Health | Head Rambles

Archive for the 'Health' Category

Just the thought of it

Grandad August 12th, 2011

When I was a lad, running a temperature was a sure-fire method of getting a couple of days off school.

The Ma would toddle into the bedroom, stick a thermometer into my gob and wander off again, leaving me to my own devices. My devices were simple – either a drop of friction on the bed-sheets or the bulb in the bedside lap. Either method is guaranteed to work, though The Ma might get suspicious if I were running a temperature of 150 degrees.

Docs are the same. They also love the temperature, but also have a few extras. They check temperature, blood pressure, pulse and whether you have a cold wet nose or not [our Doc trained originally as a vet]. This always struck me as being akin to kicking a car’s tyres and checking the radiator levels to see if a car runs or not. Very strange.

I have my own method, and it is incredibly accurate. Basically it is a checklist of what makes me nauseous.

The concept is very simple. I have a list of foods and beverages, and I just imagine myself sitting down to a large portion of each item.

First off is tripe. I think of myself tucking into a large plateful of tripe and then check to see if I feel nauseous. I fucking hate tripe, so nausea at this level means that I am in the whole of my health. If I didn’t feel nauseous then there is something wrong.

Then I step up the ladder and think of boiled bacon and cabbage. Nausea at this level probably means a minor head cold or a mild flu. Nothing whatsoever to worry about.

I continue on up the list covering such items as poached salmon [that means I need a couple of aspirin] through minute steak [this is getting serious at this point] up to Confit de Canard and Vindaloo.

Nausea at the thought of Confit de Canard is serious stuff. At this stage I would need a heavy prescription of something or other, and as for Vindaloo – that is the point where I lash down to the nearest fever hospital and book myself in.

There is one further level. Guinness. Feeling nausea at the thought of a couple of pints is exceptionally serious. It has never happened.

I reckon it would mean I’m dead.

The Lost Weekend

Grandad August 8th, 2011

That was one hell of a weird weekend.

I am not normally one for getting ill. Sickness has only one redeeming factor and that is the ability to get a couple of weeks off work. Seeing as I gave up paid employment ten years ago, there didn’t seem to be any point in falling ill. so I didn’t.

On Saturday night I was completely blindsided by whatever the fuck bug it was. It left me completely incapacitated all through yesterday. I even went to bed early which is an indicator of how bad it was. I woke this morning and had great difficulty getting dressed – every move I made was agony. I made myself a cuppa [which I never drank] and eased myself painfully into my armchair. I promptly fell asleep again. I woke again an hour or so ago and found my clothes were wringing wet. And suddenly all the aches and pains had disappeared. I can actually move my head again and can walk without difficulty.

The only problem now is that I have to catch up with the rest of the world. I haven’t a clue what has been happening, and have had to flick through a few news sites to see if I have missed any excitement. Apart from America going into financial meltdown and riots in London it seems to have been a quiet enough time.

My problem is that I have little or no memory of what went on yesterday [or most of the day before] so I have nothing to write about. I have a vague recollection of entertaining visitors yesterday and I notice the Sunday Times is on the table so I must have gone down to the shop at some stage. But vague recollections don’t make for interesting scribbles, so I looks like I will have to spend this evening in the pub to catch up on all the important bits of news.

It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.

Quarantine

Grandad August 7th, 2011

I wasn’t going to write anything today, because I feel like shite.

Headaches, faceaches. shivers, aches all over, hot and cold flushes. You get the picture.

Then I realised something.

The chances are that this little beauty is highly contagious, and therefore the chances are that you’ll pick it up just from reading about it. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Well, actually I would but that’s beside the point.

Anyhows, I would suggest that you take the following precaution -

Mix up a large bath of water and Jeyes Fluid. Then immerse your computer completely in the solution. There is no need to unplug it first, and it’s probably better if you don’t as that way the disinfecting will be more thorough.

I would further suggest that once you have immersed your computer in the Jeyes Fluid that you give yourself a thorough scrub. A coarse bristle brush [or ideally a wire brush] will do the job.

You have been warned. I have told you what to do, and if you wake up in the morning feeling like shite and with headaches, faceaches. shivers, aches all over and hot and cold flushes, then don’t come crying to me. It’s your own fucking fault for ignoring a simple straightforward procedure.

Why do I just know that someone will ignore me and will carry on getting infected.

There is always one.

Deadly outbreak of hysteria

Grandad June 6th, 2011

What the fuck is all this hype about E Coli?

When the outbreak first occurred, we had a frantic message from The WHO screaming about a ‘deadly’ new strain of the virus. Now EU ministers are meeting to discuss the ‘lethal’ outbreak.

Now ‘lethal’ and ‘deadly’ to me are words that would imply that it’s a case of ‘one touch and you’re fucked’. Both words leave little to chance. They are as uncompromising as sharing a bath with a plugged in toaster, yet they give out figures that say that 2,000 have fallen prey to the virus but only 22 have died? Now I have every sympathy for the families of the victims, but taking a dispassionate look at the figures hardly indicates a deadly or lethal outbreak? You catch the bug, you have a 99% chance of survival. That sounds like pretty good odds to me?

And why are they having such difficulty finding the source? Surely a simple interview with the 2,000 victims should throw up something, if you’ll pardon the expression? So far they have decimated the Spanish cucumber crop and caused near riots by the Spanish farmers. Then they left a poor restauranteur in Northern Germany in a state of bewilderment having accused him of poisoning half the world. Then they decided it was beansprouts. There is something beautifully ironic about that, as beansprouts must epitomise the very definition of ‘healthy eating’.

Surely the simplest way to put this story to bed for once and for all is to make sure that beansprouts are the only item on the menu at EU headquarters?

Just tell ‘em it’s part of a ‘healthy eating’ drive.

Heh!