Life Via a Line

In life there is always something we feel we cannot and should not do for fear of humiliation, regret, having to explain ourselves to others, and sometimes to ourselves. When you think about it, the word should is an instrument of regret. Decisions that we make everyday may not lead to the results that we want in life, but does it really serve to tag on a conditional disclaimer to everything we have said or done in the past? It does if you want, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, to “beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”.  In the real, modern world without prohibition, flappers, speakeasies, jazz, and glam, it doesn't serve you to caveat your life with  should  if you want to experience life in the moment, at its fullest. It’s not easy to remove the word should, this seemingly harmless word from vocabulary because we’re programmed to blame ourselves when things don’t go according to plan or as we hoped they would as if there...

I have always believed that surrendering equates to failure. Earlier this year, I felt completely defeated by life. I was down for the count.  I knew while being down for the count, that I couldn't get back up on my feet until I surrendered. Every part of my life flooded before me, my life felt perfect until this point.  My golf, my career to date, my wife, my family all of it on a conveyor belt flooding my mind.   7 years prior to having my line fitted while I was out playing golf, Life had thrown me a massive curveball, more like a shower of curveballs that ripped my life up into a billion pieces.  To everyone around me, I appeared to be living the dream.  Lady Captain off of +2 while holding down a job in the NHS.  My life was never the same again.   After a few years of this, my life was unravelling before my eyes and after knowing nothing but success, I started to encounter nothing but failure.  Exhaustion, pain and my ...

It is often said that it is better to leave too early rather than too late, whether that is your career, a party, or life itself, But the problem is to know when that might be. The only certainties in life are death and taxes. We all try to avoid both.  Our NHS is collapsing and I fear one day will no longer exist and free at the point of need will be just a distant memory. In most countries the population is ageing and needs more medical attention, and high-tech modern medicine is ever more extravagant. We all want to see cancer cured, but this will only drive costs up and not down. Not just because the complex genetic and drug treatments involved are so costly but because more of us will then live longer, to die later from some other disease, or slowly from dementia, requiring constant and expensive care. Rather than the discovery of new antibiotics, the human race, especially in the poorer countries, faces decimation within a few decades from bacterial antibiotic resistance....

Relationships are part and parcel of life.   I haven't actually had many relationships even though my siblings believe I used to run a black book. Some people love relationships while others prefer being single.  I openly admit I wasn't sucked into dreams of massive fairytale weddings and living like a princess.  I've watched my siblings go through heartache, loss and the grief of relationships breaking down on the road to their current happiness.   Regardless of how they happen, breakups aren’t easy, and it’s common to think of a relationship’s ending as a failure.  I  may in my teens of got upset over dates gone wrong, I could tell some great stories but will save the for some other posts.   I got married last year to my long term girlfriend, we have been together a very long time and she openly tells me she married me for my pension.  If the point of a relationship is to be together until death-do-us-part then yes, a breakup is n...

Today, someone knocked into me and I said sorry, they just carried on with their day completely oblivious.  If you’re anything like me, you apologize far too often, and most of the time, when you haven’t done anything wrong!! Sometimes, I even find myself apologizing for matter's beyond my control.  I apologize when someone else was actually in the wrong and sometimes I apologize for life choices I have every right to make. As a human being, I apologize because I am highly sensitive to people around me and never ever do I wish to be the cause of causing pain to someone else.  It is my nature to apologize when I have done something wrong or if I have in some way, god forbid, hurt someone's feelings. I do though, readily admit that sometimes you will not find me saying sorry for;  - Being who I am - I never apologize because someone demands an apology from me - Giving my opinion, In life there is no right or wrong opinion, and I will never apologize for giving...

We live in an age of information overload, television, internet and magazines flooding our senses with a myriad of things, combined they can affect us just enough that the subsequent thoughts we may have seem like they are our own, and the decisions we make based on those thoughts seem rational. Everyday, we are primed to spend our time or money on objects that often we do not even need.  A thought is planted in us so carefully that suppressing it feels like denying our most basic instincts.  It stirs our primal desires of power, sex, and influence. The results are obvious, and all around us. We are always looking for the next TV, the next smartphone, the next model of Car or the next television series to binge on.  Today, we are all consuming information and material possessions at a startling rate, and we don’t seem to mind.  Society has become throw away and when it comes to entertainment and information, it's as if there is no such thing as too much....

My chest line is now part of me, just like my right arm is.  My chest line is a permanent fixture.  My line is a soft, hollow tube that is actually about the size of a large drinking straw.  It's main use is to take and return blood from my body. It is extremely strong and made from medical grade plastic.  The tip of my line has been placed into one of my large blood vessels near the atrium of my heart.  It is placed here because of the large volume of blood flow.  In order to hold it in place, along the line is a cuff.  Gradually over time, my tissue has grown over and in between this small cuff which makes it more solid and holds it in place and more importantly helps stop any bacteria from entering my body through the exit site.  The hub of my line sits on my chest and I always cover it with a dressing, a biopatch and tape the legs, or lumens, down for safety and of course personal comfort.  I have two lumens, one blue and o...