still holding the hedgetrimmer, and that had to be jettisoned in as safe a manner as possible, and that I was, in all probability, about to experience for the very first time, what a broken leg would feel like.

 

Fortunately, elementary phsyics saved the day once again. Since the heavy wooden plank was now falling through the rungs of the ladder, all that was left was the weight of the aluminium ladder itself. I was now falling face down off one end of the platform, with my left leg caught between two rungs on the top of the platform. My weight, and my trajectory, caused the whole platform to lift and pivot around the legs of the ladder at the end that I was falling from. Had that pivot not occurred, there would have been a very nasty snapping of both my tibia and fibula.

 

I lay there for a few moments (going "ow-ow-ow-ow", "shit!" and variations on that theme) before I thought that I probably should check to see if I had broken my leg. Fortunately, I hadn’t, although there was a small gash where the flesh had got trapped between the tibia and the ladder rung. However, now I have a painful leg and currently reduced to hobbling around. The rest of the hedge will have to wait.

 

What really makes me feel stupid is that I’ve always known this accident could potentially happen. I’ve spent hours standing on the plank on the ladder platform. All it took was one momentary lapse of concentration, and the laws of physics kicked in. However, it could have been worse.

The human mind is capable of making many things appear real. For example, this elderly lady who:

I continue to be grateful that the majority of my perceptions continue to be shared by those around me, such as, for example, the fact that there is a nest of rats in our compost heap and that I, and our farmer neighbour, can at least attest to the fact that (a) they aren’t made of diamonds and (b) so far we have trapped nine of the buggers.  

I mentioned a few weeks back that one of our neighbours had been told that he did not have long to live. Alas, the doctors’ prognosis was accurate, for yesterday we attended his funeral. He was a popular man, and 200 friends and neighbours were there yesterday to say farewell. As is traditional in this part of the Netherlands, his coffin was brought in by members of his family and his nearest neighbours. The service was simple, but moving, with his three daughters speaking about his life, and music (chosen by Jan) by Bach and Schumann.

 

He will be missed.

Fancy spending up to eight hours a day in a pool with hundreds of fish nibbling on your scabby old skin? Yes? Then "Doctor Fish" – otherwise known as Garra rufa sound just the thing for you. Me? I think I’ll pass, at least until some dependable clinical trials have been done…

The director of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization has clearly the perfect name… He must be the right man for the job.

How do you live your life? By not worrying about death? Or by letting the realisation that life is finite, and death inevitable, shape what you do in the time allotted?

 

Epicurus argued that the fear of death was irrational. "Where death is, I am no longer," he said, "and where I am, death is not." Epicurus’ point is that there is nothing to fear in death itself, what people really fear is the process of dying and the pain that all too often accompanies the final illness.

 

Heidegger, on the other hand, argued that death is a constant presence in life, and renamed human existence "being towards death". Heidegger therefore rejected the Epicurean idea that death is irrelevant to our lives. To understand life fully, Heidegger argued, one must understand oneself as finite.

 

These two points of view are explored by the philospher Havi Carel in a compelling piece in The Independent. The question is thrown into sharp focus for her by the fact that she has, at most, 10 years left to live. Ten years that will increasingly be marked by illness and pain. 

 

Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t feel the two viewpoints are an "either/or" situation; to me it feels like a "both/and". I don’t fear death, and I know that it’s inevitable. Perhaps that’s because, as Carel argues, I am in good health. Perhaps if I were in her situation I might feel differently. I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently because one of our neighbours has recently been told he has only a few months, perhaps just a few weeks, left to live. He seems to have accepted this with equanimity – he’s more concerned about how his wife will cope – and is busy putting his affairs in order in readiness. His forthrightness is admirable, and is an example that I hope to follow when my time comes.

 

(hat tip to Julian Baggini over at Talking Philosophy for the link to the Carel article)

The Angry Professor writes about a student, Hans. Read it, particularly the kicker at the end. Talk about the blind leading the blind…

I’ve been fortunate enough never to have had to take anti-depressants in my life. The real kicker appears to be when people stop taking them, as Holly Finch has found out.

I know that self-awareness makes us to be a very strange species, but sometimes I come across something that I find extremely difficult to understand. Here’s an example: a healthy woman who sees herself as incomplete – because she has too many legs.

 

Update: Vaughan, over at Mind Hacks, has some more information about this.

Mr. Eugenides indulges in a spot of "shooting fish in a barrel". Oh, I say, good shot, sir!

The telly was in severe danger of being broken last night. I came very close to hurling something at it. As it was, the dog was treated to some fairly colourful language. The cause of all this was a programme on BBC Two called "Trust Me, I’m a Healer". It was about a so-called shaman, Peter Aziz, who claims to heal patients with the help of dragons, tree spirits and hallucinogenic drugs. Yeah, right. At one point, with a completely straight face, he said:

Excuse me while I just count to ten. No, sorry, Peter, that’s just crap. And for this you charge 40 quid an hour? There’s plenty more where that came from on his web site, which has practically broken my woo-meter.

 

What really got me fuming during the film was the way he gives false hope to those poor unfortunates who are gullible enough to believe him. The film followed two such people. One was Margo, who had cancer of the colon. A lovely woman, but completely taken in by Aziz’s hokum. She has, of course, died. I think the nadir of the film was when Aziz almost (but not quite – he was obviously canny enough to realise the danger) said that his treatments for Margo would have been successful if she hadn’t have gone and had chemotherapy.

 

The film was made by Jason Massot, who I think was clearly too easy on Aziz, but then again, perhaps that was what enabled Aziz to give free reign to his nonsensical claims, and condemn himself out of his own mouth. Had I been in Massot’s shoes, I would have found it difficult to keep filming. I would have wanted to stop the camera and shake Aziz warmly by the throat every few minutes.

A great anti-smoking campaign. I wish that my nearest and dearest would get unhooked.

And another tip of the hat to Mind Hacks. This time for the entry illustrating schizoaffective disorder, with a link to an article describing the symptoms, written by someone who suffers from it. Hell on earth comes closest to what I think it must be like. I consider myself fortunate that, thus far, I have remained reasonably sane.

Remember, today is World AIDS Day.

 

 

 

(hat tip to Sleepykisser for the image)

The White Queen, in Alice Through The Looking Glass, claimed to be able to believe in six impossible things before breakfast. If quality, not quantity, is the measure, then Cotard’s Delusion must score pretty highly on the "impossible things" scale. This is the strong, unshakeable belief held by the sufferer that he or she is, in fact, dead. Mind Hacks draws our attention to a good article in the FT about the condition.

Just six days to go to this year’s World AIDS Day on the 1st December. The theme for this year is accountability. The EU Commission has also launched its AIDS – Remember me? web site – a somewhat odd little web site aimed at yoof.

Maceij Ceglowski (the intelligence behind Idle Words) has started the Bedbug Registry, where travellers can report sighting of bedbugs in the hotels they visit. The University of Kentucky has a particularly illuminating web page on the species.

 

It all brings back memories of the first time I stayed in San Francisco. When I got to my room and switched on the light, I saw, with some horror, the pattern on the carpet fleeing to the walls…

A striking Road Safety advertisment from New Zealand. Although, to be strictly accurate, it ain’t the speed that causes the mess – it’s the sudden stopping that does it.

…Pratt by Nature. Physician, heal thyself. It’s a sad story, really. I feel sorry not only for the patient(s), but for the doctor as well. But the astounding thing appears to be that she is carrying on practicing medicine. She should be removed at once.