MEDICAL MATTERS

[Marilyn]

I have been giving him a hot toddy before bed.
The cough mixture is useless and contains nothing that will work...

[Marilyn]

He may as well munch Fisherman's Friends...because his cough mixture is not anything stronger!

[Stanley]

We can still get the original Covonia Bronchial Balm here Maz. It tastes nice and does the job.
Commiserations on the cough keeping you awake, it would drive me potty.

[Stanley]

I saw the diabetes nurse yesterday and all my results are good and improved from my last 6 monthly assessment. However the laboratory have had an aberrant result in my sodium levels and want a re-test next week. Almost certainly a glitch at the lab. I am not going into a decline!

[Wendyf]

Good news Stanley. Hope your sodium levels are Ok, cutting carbs causes your kidneys to excrete more sodium so you do need to keep up your salt intake.
The Low Carb Skipton group is steadily growing, Col has three more people to mentor after Monday night's meeting.

[BillHowcroft]

When I moved back to Derbyshire in the late 80s I went to a local history lecture by a pharmacist who had trained in the 20s and supplied medicine to poorer people. He said that many medicines then were formulated on the premises and nearly always included ingredients to make them taste nasty since customers didn't believe they did any good for you if they tasted pleasant. Many heartbreaking tales about how people managed before the NHS.
I often wonder about how a country recovering from a war economy managed to transition so successfully from the private system to the NHS. I suppose we had lower expectations then and placed less demands on the medical sector.

[Stanley]

It wasn't easy Bill, read the history. At one point Nye Bevan was asked how he had overcome the resistance from the consultants, he said "I stuffed their mouths with money". You're right, we didn't expect as much then but it was still an enormous effort and a bloody miracle that Labour managed to do it. Over 70 years later, despite the attacks on it from the various policies over the years it is still the cheapest and the envy of the world. Fight for it!!

[Stanley]

See THIS for a BBC report on suggestions that based on this winter's experience in Australia we could be in for a heavy flu season. The message is clear, If you can get a flu jab, do it early!

[Stanley]

I went and had the repeat of my blood test yesterday. Evidently the lab got a rogue reading of my sodium levels which is a possible indicator of a kidney problem. Now I shall have a vague sense of unease until they tell me it was simply that, a rogue result. But I suppose it's good they are so thorough......

[BillHowcroft]

Ethel Armstrong finally retiring from the NHS:
https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/hea ... -70-years/

My mum started training as a nurse the year before the NHS started up but retired in the 80s when my Dad moved to Spain.

[Stanley]

She saw the lot!!

[Stanley]

HERE'S an encouraging report by the BBC of the chance of 'kinder' treatments for childhood brain cancer. Anyone who has watched the process knows that in many ways the treatment is more distressing than the problem and any improvement, particularly in the case of children, is to be welcomed.

[Tripps]

I found this interesting lexical-gustatory synaesthesia

It means he tastes certain flavours when he hears certain words. Having watched bits of the BBC4 series on the brain recently I have no doubt that he does. I am interested because I spoke - a few years ago- to the son of my next door neighbours, and he told me that he saw numbers as colours. He was exceptionally intelligent, and I now realise he was suffering from
colour-graphemic synesthesia.

I decided after watching only some of the recent BBC4 series on the brain that we are all just 'servants ' of our brains. They were speaking of mapping the connections in the brain, but a scoping survey had shown that the data required would exceed the total world digital storage space now available - just for one brain.

Makes you think doesn't it?

[Marilyn]

I have always had trouble with coloured writing, be it letters or numbers. Anything written in colour bounces about.
I have excellent vision otherwise. I asked about it when I had my eyes tested and was told they had never heard of such a thing and had never heard anyone mention having such a problem. I find it such a problem with my mobile phone because certain texts ( such as numbers, dates, days of the week ) get inserted in coloured writing and the darn thing I need to know bounces about within the otherwise readable text.
I'd like to know I am not the only sufferer...

[Stanley]

I doubt it Maz. The brain is so complicated I never dismiss anything I hear reported of it. Mine is the size of a planet.......

[Big Kev]

I no longer require medication for T2 diabetes, looks like I've reversed the condition. Good stuff.

[PanBiker]

Excellent Kev, good news indeed.

[Wendyf]

Excellent!!

[Big Kev]

Excellent!!

I've messaged Colin with an update for the LCHF 'story'.

[BillHowcroft]

They advise different coloured texts and backgrounds can help some dyslexic children with reading.

I too find some text/background combinations difficult in both colour magazines and on computer screen.. I am slightly red/green colour blind.

[PanBiker]

We produced exam papers in about 6 different colours for last years exams. I'll see what this year 11's spectrum is likely to be shortly in the November mocks.

[Marilyn]

Provided the text is black or dark blue, the background paper colour makes no difference. I don't find anything better, worse or different about coloured paper.
But anything written in colour...boy is it difficult. ( just as an example, I cannot read what links are about on OG as they are coloured writing. Email addresses, phone numbers, monetary amounts, time of day and days of the week are always inserted in colour within text messages...so annoying if someone was to text "See you at 4 on Thursday. I can't read the 4 or Thursday! Or if they text "see you in 10 mins", I can't read the number 10. )

[Cathy]

Gosh Marilyn, did I know that? I thought I was the one with vision problems and you were the half deaf one.
How did you get on studying and being a nurse?

[Stanley]

That's worse than my bum eye Maz. Commiserations.
They told me that as well Kev but I said I'd stick with the Metformin as I believe they are an appetite depressant and they don't appear to be doing any harm...... Officially I am now pre-diabetic.

[Marilyn]

I can see perfectly fine Cathy...can still thread a needle and am told I don't need glasses.
I first noticed it in Primary School when the teacher would mark things in red biro. If she put a comment at the bottom in red biro, I couldn't read it, as it would jump about.
It helps if I close one eye and squint with the other. Coloured letters and numbers don't seem to anchor to the page somehow and seem to hover above it.
Thankfully you don't encounter coloured writing much in life, so it's not really a bother, except with the mobile phone...

The "Post Reply" box on OG is a classic example...Red Writing.