Sogger’s Blog

For the past couple of years, I’ve had the pleasure of owning my own domain name, thinking at the outset that I might do some clever webby things with it. It turns out that time and inspiration took me elsewhere, so I have decided to keep the blog going but to let the domain go.

So if you want to keep in touch with anything I may have to say in the future, please update your bookmarks to:

where you will find all manner of new things a copy of this site.

Thanks to my good friend John of John’s Background Switcher fame for hosting the site for the last 2 years…

Sorry to bore you with yet another trip to the neurologist, but this one bears mentioning as I was officially proclaimed “pharma-resistant”. He really really wants me to have an operation to stop the seizures. However, snipping the nerves in my spinal column that lead to the language centre of my brain, with no guarantee of success, doesn’t sound particularly appealing to me (he euphemistically blogged). So I guess I’ll continue looking for the combination of prescription drugs and alcohol that gets me down to an acceptable frequency/severity.

The trouble is, the ones I’m on now, while not being particularly effective, are also anti-depressives, and I feel f*****g great.

In the ongoing search for a combination of tablets to get my seizures under control, I went, 2 weeks ago, to see a new neurologist (the original one had a very long waiting list and was only seeing serious cases – my problem being purely pharmacological, it doesn’t count as such). Dipping his hands into the lucky bag, he came out with the name Zonegran. Sounds kind of 1950’s Science-fiction’y. The idea is (as always), to introduce it slowly, and pull out one of the other treatments.

The side-effects on this one were, (as always – you get the pîcture?) terrifying, and I twittered that I had a 1 to 10 in 1000 chance of having suicidal thoughts. What I didn’t mention was that it specifically advised you to drink plenty of water as there was a possiblity of developing kidney stones of having other kidney-related problems. I took this to heart (and bladder), and upped my water consumption to approximately 2.5 litres per day.

Exactly 1 week after starting the treatment, in mid-afternoon, I started getting pain in my back and by early evening peeing was impossible without excruciating pain. Straight to the doctor who gave me a potential diagnosis of kidney stones and a shot of anti-inflammatory in the arse.Kidney stones are scary things and I didn’t fancy passing one of those things, so I didn’t sleep too well, even though the anti-inflammatory did the trick.

So obviously, I stop the tablets against the doctor’s “better” judgement, and whatdya know, the next day, I’m feeling, if not 100%, well, 75%. Blood tests show higher than usual levels of creatanine (so the kidneys have been under stress), and the X-rays and ultrasound show no stone (jesus did that relieve me, in all senses of the word).

It’s 4 days since I stopped the Zongran, I’m seizure-free (unlike with the Zonegran where I had one every day), my kidneys are on top-form (as far as I can tell). I guess that’s another one I can strike from the list. I’m beginning to feel that the best way to treat this is for the doctor to give me my own prescription pad and let me work it out on my own – I’m a responsible adult, I know what’s best for me, what’s working and what’s not, what combinations should be taken together and which shouldn’t and I’m not gonna give all sorts of prescription drugs to my mates (unless they pay). It would be cheaper in the long run.

The South Lakes Animal Park is a great day out and I recommend it heartily if you are in the Lakes – it’s off the overly-trodden Bowness/Ambleside  standard for those that want the Lakes without traipsing up the hills. And you get to visit my home town which a few years ago, nobody, but nobody, would ever make a detour for. However, if you are going to the animal park (why don’t they call it a zoo?), then why not also get yourself down to Furness Abbey – it’s stunning, eerie and if it was closer to a motorway, I’m sure it would be one of the most visited monuments in the UK (so I’m glad it’s not the case). If you want a bracing walk along wide sandy beaches go down to Roanhead and, if the rain holds off, take a look across the bay and right up into the Lakeland Fells. Cap it all off on your way back home with a walk through Ulverston and up the Hoad where you can take in a view of the whole Furness peninsula.

But wait a minute, this wasn’t supposed to be an advert for the Furness Tourist Board (should such an entity exist – if it doesn’t, come on Cumbria County Council, get your act together, you are sitting on a gold mine – cash in!). This is supposed to be a rant about how frustrating it is to see how people will blindly follow meaningless rules.

Back to the pleasant day out at the zoo Animal Park. After mingling freely with the lemurs, emus, kangaroos and Liverpudlians we started to get peckish. The restaurant was busy and there were 6 of us, but there was only a 4-seater table free, so, borrowing a couple of chairs, parking 1 of us at each end in the aisle between the rows of tables, we could sit down comfortably, note this for later: without blocking the aisle.

I was somewhat surprised a few minutes later when a waitress came along and pointed us to the line on the menu telling us that chairs were not allowed to block the aisle, because of the risk of tripping the waitresses carrying hot food and drinks up and down the aisles. I was willing to accept this even though you could drive a safari jeep down the aisle, so we duly squashed the two offending chairs out of the way. We were interested to see what would happen a few minutes later when another group of six people arrived at a table just next to us and pulled up two extra seats. This group had a baby with them, so they put it in a high chair, note this for later: not in one of the aisle seats. I was wondering whether to tell them about the mortal danger they were in, but wasn’t fast enough, as, like a tourist looking for lions on a Kenyan safari, the waitress soon spotted them, quietly pointing out the small print. However, she added in this case that there was a way around it - the rule didn’t apply to high chairs: adults couldn’t sit in the aisle and run the risk of having hot tea spilled over them, but it was OK for babies. The explanation, delivered with a shrug of the shoulders, “It’s Health and Safety”. I guess a high chair is not really a “chair” in official terms. Gotcha.

So the waitress had obviously been briefed about how to get round it, and they thought the rule was ridiculous, but I suppose there are some officious bureaucrats who might just arrive unannounced one day to see whether they are applying the rules and failure to comply carries serious penalties, waterboarding or some such thing for the waitresses no doubt. The people who were told about it of course thought it was ridiculous, but complied anyway, moving granny from the aisle (no boiling coffee in the blue rinse), putting the baby in her place (“we can always explain it away as a birthmark and anyway when her hair grows, it will cover the burns” they fictitiously said).

Now, when I’m in an animal park zoo, I prefer them to be thinking about health and safety when I’m stood on a 100 metre long, 5 metre high wooden walkway with 200 other people, next to a cage watching tigers effortlessly climbing up poles to devour dead chickens, hoping that, 1) the tiger can’t scale the fence and 2) the walkway won’t collapse under the weight of all those people. But, frankly, I think 3rd degree burns from errant baked beans is probably more likely, so I should probably just chill out and accept that the rules are there to protect us.