Boot camp

Dear unconscious brain
I know that you have done all you can to protect me because you love me so much and for various reasons this has included avoiding exercise which we view as painful and exhausting. Every time I even thought about doing some form of exercise you thoughtfully deprived my muscles of oxygen so that they felt tired and heavy before I reached for my trainers. And I thank you for doing such a good job at keeping me safe and now I know that you and I haven't kept me safe from poor health, just from exercise.

You did all you could to prevent me from attending my first ever boot camp. You and I had heard about such things but never attended one. You tried to protect me by being the little voice of concern about being 52 years old without so much as a day at the gym with all our various health problems and I chose to ignore you. And on one level you were right; it was hell. But here's the thing unconscious brain, we both learnt some stuff about me that we didn't know. Hell, we didn't even know that we didn't know some of it.

So whilst is was really challenging and difficult we found that the mental support given helped me to do more physical activity that we ever knew was possible. I didn't throw up, pass out or die from a heart attack. I didn't even break down and cry or swear at the trainer. I now understand that you have been doing a better job than I could possibly imagine in order to keep me safe and I am here to tell you that things are about to change, and you are going to get on board with this, for all of me, including you.

We had our limiting beliefs blown out of the water today and this was both revelational and exhilarating. At 52 and after 5 children I can actually do enough exercise to have the body that I have wanted to have since my first child was born. The one that I used to have all those years ago. Until I met some amazing women today I thought that I knew that this was impossible ( unless you are very rich with a personal trainer spending 4 hours a day in a gym). And even better that this, we both now know that I can do more than either of us thought we could do. The amazing women we met also demonstrated the psychological effects of exercise and this was even more exciting than the body I plan to work towards.

So starting tomorrow you are going to change the way that you protect me because we both know that the best way to protect me is for me to exercise, and by exercise I mean more than a 20 minute stroll round the block. This is a good way to start so let's walk for longer, add in some jogging and start doing some strength training. Think of the benefits: more energy, more vitality, more toned and even happier than I am now. My gorgeous partner and I will be able to do more things together like visit places that have lots of steps to see something spectacular, or walk round a really interesting town or city.

Thank you unconscious brain for all that you have done and for all that you are going to do from tomorrow to help me become a fitter, more toned and even more gorgeous me.

love
Sarah

https://www.facebook.com/stonefitness?fref=ts - where I went for boot camp

Life in E.D.

I worked in Emergency for over three years, mainly in the UK and briefly here in Melbourne. The E.D that I worked at in the UK served part of the M23, part of the M25, a local town and Gatwick Airport. We had a special red telephone for Gatwick Airport with it's own ring tone. Everyone who worked in the department would hesitate for a second if we heard it ring. More of that later.

Working a department like the E.D. is fascinating, fast and never dull. Any kind of case could come through at any moment. During my time there I saw the best and the not so good of humanity. I witnessed terrible sadness and loss, relief and joy, anger and frustration, disappointment and confusion and a surprising amount of gratitude. From our perspective were just doing our job but from the patients and their families perspective we were sometimes the team that saved their loved one's life. Of course other times we were abject failures who let their loved one die or gave them distressing news about life-threatening illnesses.
Even then I have witnessed patients and their family thanking the team. However a large majority of our patients came in with broken limbs from falls, cuts and gashes, chest pains and back aches, severe migraines and dislocations. There were foreign objects stuck in eyes and various parts of the body and children that swallowed something they shouldn't including candles, bubble bath, hair dye and the little packets that keep things dry from a flat pack from that well known Swedish store.

You may have thought that I would have witnessed many deaths but this is not the case. Very few people die in the E.D. despite the stories that appear in televisions dramatic versions of the department. And whilst we are on the subject of dramatic interpretations, I am sorry to disappoint you but there is very little romance between the staff either. I haven't seen a television drama that captured the frenetic pace of the work involved nor the humour that we employed to cope emotionally. A bit like school children, it could be the little things that we found hilarious within the department. Like the time that we had a motorbike rider come in who had survived a rather nasty crash. It was his matching army camouflage telephone cover and underwear that made us smile, although obviously not to his face. Or the time the 50 year old male came in having collapsed at a party and we were concerned that he had had some kind of heart attack but his wife made him tell us about the 'special brownie' that he had eaten minutes before his collapse. He was concerned that we would contact the police and also that we would judge him. Let me reassure everyone reading this that our job is to care for everyone who comes into our department. We don't contact the police, we don't give less care to someone who received their injuries through hurting another person and we don't turn people away.

I have provided nursing care for men in white paper boiler suits who were in custody for swallowing large amounts of illegal drugs to a man who came in with a paper cut and just about everything in between. Sometimes we were able to make a big difference, and sometimes just a little difference but that was only in our view. Patients came in to have their physical problems solved and sometimes their emotional problems as well. Occasionally we would have a patient who had to remain anonymous on the whiteboard for their own safety because they were victims of assault and there was a risk that their partner would turn up and have another go. Once the department was in lock-down because a very angry partner turned up with a car boot loaded with riffles and a bomb. Fortunately he was so angry that he warned everyone that this is what he was going to do and we had time to lock-down the department and keep safe until the situation was defused.

I mentioned Gatwick Airport and the red phone. It was an old fashioned telephone with a dial and heavy hand receiver. It sat on a little shelf in the middle of the department where our radios connecting us the the ambulances and land line phones sat along with mountains of paperwork and the computer, otherwise known as the 'nurses station'. It was used by every health professional that entered the department and the emergency doctors also had their own office. That red telephone could signal a single patient or a plane load of possible casualties. They were always thoughtful enough to call us to let us know to 'stand down' which was the most common outcome. Next time you are considering a sneaky smoke in the toilets you should probably know that you will be found out, that the smoke detector will register and that an emergency department like ours will be on 'stand by'. We had a few medical emergencies every year, mostly passengers who were determined not to miss their flight despite chest pains, blinding headaches, chest infections and gastro. What might be manageable on the ground is not the same flying at 37,000 feet in a pressured cabin. Then there were the times that the wheels didn't lock properly, the plane was very low on fuel and once when the captain collapsed. His co-pilot successfully landed the plane and the passengers were none the wiser. The department however had heard whispers about a forth-coming emergency practise when actors are prepared off-site or out of our site and suddenly turn up. The senior staff of the hospital know before hand and have additional wards and beds open and additional staff to help out, but we don't know that until the first set of casualties arrive. So when the call came through that a plane load of passengers were potentially at risk because the captain had collapsed the team thought that it was another practise. It makes no difference in that we always prepare and act as if it were real but imagine their surprise when the ambulance arrived with the captain. And please, if you are sick, don't get on a plane.

For me three years was enough drama but there are some amazing and dedicated nurses that devote their entire career to working in this department.

Keep safe
love
Sarah

Working through grief

They say that time is a great healer. I'm not sure who 'they' are or were, or if this means that a great many people have said the same thing. At a time of loss it is one of the many platitudes offered to the grieving person and for some people time will never allow them to fully recover from their grief. But for most of us we do eventually recover enough to be able to move on and get on with our lives. Memories become joyful rather than painful, mementos become a source of happy memories instead of painful reminders and we can get through whole days without thinking about our loss.

How do we work through grief so that we can emerge the other side able to move on and maybe even take the same path again, such as meeting another partner or getting another dog (cat, insert choice of pet here)? When we love unconditionally there is always a risk that one day the person or animal will move on for what ever reason. It could be death or the breakdown of a relationship. There is a saying that goes something along the lines of .."the only two guarantees in life are death and taxes". I should probably point out now, in case you feel cheated later in the piece, that I don't have the definitive answer to this question. I only have my experience and observations.

I once met a lady who had been a widow for nine months. She still cried every day, was still sleeping on the couch because any bed represented the loss of her husband and was struggling to carry on with her life even with medication and professional counselling. I have known other people who were never the same following the death of their spouse or child but did continue to live their lives and were able to have fun doing so. I have also known women who have never recovered from the loss of their spouse, not from death, but through the breakdown of the relationship. They remain bitter, angry and resentful, unable to move on and meet other potential partners or to work through their pain to a degree that enables them to live their lives in fulfilment and happiness.

Last month I ran two workshops at different aged care facilities for staff who had experienced a cluster of deaths. You may imagine that working in an aged care facility, or indeed any health care setting, meant that the health care staff encountered death on an almost daily basis. However this is incorrect. Whilst there will always be deaths in an aged care facility they are usually spaced out and not that frequent. A cluster in two facilities had left the staff devastated and starting to withdraw emotionally to protect themselves. The workshops helped the staff to reconnect to their purpose for choosing that particular profession and to remember all that they had given and the difference that they had made.

And this is how I am coping with grief today and all the days that it takes to be able to remember Josh without my eyes leaking. Whilst it is true that Josh gave us all more than we could ever give him we did give him all that we could, without spoiling him rotten. He was loved unconditionally, even when he dug a hole in the back yard that would have won awards at a wombat competition. Even when he snuck into my bedroom and found the Christmas chocolate. Even when he refused to go back outside without a treat or when he tried to fight other dogs at the vets. He was loved and cared for every day that he lived with us. He was part of our family. He knew that he would always have a home, always be loved, always be fed, always be kissed on the top of his hard head with that soft fur and that we would always be here for him. I choose to keep busy and not to think about him most of the time. I choose to honour him by giving his food and belongs to other people and organisations that help rescue greyhounds. I also choose to keep a few of his items that I have put away until it doesn't make my eyes leak when I see them. I choose to take it one day at a time and not force it. I choose to support my family grieve in what ever way works best for them. This is how I work through grief.

I offer my thoughts and condolences to you if you are grieving and respectfully ask you to consider taking all the time you need, to get professional help if you are struggling to cope and if your eyes keep leaking after a month or two.

Be nice to yourself
love
Sarah

Josh R.I.P.

My heart is breaking.

We chose Josh from the GAP website and collected him seven years ago, almost to the day. He was already five years old and had had several homes due to no fault of his own. Like all retired greyhounds who go through the GAP program he had spent time at the GAP centre for assessment, time with a foster person and then been adopted. However his adopted family suffered a tragedy and Josh ended up back at the GAP centre for re-homing. By the time he came to live with us he appeared to believe that it was for a limited period. We will never know if he thought that people didn't want him or that this is just how life is: a series of homes. So when he first arrived he was very subdued. Friendly but subdued.

My heart is breaking.

We knew that he felt at home and safe when he started to test the boundaries. We became firmer and set very clear boundaries and after another month or so, he settled down. He even seemed to like the boundaries. They told him where he was in the pack. His pack. His home.

My heart is breaking.

Like all retired greyhounds Josh was a couch potato. He could still run really fast and used to run laps round and round our back yard. He always ran the exact same route which eventually developed into a track with an especially deep groove at the bottom of the turning circuit round the Hills Hoist. At the top of the garden he would leap up onto the raised small lawn, stand there panting for a minute with a typical greyhound grin and then dash off again. Sometimes we wondered if he was expecting us to cheer each time he came up to the top because he looked so pleased with himself.
And then there were all his other little quirks and things that made him Josh. He would come down to hang up washing with me nudging me from behind to turn round and stroke his head. Hang up a piece, stroke Josh, hang up a piece, stroke Josh. If I tried to hang up several pieces I would feel a nudge from his nose as a reminder. He was the same with other family members who hung up washing.
And he loved to come inside, down in the den. As you walked back up the path he would race up ahead of you so that you let him in when you went back in. We made him wait and come in last to keep him at the bottom of the pack. He would bounce around waiting for his turn. If it was my youngest daughter he could be a bit cheeky and run in ahead of her. We always figured that he viewed her as a fellow cub on the same level as he was. The other time that he would run in, even if it was me holding the door open, was when it was thunder and lightening. The minute the door was open a black streak was flash past and Josh would arrive in the den panting with big open eyes. Once during a storm I went outside to get in the washing. Apparently Josh was beside himself, pacing up and down by the door, peering out waiting for me to return. When I got back inside he checked to see that I was okay before resuming his panting and drooling.

My heart is breaking.

He chased birds. He would launch across the garden at any bird that dared enter with a big deep bark. He rarely barked so this was always both a bit of a surprise and rather amusing. Having got rid of the bird he would stand watch in case it considered coming back. The only other time we really heard him barking we couldn't find him at first. We followed the noise to the bottom of the garden behind the fir tree to see a cat sitting calmly on the fence, swishing its tail whilst Josh was barking and barking. I gave the cat a bit of a shove and he jumped down the other side of the fence. Josh patrolled the back fence for ages, to make sure it didn't come back.

Most of all Josh liked being with us. It didn't matter to him if it was outside or inside, unless there was a risk of thunder and lightening. He was my companion when I gardened, when I hung up laundry, watered the lemon tree or just sat outside to enjoy the sunlight. He liked to be inside with us if we were all inside and would sit and whine outside the back door to be let in. He recognised the sound of the car being locked when we got home and would start to whine before I had the key in the front door. The video games are played in the den and he endured Wii tenis, battle of the bands and dancing. He kept a careful eye to make sure that feet didn't come too near and if it was near his bedtime he would sigh.

My heart is breaking.

Being an ex racing dog meant that his hips were damaged from a young age. The dogs are required to run round the track at an angle and if you are a winner like Josh apparently was, the four years of this type of running take their toll. He couldn't sit down but instead had to either stand or lie. He was on injections and powder for his hips because they were tight and sore. Sometimes he would catch them by landing badly when he jumped off the top grassy area or turned a corner badly. Once he hurt them so badly that he lay their whimpering until we could get him to the vet. Several years ago we noticed that he didn't run round the garden any more but he still chased birds and followed me with the laundry. He still raced up to the back door to get there first.
And then his hips got worse. He frequently limped, sometimes stumbled and recently stopped following me round the garden. And then his hips got worse. He sometimes struggled to get up at all, he often breathed as though he had been running when he hadn't and he needed pain killers more often.
And then this past week his hips got worse. He struggled to stand every time he got up and sometimes needed help, he stopped wanting to hunt his meaty cubes in the garden, he stopped wanting to do almost anything except lie on his big floor cushions with us. And this his front leg got bad, apparently from having to take the weight of his back legs and he developed a terrible limp.
We took him to the vet last week and they gave him several injections and a variety of pain killers and we took him home and things continued to deteriorate. He was still happy to be with us and we could get him to eat bits and pieces but walking was clearly very painful for him and he was becoming less and less keen to stand up at all.

Today we took him back to the vets and there was nothing more they could do. Twelve years is very old in rescue greyhound years and he had given it everything he had. We could have brought him home with more pain killers but it would have been for our benefit, not for his. So we made the most selfless decision we could: we stayed whilst he went to sleep, forever.

We have chosen the service that cremates him and gives us back his ashes to sprinkle on his favourite place. There are several holes that he dug and loved to enlarge and the flowerbed that he once dug up.

Our house and back yard seem very empty. There are memories of him everywhere, reminders because all his belongings are still scattered around the house and back yard and I find myself still listening out for his panting and loving expression and delight every time he sees me.

I know that it takes time, I have been here before. It took three months last time so I am giving myself plenty of time and I have given the family the freedom to have as much screen time as they want for a few days so that everyone can cope this first week in their own way.

A dog is loving, non-judgemental and a wonderful example of pure love, without asking for anything in return. He gave us plenty to celebrate and be thankful for, and what ever we gave him, he gave us back in spades.

Thank you Josh
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Starting today

I am starting this blog so that I can write for 20 minutes a day and see my work displayed. I could write for 20 minutes in a note book or create heaps of documents in a folder but neither had the same appeal.

So why 20 minutes? Because this is the advice from a very skilled author who helps people like me improve their writing skills. People like me who struggled with writing at school and beyond, and in my case even during my Master's degree. My senior school was a new comprehensive that had been the secondary modern school in the area. In the UK at that time every child sat the 11+ in their last year of junior school. You were then streamed using the results of that exam. If you were in the top few hundred you went to the local grammar school and if you scored less you went to the local secondary modern.

They stopped the system the year that I went to senior school and it was pot luck if you were sent to the 'old' grammar school because their teachers, school ethos and general attitude was that you studied hard, were given all the resources you needed to achieve your chosen further study or profession and that good behaviour, school rules that encouraged achievement and general politeness were all essential. The secondary modern on the other hand was just grateful if you showed up and handing in homework was a bonus. The teachers believed that so long as you sat in class and made some effort this was enough although there were a few teachers who believed that caning was the only way to make children respect the staff and that it was acceptable to hit children round the head with the board duster. Every term the must disruptive children would be away for a period of time, and apparently this was because they were in the local remand centre. We weren't taught how to write essays, how to spell correctly, how to use grammar appropriately and it wasn't until my children went to school that I knew what a verb and adjective where. My lack of knowledge about such things didn't do much for my language skills in either English or French.

When I left home at 18 to be an assistant matron in a boarding school I used to write home every week. When I left that job to start my nurse training my parents revealed that they had loved my letters not for their content but for their amusement as they howled their way through all my grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Despite reading many books over the years my spelling and grammar haven't improved and I am lucky to write in an age where a squiggly red line warns me of another mistake.

So why would I want to persist? Because I believe that I have something useful to offer. Something that can enhance people's lives, improve their quality and probably quantity. I am a mentor and expert for helping people, mainly women, maintain their weight after the age of 40. I love being able to offer knowledge and insights that helps my clients keep their pre 40s figure, their energy and their sense of fun.

But that is not what this blog is about. I already have a blog for that. This blog is just about my life, my observations and thoughts so that I practise writing every day for 20 minutes to improve my writing muscle.

You are most welcome to comment below each blog.

until tomorrow have a good day

love
Sarah