Open Book Blog Hop – September 11th

This week the topic is ‘Where were you and what did you do when you heard about the 9/11 attacks? What did you do to move on?’

I was driving my then 16 year old son home from school when I first heard the news on the car radio, as of course our time zone is several hours ahead here in the UK.  My husband was at that precise time on a flight to Cleveland, Ohio.  We were both stunned, and I pulled over onto a verge so that we could listen more easily to the breaking news. My son instantly asked me what was going to happen to his dad, but of course I couldn’t answer him.

When we arrived home we turned on the TV, which had blanket coverage of the disaster.  American air space was closed, and we looked on in horror at the unfolding story.  It wasn’t until the following day that Sam managed to phone to let me know his flight had been diverted to a small airport at St. John’s in Newfoundland, along with about 27 other jumbo jets.  He stayed in the town for a week before flying back to the UK, receiving free phone calls, free hotel accommodation and free meals, and still talks about his stay to this day and how generous the people of St. John’s were to the sudden influx of travellers.

Later in the year it was time for him to go back to Cleveland to have another go at finishing the business trip.  I didn’t want him to go and had visions of a further disaster, but I knew that nothing would keep Sam from his work.  He flew out to Cleveland and home again without incident.  Since then he has had hundreds of flights, indeed just at this moment he is in India on business, but I still have a nagging worry at the back of my mind every time he has to fly, and always tell him to take care.  It’s good for him not to become too complacent!

What were you doing on 9/11?  Add your blog to this one by clicking the blue button below.

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Open Book Blog Hop – August 28th

This post has been scheduled as I’m currently over on the Isle of Wight, but will be back tomorrow for a few days before heading back there at the weekend.

The topic this week is writing about our favourite foods.

I’ve never been a ‘foodie’.  Dot raised me with the philosophy that I must eat to live, and not live to eat.  She also hated cooking, and unfortunately passed that dislike on to me.  So I must admit that I’m not really much help this week in writing out any recipes, because I never use them!  I tend to cook the same things – something I can bung in the oven or in the steamer, and go out of the kitchen and do something else while it’s cooking.

Oh dear, this is not what you wanted to read, is it?

Fortunately my favourite foods are those that I can bung in the oven or in the steamer!  I prefer unadulterated fresh lean meat or fish, with plain steamed vegetables.  If I ever go out to eat in a restaurant, all the veggies seem to be swimming in cheese sauce up to their waists, and the chicken or fish is usually covered in some sort of spicy batter that makes my mouth burn.

Oh dear, this is not what you wanted to read, is it?

I like fresh or tinned fruits, and soya custard.  I also like plain non-creamy, non-rich cakes and lovely warm wholemeal bread.  There’s one exception to the non-rich cakes – I do like Christmas cake actually, the one full of dried fruit and nuts, although I can’t eat a lot of it.  Many years ago (about 25 I think) I actually made a cake – it was a Christmas cake and nobody ate it but me.  It took me three months to eat it, and I put on half a stone in the process.

Oh dear, this is not what you wanted to read, is it?

Ten years after this disaster I had the sudden but baffling urge to create another tempting treat.  I actually stayed in the kitchen for more than ten minutes and ended up looking dejectedly at a Rice Krispie cake/mess, which my husband took a photo of because he was so amazed I’d even thought of making the bloody thing in the first place.  Sam often jokes and says he feels deprived because I never do any baking.  I tell him I’m keeping the cardiac consultants at bay, and that he’s the fittest 60 year old I know!

What do other blog-hoppers like to eat?  Click on the blue button to find out or to add your blog too.

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Open Book Blog Hop – 21st August

This week we’ve been given the following topic:

‘Health and fitness for busy people – what little things do you do to stay healthy? Food, exercise, special vitamins, clothing, shoes, etc. What do you do that could help someone else?’

I don’t know that I could help anybody else, as it’s up to the individual to decide if they want to alter their lifestyle to become healthier or fitter.  I can only write about my own efforts to halt the march of time and (if I’m lucky) go into old age with my independence still intact.

On a non-working-at-the-hospital-day, after breakfast I take a long walk of about 40 minutes, rain or shine, before sitting down to write.  This would be followed by another half an hour walk after lunch, and another one after dinner.  If I’m off to work I walk just over a mile to the hospital from where I’m allowed to park the car, and then back again later on.  There is a courtesy shuttle bus, but I’ve never been one to take the easy option!

As for food, I’m dairy intolerant and was raised not to have a sweet tooth.  Not eating many sweet things stood my mother in good stead, as she lived to the age of 92.  I prefer to eat lean meat, quorn or fish with vegetables, or fruit and non-dairy yoghurts, or jacket potatoes and salads, mostly the food I was brought up on.  I hate anything spicy, and prefer plain food.  I rarely eat junk food, as I find it too fatty, and I’m not too keen on barbeques either.  Sam can’t eat pastry, so pies are out (that’s not a bad thing I suppose). What I’d really like is for breakfast cereals to be free from sugar and salt.  Sugar and salt is in most foods, and the only cereals I really enjoy are All Bran and porridge, but you can’t have too much of the former!

I’m not really a clothes/shoes person.  At my age of nearly 60 I still take Dot’s advice that it’s a kindness to others to dress appropriately and not look like ‘mutton dressed as lamb’.  I prefer trousers and don’t often wear dresses or skirts, but if I do they would finish slightly below the knee.  I wear flat shoes as I’d fall over trying to totter about on stiletto heels.  Any top I wear starts at the base of the neck and not halfway down my chest, thus saving the world from the sight of yet another heaving cleavage.

Apart from my Thyroxine tablets I take a  WellWoman 50+ vitamin tablet every day, and Glucosamine to help with my joints.  Despite all this I think I was dealt a bum deal with regards to genes, but I’ve managed to survive 12 years of advanced stage 4 thyroid cancer (there was thyroid disease in my father’s side of the family) and I’m still alive and kicking.  I’m a bloody walking, whispering medical marvel…

What do other blog-hoppers do to stay fit?  Click on the blue button below to find out.

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Open Book Blog Hop – August 7th

This week we’re listing some of the things that we have seen change or develop in our lifetime.

I’m getting on a bit now, and so jumped at the chance to share what has changed since I was a child:

1.  I remember pre-decimalisation currency – yes, the old pounds, shillings and pence.  It took me ages to get used to the new coinage in 1971!
2. Colour televisions didn’t really appear until 1973.  We had a black and white TV set until I was about 16.
3. Microwave ovens were not around until my eldest son was a baby.  When I was a child my mum heated up dinners in the gas oven and hoped they didn’t dry out.
4. I remember being taken to a room filled with a huge machine in a college when I was about 15 and told it was one computer! Yes, computer technology has improved in leaps and bounds since then.
5. Dishwashers – who would have thought that private households would have such a thing?  Back in the 1960s Mum washed up dirty crockery at the sink!
6. What has also changed is the amount of cars on the road.  As a child we played in the roads, because there was much less traffic.  Now you’d get knocked over in no time.
7. Children’s freedom has declined nowadays because of the increased risk of paedophiles.  I played outside for hours in the 1960s with no thought of having to watch out for paedophiles / perverts.
8. The proliferation of junk food outlets started in earnest around the mid 1970s.  Now we’re paying the price of increased waistlines, diabetes, joint pains, and goodness knows what else.
9. Another proliferation – CCTV cameras.  The average person is caught on camera about 300 times every day now.  Big Brother is watching…
10. If I wanted to read a book in the 1960s I’d go to the library or buy one from a book shop.  Now you can read books online and buy them without even stepping outside your front door!
11. Health & Safety rules at work and leisure have improved over the years, which is a good thing.
12. As a music-mad teenager I bought vinyl LP’s or singles for my record player.  Now you can buy and download music online and listen to it via CDs, MP3 players, iPods and iPads etc.  The downside of this is that many record shops have closed down.
13. Treatments for common diseases have improved. We are all living longer. Cancer is no longer a death sentence for some.

Click on the link below to find out what changes other blog hoppers have seen:

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Open Book Blog Hop – 24th July

Today’s topic is ‘What Kind Of Lessons Could Anyone Learn From What You Do In Your Career?’

I’m a medical secretary and have just gone back to work after a 3 year hiatus to recover from cancer treatments.  I previously worked in the Cardiology, Pain Medicine and Dermatology departments, and believe me, you can learn quite a lot from the job I do.  I’ve made a list below, in no particular order, of all the things I’ve learned over a 13 year period while working in these 3 departments.

• Keep your weight down to prevent joint pains, backache, and heart disease (one consultant used to say that the only way to prevent backache is to have your jaws wired together!).
• Use a high factor sunscreen on your skin during the summer months.
• Acceptance of your pain, disease or discomfort is the only way forward.
• There is no pill on earth that will stop the pain of arthritis.  You have to change your lifestyle instead.
• Look after your body by exercising daily and keeping the joints mobile.
• Sitting down all day is bad for you.
• Keep an eye on changes to your skin/moles.
• Quit smoking because it clogs up the airways (you only have to listen to my neighbour hacking away every morning to know that’s true – he’s smoked since he was 11).
• Quit eating high fat foods because they clog up the arteries with plaque, which causes heart failure.
• Prevention is the key.  Bust your butt to stop getting the disease in the first place!
• A melanoma is the most aggressive form of skin cancer, and it needs to be diagnosed very early.
• The more your skin is exposed to the sun without any protection, the more age spots (actinic keratoses) will appear as you get older and the more likely you are to develop skin cancer.
• Skin cancer can be caused by sunburn suffered decades before.
• The only way you can move up the waiting list for a procedure is if your pain is due to cancer.  There is no need to keep ringing every 5 minutes saying that your case is urgent.  There’s another 1000 people in pain who are all in the same boat.
• Add pineapple, ginger and turmeric to your diet to offset arthritis.
• Pilates will help with lower back pain, but the relief is not instant.
• Yes, it CAN happen to you.  You are not the exception to the rule unfortunately.
• Men who take opioid painkillers for a long time might suffer with low testosterone levels.  A low testosterone level could cause a man to have hot flushes, just like a menopausal woman.  Hot flushes are a sign of low hormone levels in both men and women, and nothing else.

I’m now covering holidays and sickness in every department!  I can’t wait to learn more by typing new clinic letters.

What have you learned through your career?  Read others’ blogs or add your blog to this one by clicking on the blue button below:

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Open Book Blog Hop – 10th July

This week we’re giving readers an insight into our other non-writing career, and so as I’ve recently gone back to work part-time to cover holidays and sickness,  I’d like to give you a day in the life of a medical secretary. 

The job has changed dramatically from when I first started 13 years ago.  Now the system is totally electronic and we don’t have to deal with trollies full of patients’ notes, so here’s what I would have to do in a day:

1. Check answerphone messages from the previous day and deal with those.
2. Collect and open the day’s post and deal with each piece of correspondence.
3. Collect patients’ folders from Medical Records who are attending your consultant’s clinic on that day.  The folders just contain address labels in case the patient has a further appointment or procedure, and blank clinic headed notepaper for scanning after the consultant has written on it.  In the past it would have been thick wedges of notes, but now these have all been scanned onto the hospital system.
4. Take the trolley of patients’ folders to the clinic consultation room ready for the doctor.
5. Finish audio typing the previous day’s clinic letters if these have not been done.  In the past secretaries would have been using dictation machine tapes to type from, but now the doctors dictate straight onto the computer.
6. Try and audio type fast enough in order to keep up with your consultant as they dictate the current day’s pile of letters!  Sometimes during the day the doctor will stand over you and watch you type an urgent letter as they talk.  Fun, fun, fun.
7. According to the letters and any accompanying forms in the patient’s folder, make a further appointment for the patient or take a completed form to the Waiting List Office if the patient needs a procedure.
8. Prepare to be interrupted several times in any half hour period while you’re typing away by the phone ringing.  Deal with patient enquiries, which are usually about how much longer they have to wait for a procedure.
9. Take the patients’ folders to the scanning room when you have finished typing the clinic letters and booking further appointments.
10. Filing letters from the day’s post when the doctors have finished with them, or taking them to the scanning room if they should be filed in the patient’s notes.
11. Photocopying.

Thankfully though, as I have a bank contract, I can work as and when I want to!

What do you do in a day at work? Please click on the blue button if you wish to add your blog to this one.

Rules:
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2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
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5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Open Book Blog Hop – 3rd July

This week we’re writing about the next vacation we’d love to take.

Apart from many breaks to seaside resorts in the British Isles, over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to visit various places abroad for holidays; Chania in Greece, Zakynthos in Zante, Alcudia and Costa Brava in Majorca, Binibeca in Minorca, Portinatx in Ibiza, New Orleans, The Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, and many of the Caribbean Islands including Grenada, Dominica and Jamaica.  I’ve also sailed towards The Pitons in St Lucia on a catamaran whilst dancing to reggae music and watching the sun setting.  All these continental holidays have had one thing in common – after a couple of weeks I always look forward to returning home!

I’m sixty this year, and have had enough of travelling.  To be honest I’m a homebody really, and now prefer my lovely holiday home on the Isle of Wight, which we purchased earlier this year.  Sam and I will be making many trips there this summer by ourselves and also with our grandchildren and/or extended family members.  Here’s a photo of it which I took in April.

The beach is but a five minute walk away.  It’s not too hot, I don’t need to take my trusty brown medicine to ward off alimentary canal dysfunction (which I’ve had to take to every country I’ve visited so far!), and I can sit on my decking and watch the world go by.  I can cook the type of food I like to eat, and sleep on a memory foam mattress with a memory foam pillow whilst listening to the sea in the background.  Bliss!

Below are the golden sands of Puckpool, which is about a 10 minute drive from our holiday home.

Call me boring, but I don’t care.  The Isle of Wight rules as far as I’m concerned!

Where would other blog-hoppers like to go on vacation?  Click on the blue button below to find out.

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Open Book Blog Hop – 26th June

This week we’re writing about what advice has stuck with us for a long time, and who gave us that advice.

Nothing was ever sugar-coated for me as a child. My mother Dot, with her typical East End tell-it-like-it-is attitude, drummed the following advice into me from a very early age:

‘Never get old and fat, because first you’ll see ’em with one stick, then you’ll see ’em with two sticks, and then you won’t see ’em at all, so everything in moderation.’

As a child this always gave me a terrible mental image of an unfortunate whale-like, wrinkled person stuck and floundering in an armchair like a flapping fish.

Up until the age of about 12 or 13 when I was given pocket money, sweets were rationed to one small bag on Saturdays only.  If Dot saw me trying to take more than 3 biscuits, then the tin would be quickly whipped away and my protestations would be ignored.  Vegetables were always put on my plate and I would be expected to eat some whether I liked them or not, but by the time I reached late teen age I was eating everything put in front of me; vegetables, liver and onions, stews, casseroles, and boiled fish to name but a few.

Now I’m nearly sixty I finally get what she was trying to teach me.  I’m thankfully still mobile, and am glad she gave me the advice.  Both our granddaughters are overweight, and when we recently paid an unannounced flying visit to drop something off, both of them were sitting in front of the TV, each chomping on their own large mixing-bowl full of crisps and sweets.  We were horrified and wondered if this was a regular occurrence, but could say nothing.  The youngest granddaughter complains that her legs hurt and chafe if she walks too far.  I can see diabetes, heart disease and early-onset arthritis waiting in the wings ready to pounce in the future. Somebody ought to take those mixing bowls away… I’m sure Dot would if she could!

To add your blog to this one or to see what advice other blog-hoppers have been told, please click on the blue button below:

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Open Book Blog Hop – 19th June

This week we’re writing about what life events shaped us into who we are.

1.  Being an only child.

Being an ‘only’ child gave me much time to use my imagination and play alone.  I had an imaginary friend for years!  It also made me self-reliant, independent, and a bit of a loner.

2.  Not having a childminder.

I was further schooled in the art of self-reliance by being left alone in the house during the school holidays from the age of 9 while both my parents worked.  At times I also had to look after my 5 year old cousin.

3.  Winning an inter-schools’ story competition at age 11.

This win and the coveted certificate that came with it gave me the encouragement to write more stories.  I’m still writing them 48 years later!

4.  Early death of father at only 49.

I had to grow up quickly aged only 19 and be the supportive rock for my mother.

5.  Becoming a mother at the age of 24.

Giving birth to Leon and raising him to an adult gave me a gift of patience and tolerance that I never thought I’d ever have, all due to his hyperactivity, petit mal, tantrums, and general pain-in-the-arseness (I love him really!).

6.  Becoming a mother-in-law at the age of 46.

I learned to curb my impulsive nature and keep my mouth shut.  So far it seems to have worked – my daughters-in-law and I get on really well!

7.  Being diagnosed with thyroid cancer 12 years ago.

The three major operations, vocal cord palsy, 4 radioiodine treatments and 30 radiotherapy treatments I’ve had so far to try and beat this disease has taught me how to endure.  I’m very good at it!

8.  Caring for my  92 year old mother in the last years of her life.

This gave me understanding and compassion for elderly people in their day to day trials of just trying to live a normal life and maintain their independence whilst dealing with a body that is deteriorating and virtually immobile.

What life events shaped you?  Please link to this blog by clicking the blue button below.

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
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5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Open Book Blog Hop – June 5th

This week’s topic is how we schedule our working week.

Well, I think I’ll give you an example from when I worked as a medical secretary, and also an idea of what I do now.

In 2002 I would get up at 05:10 and jog around the village for half an hour, before leaving for work at 06:30.  After arriving at the hospital I would then start typing letters around 07:20 and not counting a half hour lunch break, carry on typing until 3pm.  Then it would be a half hour drive home to start preparing the evening meal, sorting out my sons with their homework, and doing any household jobs.  I did this for years!

Now I’m retired.  I get up when I want to and have a nice 40 minute walk around the village about 08:30, acknowledging anybody I see and generally enjoying the early morning quietness.  Then I return home, make a cup of tea and start checking my social media sites for a couple of hours.  I’ll then have another walk or do some gardening, and in the afternoon I like to write blogs or continue with whatever novel I’m working on.  I like having no deadline to work to, and I’m lucky enough to enjoy a stress- free life. If I don’t fancy doing any writing, then I’ll read or find something else to do.

All I can say, is that I’m really enjoying being retired and having no schedule!

Is your working week packed to capacity, or do you get some free time?  To find out other blog-hoppers’ schedules, please click on the blue button below (you can also add your own blog).

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