I don’t write very often about my health, but, at the tender age of 72, it’s bound to figure now and again. True since the pandemic has been with us this last year my health has featured more than just now and again. And here’s the great irony the older I get the more I have to write about health-wise even without Covid but, and here’s a big but, I feel less inclined to write about it.
But last Thursday night (for the second time in this blog) I had such a perfect storm of a night mental and physical health-wise that I thought I would write about it on the grounds that this retirement blog just might offer a little comfort to others in a similar state of 72 year-old retirement. Maybe not. See what you think.
When I use the term a ‘perfect storm’ I am referring to a combination of factors that are only perfect in the sense that they are terrible. And to be terrible there has to be a mixture of the mental and the physical. In this case, unusually for me, the physical outweighed the mental.
The mental I can easily describe. I had ‘attended’ a Zoom run by my wine group about pruning. It was very popular. They said they had 130 odd people signed in. Who’d have thought? The session made me feel even more inadequate than usual in the wine world and it was those inadequacies that went round and round – and round in my head about two in the morning.
I know this because I was awake again and again – and again. I was awake because I needed to pee. Five times in one night as you ask, oh, you didn’t ask. Well it’s out there now. It was a world record for me. So what the hell was going off I do not know. As is often the case with my health there did not seem to be any logic to what was happening.
It was nice to be awake so that I could take full account of the pains in my stomach. They’ve been there quite a while. They’re not very painful (unlike my foot pains to which I shall return shortly). Because they’re not massively painful they do not wake me up but, as I say if I’m awake then I get the complete benefit.
In July of 2019 I had a colonoscopy. I should have warned the more sensitive among my readers to skip this retirement blog and just start again next week maybe. Not too late to shut down your laptops, switch off your phones or unplug your desktops. Make a run for the hills.
Anyway where was I, oh yes, the tube up the bottom episode. To cut to the chase or whatever phrase is appropriate here, I had a polyp removed from my inward pointing passage ways. I have much the same symptoms right now and I have self-diagnosed the same. So I decide nothing really nasty and this decision is supported by a recent bowel cancer test. Well, I did tell you, you could have switched off by now.
My diagnosis I should point out was made in the absence of a real doctor – who I did see but he was in the waiting area of my Covid vaccine facility, he’d retired and was acting as an attendant in the system. How weird is that. I could never get to see him when he was actually my doctor but now here he was making sure we sat on the right seats, even hidden behind his mask we recognised him or rather Mrs Summerhouse did, I’d forgotten what he looked like.
Anyway I digress, as I say nothing really painful just mildly and with a swollen stomach which made my pyjama bottoms feel tight. That really is too much information I think. Except just to say I also felt sick and had indigestion. Can it get any better?
Well, now if you want real pain and this really is the icing on the cake, I turn to my feet, metaphorically that is. I’ve never been shot so I can only surmise that a shooting pain is something like. The plus here would be you probably only get shot once. As I say I don’t really know, but these pains come and go. A bonus don’t you think. These pains will wake me up. The good news is that being very definitely awake and in need of some form of distraction I write all this out in my diary which I keep at the side of the bed.
And I’ve got this far without any direct reference to my diabetes. Which is somewhat surprising because the experts and the media are continually reminding those of us with diabetes about the link between Covid deaths and diabetes. I haven’t got the figures to hand and I’ve no intention of searching them out. Suffice it to say there is an established link.
So little surprise then that on the BBC news on my phone this morning (Saturday) there is an article, that caught my bleary eye, written by one of their health correspondents about such a link with the title Covid and diabetes: My story. It’s the story of a young (younger than me anyway) black guy who explained normal blood sugars are between 5 and 9 (oh dear) and if you’re between 15 and 20 you’re reckoned medically to be diabetic. This is a more optimistic figure for me.
This guy was admitted to hospital with a blood sugar reading of 125 (the highest ever recorded at this hospital) and the thing is he had no idea he had diabetes. The link is below if you doubt the veracity of my account.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-56132391
All I would say about this article is that first, I’m doing perfectly well (not) without my diabetes adding to my difficulties and second somewhere between this guy’s complete casualness about his health and my verging on the hypochondriacal, is a sensible approach to one’s health. I hope this retirement blog helps you find it although I’m pretty sure it won’t.
PS. It’s now Tuesday morning and I’ve just read this through. I’ll put it out before I change my mind.