July 19th - blog 1 - money and food

This will come as a shocking start to all of you…largely because it is so off topic:

I am absolutely horrified by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling’s proposal (or is it new policy) to completely revamp the rules on which the British economy is based in order to safeguard it’s future throughout a time of economic ‘crisis’. It is remarkable how the leaders of countries can revolutionise the rules on which society is built in order to guarantee their own fears are assuaged. Borrowing (from where???) more than 40% of this country’s Gross Domestic Product is a heinous way to treat money…this is such a fallacious and farcical way to treat finances. Like the changing of the clocks it demonstrates the lack of any truth or basis that is present within something. In this case money, in the clocks’ case – time. It’s just so ridiculously stupid that we can be indebted as a country and up to our eyeballs in what we owe…without having a say in it whatsoever. That two seemingly all-knowing people can put the country further into debt seems ludicrous.

The other thing that seems ludicrous is that we never have to pay this money back, really. It is not a debt that accrues interest, I assume – how does the GDP and borrowing limits really work on a practical level? Does anyone ever ask for the money back? No? Well…whatever…it’s just fiddling the books to guarantee and ensure that things look better on the surface. We must create a fiscal picture of solvency, coping and healthy figures when in actual fact there is far too much concealing which occurs when it comes to governmental policy and honesty. It looks dreadful for a country to be in arrears, but it looks more dreadful when the economy is hitting a slowdown and there is too little spending for governments to have enough tax etc. and there is too little investment and continuity and flow of finances to keep them happy. Oh, tonight it’s making me mad…I wonder why…the pathetic emptiness of money – and yet it’s importance. It is what the world runs on but I bet those who have it, and those who don’t, often stop to think how unreal and artificial it actually is: like the life is built on time – but it is as markedly ridiculous as building it on money if you can change the rules each spring and autumn at will – it obviously cannot be that key, realistic and foundational to begin with.

Like this whole performance with my weight. Did I, or did I not, have it guaranteed with the dieticians and nurses on Thursday, the doctor on Friday – and basically everyone known to man – that I would be weighed Tuesday and Friday (twice weekly) on the chair scales, outside, plugged in, in the clothes I had always been weighed in. Which MUST be written down and recorded in many millions of different places. Nope…‘we need to weigh you this morning, right?’ Um, no. It’s Tuesday and Friday, it should be written in my doctors and nurses notes, I had a meeting with the dietician on Thursday and doctors on Friday to confirm this. I am not to be weighed more than twice weekly.

My file has now disappeared to be ‘checked’. Jesus Lord in Heaven Above! Why are conversations had and not recorded and yet when I took a shifty look at my medical notes last night there was reams and reams of information about times when I had been turned, when I’d had bowel movements and also the time when I had an altercation with Claire about watching me having a Resource drink, pages of my ‘resistance to treatment’ from random discharge people I have never met when I started eating food instead of drinking Resources. The selectivity of records and the slanted-ness of their nature was alarming. I find important information has been discarded or simply not recorded or written down and that inconsequential details are made large notice and big deals of. Key things for my healthcare are neglected and the whole write-up seems to be a little distorted towards the relating of incidents and difficulties as opposed to movements, progressions and successes. It also transpires that the meeting with the Social Worker was organised a long time before it was had – potentially even when Dr Gordon came back from holiday. D and V is listed almost as an afterthought and there is no mention of food anywhere in my assessment for discharge that I can see…

…I didn’t get long enough, or feel comfortable enough, reading such information though. I was only half trying to do it at the end of the ward in the worst of circumstances and feelings so I couldn’t get a decent idea. But I do know that there is absolutely no accuracy of weighting in the distribution of time and detail in the recounting of my time throughout my stay in this hospital. Nurses write reams when there has been an issue with me, and nothing when there have been huge progressions…hmm…there will be something to say about this further down the line.

So…food for thought…but more specifically…it’s more important to keep gaining weight at the moment. That, more than anything I can say or write, will be far more relevant to the righting of the writing. It is only by giving them good and positive things to write that I can change opinion – and perhaps now I simply know more of the ideology behind Sue Lovell, Dr Sinha and even to a degree Dr Gordon’s reasons behind the decision they took last Friday. When faced with such distorted information where the wrong (not necessarily inaccurate but certainly incomplete) things have been given as factual and/or important is it any wonder that crap choices are made? And perhaps it is only continued communication which will prove that record wrong – and not correcting it verbally etc.

And essentially there’s little else to say. I lost count of the amount of times Franco deserted me yesterday whilst supposed to be watching. I cannot be responsible for his leaving me – although I continued to eat throughout. And today it is Priscilla’s last day, and Claire is working too. But thankfully I think I’ve just seen Adele arrive which means that I’ll have some security, friendship and comradeship as I manoeuvre through what could be a challenging day with the trained staff on duty. And then I can feel comfortable with the observers, and Adele’s level of observation is the right level of conscientious whilst appreciative of who I am as a person. If anything the sectioning has made our relationships stronger – that of mine with Alison and Adele is far more cemented now that there is a consistency to our contact and not a lack of awareness of their role in my care. It seems that everyone has benefitted from the firming up of clarifying their roles which has occurred under sectioning. My opinion would be why couldn’t they have done this without the need for the official label – but then no-one would really have had the appropriate attitude or approach – and I wouldn’t be so compliant I suppose. And more than that, I wouldn’t be so concerned about getting it slightly under – which I may have done yesterday. Yet today I have Chicken Jambalaya – another meal like Thai Curry. I sense I’m going to be really comfortable with this because there is no room for error – no room for me getting the calories skewed. It’s a nice meal where everything is served up for me and there is no relying on me to help myself to 2nds etc. or putting stuff extra in to build up the calories…it’s more secure for me to do it like this – I worry less!

Perhaps that’s something I need to see. I may well have been doing it before – I certainly was, actually – and certainly will have done more had I been allowed to continue. However I spent long periods of time in doubt around the precise amounts I was serving up myself – I even thought I’d need Mum to leave last night given the amount I was going to be relied upon to calculate things according to my own estimations etc. In the event I needed her support more than I feared my portions – and in the event everything was perfect…

…and yet such meals fully served and calculated etc. are not just for the dieticians. They’re for my sanity too. So I have no complicated calculations, no difficult stressful ‘did I serve myself enough’. And whilst I will not change my meal plans for the world there is an acceptance inside that even I am easier when there are whole meals there served for me and I am not responsible – just in case I get it ‘wrong’. Whilst I know that any error would only ever now be by mistake or miscalculation and not in any way shape or form through intent, there is still a greater delight within me when I feel taken by another through the calorific content and arrive at the other side of the meal (however stressed I may be whilst eating – which has actually turned out to be not a lot) having actually done it.

Anyway – there is a great settling within me at the moment around the restrictions I am under through the sectioning. More than that – with the restrictions placed upon me via the regime. I don’t like loading with Shredded Wheat etc. at breakfast, nor do I much like the snacking regularity, or the fact that I am more comfortable with apportioned meals. But I do not feel the need to change or move away from anything that I am doing. I want to keep going – and keep upping and guaranteeing I’m maintaining the consumption of enough on a daily basis to ensure continued, and increasing, weight gain – hopefully at a higher differential than 100grams per day. It actually needs (though hugely successful over the last few days) to be going on faster. Or I won’t be happy – and nor will those in the God places. I’ll see where I respond to putting more, now I know – probably lunch time and maybe a little more milk at breakfast etc. It’s those little additions now that’ll make the difference, not wholescale changes but continued mini-uppings…

…oh sorry guys. For a blog that started so promisingly different I made it all about the food again. But I needed to. I’m doing it now – there is no sense I’m not. But the doing it…I’m going to do it more. And that just came off my fingers – it wasn’t an intent from my head. Had my head said it, it would have said ‘I want to do it more’ or ‘I hope I do it more’ or ‘I need to do it more’. Nope – body says it’s ‘going to do it more’ so I’ll just stand back and watch how that might take shape. Beyond that, all that is required from my mind is the allowing of the responses it gives me at any given moment to come through into reality and the cessation of comparison to yesterdays and to ‘normals’ and to what I know historically and habitually and from the past that I like and the amount that I eat. Expansion – visually, mentally and portionally (esp. at snack time) will liberate me into a 0.8 kilo weight gain per week – at least – and I really do feel that I should be at least there, if not more than that. That is a really strong motivational drive underneath me now…though I know it may be an artificial kick up the arse, I can cope with that…I’m smiling within that too. For now, though, guys…happy weekend.

IN MEMORY OF A DELIGHTFUL HUMAN BEING: WHO NEVER KNEW THE GOOD FORTUNE I HAVE KNOWN AND, BUT FOR TRAJECTORY, COULD SO NEARLY HAVE BEEN ME