Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 18 August 2019

Good Morning. Only just awoke, after over 9 hours sleep.......

Thanks for beginning the thread again, Diane. Thinking of you, toiling away. Hope you get to the end, soon.

Annette, Matthew will be five in October. Tomasz was rushing about, and also playing his guitar on the stairs, as he was too shy to play what he'd learned in front of us. Later, he posed for some historic family pics: we took some of all of them, and they took some of us with the children. For some reason, my new double chin made an appearance......

DIANE - thanks for setting us off on the new week - sorry you are so busy and tired.

ANNETTE - do you ever consider going "low maintenance" in your garden? The man on the corner near us has a lovely garden, but now he has had the old hedge out and a new fence with his young neighbours, he is gradually reducing the workload of his planted areas.

LINDA - glad you got back safely last evening after what sounds like a good day with family and cake. Rosie has certainly grown and Matthew too. Nice to know Tomasz is playing guitar. I think , in family photos, we tend to concentrate on the little ones and don't keep the chins so under control!

HEATHER - I seem to remember you had one of your big family gatherings again last week - was it curry again this time? Good that the granddaughters are spending a lot of time with you.

We haven't gone to church - J and I didn't feel well enough, and OH decided to stay at home too.

Hi all, I am still here sort of. Here is why it has been quiet from here for quite a while .

I have been commuting to the surgery (at least that is what it felt like!) As I now know it all started when three years ago I was 'routinely' put on statins as I was that age to start them. Looking back the signs were there but not particularly recognisable. I was then diagnosed eventually with dangerously low B12 levels and I started the course of 5 quick fire B12 injections which were supposed to last for three months. They lasted three weeks!The obvious symptoms of this were loss of balance, trembling hands and eyesight becoming short sighted (Interestingly since my lenses from cataract ops were distance!) As this was two days before our holiday in Cornwall last year I spoke to our pharmacist to see what we could do as there was no chance of an appointment in that time. He suggested folic acid and B12 supplements and not to worry about taking too much as the body has its way to get rid of surplus B12. When we got back I heard over the grapevine that my doctor was leaving the Practice in March so carried on and waited as I didn't want to escalate the situation as I didn't want to be banned from the Practice. As soon as I was sure I was able toI booked the senior partner, she was a junior partner and our named doctor when we moved to the Forest so I knew I would be in safe hands. Her first comment was that my low level was a symptom NOT the problem so she booked biopsy tests to find out more. I wasn't happy as I found out on the NHS site this was looking for stomach ulcers or stomach cancer, neither of which did I want!

Now the interesting happens – OH found an article in the Sunday Express titled 'statins and what they don't tell you.' I ticked off all my symptoms! A GP who stopped said how within two weeks he had his thinking brain back. Within two weeks I knew exactly what he meant. When I saw the doctor again she asked if I have stopped in view of changes in my symptoms. My reply was yes and she was happy to let me carry on. She also explained the criteria for going on statins: there are three groups, first you are too young, third is you have had a stroke/heart attack and must take them, and in the middle it is advisory. My cholesterol just crept in at the bottom and she said there was no way she would have put me on them. Since then it has gone below the lower level. There are two remaining problems:
1 I will get relapses over the coming year but they will go and
2 Memory will be affected, How much and how long is in the lap of the gods. This is already obvious as I work by routines at home and I had to relearn them.

ForestBoar - What a tale. Your story is a salutory lesson for us all, in that we need to keep on the ball with regards to caring for our own health. I worry that unless you catch sight of such an article, you might remain in ignorance of some clue which is known to the medics but is not generally mentioned.

I hope you continue to improve and that your wife is keeping well also.

FB - good to hear from you. What a bad time it has been, and so long to sort this out, especially at the same time as looking after your OH. I hope you will not suffer too much from symptom relapses and that you and your OH will cope with any effects on your memory as you relearn your daily and weekly schedules.

FB - good to hear from you. Sorry it's taking so long to get back to something approaching normality. I have followed with interest your journey post-statins, and because of that I spoke to my doctor about six weeks ago and have now also stopped taking them. I had been swallowing them for almost twenty years, and was aware of continuing and increasing muscle ache, plus all sorts of minor but seemingly increasing symptoms. Still in the early stages of life post statins, and I have to say I have more energy and fewer unexplained aches and pains. I am also sleeping better. Of course these improvements may not be entirely due to stopping - but I'm pretty sure some of them are! I appreciate the reasons doctors were prescribing statins for almost everyone as a sort of miracle preventative, and I think it's only now they are realising they are just not suitable for 'blanket' prescribing. My brother in law has also stopped taking them and is far better without.

Heavy rain here this morning. I went off to church in a sleeveless blouse - the sun was shining then - but when the service was over it was pouring down. I managed to find some things to do in the office - started printing September's magazine, among other things - and waited until it had slacked off a bit before coming home. Seems more like April than August.

Has anyone else downloaded the updates for Windows 10? I started the process around 2.00am this morning- and it took six and a half hours! So far I haven't noticed any difference ... just wondered if anyone else has?

Pat -- yes, me! I began mid evening on Thursday, and in the end had to leave my desktop on all night, as after two hours it was still saying that it had only done 24% of it. Thankfully it was happier the next morning, but I already don't like some of the changes, one of which is that my photos which have been reduced in size (so that I can post them on here) are now shown in the "downloads" section as only file numbers, not thumbnail pictures. Almost impossible to guess what they are!  Bah!

Lindy - I very carefully put all my photographs in folders as I download them. They don't seem to have changed since the 'upgrade'. You gave me a bit of a panic until I checked! I spent most of yesterday preparing a PowerPoint presentation of some of my cruise pictures for some talks I will be doing in the next few weeks; I would have been extremely unhappy if that had been lost! Why do these things always take so much longer than you think they will? I have around 95 pictures in the presentation, and I've only reached Shanghai! I think I may need to do some more pruning.

PatO:  95 doesn't sound like a lot at all but I can understand your wanting to prune them a bit.  It too seems more like spring weather than August here.

OG:  Ha!  My garden is an alleged "low-maintenance" one but we're on a corner lot so it wraps around the house.  The perimeter is planted with Something Very Pretty (forgot the  name) that has just finished blooming profusely and so I've been whacking off the old blooms. I went a bit mad with Salvia Greggii and think I'll be pulling out the ones that haven't done so well and not replacing them.

Lindybird: Ah, so the thing, when being photographed, is to raise your head just slightly so you only have a single chin.   :-))    Funny how kids tend to lurk in the background doing things they're shy about, but close enough so we can hear and then making encouraging comments.

AQ: I noticed you had rain yesterday (today?) (tomorrow?)  :-)   How's the season going?   Arizona is having an extremely quiet - and disquieting - rainy season without much rain....

Forestboar:  I've heard exactly the same thing about statins.  Hope things will stabilize now.

I've downloaded the Windows 10 update and it didn't take that long - maybe an hour?  I'm on Auto Updates so maybe it does it when I'm not looking....