The Barnum Effect

Six months have washed by, on their one way journey into history. The river of time flows inexorably, sometimes meandering placidly, often in full spate - turbulent and roiled by events.  I find it usually manages both at once, which I dub the "slow/fast duality of time".  In an "At-Risk" category, I've spent the majority of my time sheltering at home.  The metronome of work still ticks and tocks, back and forth.  Start work, finish work Start work, finish work Start work, finish work Start work, finish work Start work, finish work Weekend Weekend ... The days waltz by, working from home, with the odd day of annual leave to break the rhythm. It is all somewhat muted without the hurly burly of the commute and the hubbub of the office.  The constraints on my activities external to the house seem to constrain me within the home. I'm oddly stilled. Held quiescent. Time slows. Blink. It has been 6 months. It went by in a flash. Where did the time go?

My earliest fears were of nuclear war. Born during the cold war, I was afraid, especially at night whenever a bright light flooded my room. Was that the flash of a nuclear explosion? Was the catastrophic shockwave about to hit? No - just a car turning in the street - its headlights flashing past my window. I was not yet 10 when I became aware that scientists were starting to predict climate change. This worrying prospect was ignorantly laughed off by one of my primary school teachers, who nonchalantly said it would be nice to have warm summers. Concern about the destruction of the ozone layer came next. Optimism flowered during my late teens. There were signs the world was becoming a better and more tolerant place. The fall of the Berlin wall and the subsequent break up of the Soviet Union made the spectre of nuclear war fade. International bans on CFCs began the healing of the ozone layer, and raised the hope that nations might cooperate to stop climate change. During my ea...

I'm swollen around the chest area as I'd expect after the double mastectomy - there are some sloshy seromas building up which I've been told not to worry about - the seromas should self-resolve, and if not they can be drained with a needle. I was particularly aware, as I woke up this morning, that my face and neck feel quite puffy. My eyes feel all crowded in by swollen eye lids. I feel like I've gained 10 pounds around my middle too. This swelling has been developing since my operation three days ago. I thought it was my imagination until I looked in the mirror and saw a big round moon face looking back at me. Why, oh why, am I puffed up like a balloon after my operation? Thank goodness for the internet. While it can on occasion lead us down dark alleyways, often it can take us straight into the light... It seems evolution provided a way for injured animals to lay up for a few days to recover from traumatic injuries. With an injury hormones are released which...

The day after my last post I fell ill with flu, which delayed my operation by two weeks. I'm now two days post-surgery, back home, and recovering. I had breast cancer operations in 2001 and again in 2008. Those were traumatic experiences, my post surgery recovery was tainted with feelings of loss, and fear for the future. Each of those operations were just the heralds of more debilitating treatment - the long hard slog of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Following on from that were the yearly scans and tests to check for new cancers and secondaries, a regular cycle of building tension as each appointment came due, plunged back into the medical world for the tests, then the gruelling wait for results, hoping to hear those precious words "all the tests came back clear" and feel the giddy relief once more. This has framed the last 18 years of my life. I allowed it to box me in. I focused on getting through each day. I made no long term plans. I did not peer in...

A little over 18 months ago I had my ovaries and fallopian tubes whipped out. In two days I'll say goodbye to both breasty-dumplings, with a double mastectomy. 8 years ago I wondered on this blog: How would I feel if I went down the free-martin path and said goodbye to ovaries and breasts? Once done there is no turning back. Answers on a postcard to... I'm now on the verge of finding out. Will I wake up one morning suddenly feeling released from fear when the cancerous Sword of Damocles hangs over me no more? Will I mourn the loss of my breasty-dumplings? Will I revel in being free of the bouncy bits and take up jogging? Or will life continue much as before? Cancer in 2001 reduced left-breasty dumpling to a B, whereas cancer in 2008 resulted in right-breasty dumpling growing to a FF. So I'll certainly be glad to lose the lopsidedness. I'm going flat - no reconstruction for me. I will not subject an innocent part of my anatomy to the surgeon's knife in or...

At some point in the last 12 hours we've passed through the vernal equinox, so by my reckoning we're in spring. The plants in the garden have already jumped the gun and are visibly growing day by day. The mild weather we've had in the last few weeks means that several species are already flowering. Not only are the daffodils and primroses flowering, but the ornamental blackcurrant, the forsythia, the magnolia, the grape hyacinth and the camellia are all bursting into bloom. I haven't had much time to potter in the garden. For the last 6 weeks I've been switching my working hours from evenings to days for a project at work, and for the last month I've ramped up my hours to over 40 a week. I'm looking forward to the lovely juicy overtime, but I am feeling drained. The turning of the seasons has been working its magic on my lodger Sam. It must be the time of year for springing surprises. Last year around this time he announced he was in a relationship, and ...

Today Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the United States of America. I'm British, so this should not be of any relevance to me, but of course the influence of the US is felt across the world. Many outside the US watched the elections and were quite confident that Mr Trump would not be elected, as in much the same way most thought we in the UK would vote against Brexit. No one quite knows what to expect now. Brexit & Mr Trump are paradigm shifting moments of the 21st century. I find it hard to summon the confidence I once had in the democratic process. Can elections be a good way to make decisions if these are the are the choices the public makes? I have this forlorn hope that, through some bizarre accident in the physics laboratories where I work, I have been transported to a parallel universe temporarily and it is just a matter of time until a rubber band effect yanks me back to my own reality. Meanwhile I wonder whether the ordinary people of the late ...