Between Bourke 'n' Elizabeth

Mind games

This is the slogan used by Alzheimers Australia to promote wellness. There are seven aspects to their programme:

Brain
Diet
Body
Health
Social
Habits
Head

This is not just for us older people - it holds as a recipe for life. No good worrying about various types of dementia just cause you're old.  So how am I measuring up to this checklist?

I mind my brain: I read; I use a computer; I got to the cinema; I go to the theatre; I am learning Bridge; I take on new things like drumming and photography.

I should mind my diet better: I dont eat regular meals; but I do eat the 5 food groups with little saturated fats; I eat veggies; I dont eat much fish; I eat nuts; I should eat more prunes.

I should mind my body better: I walk to work and back 5 days (35 mins each way); I should try to speed this up; I dont dance; I dont do weight bearing exercises; I dont do yoga; I garden.

I mind my health: I take BP tablets; I take cholesterol tablets; my health is not the best but I am taking advice.

I mind my social: I have a good circle of social contacts; I am still in the workforce; I will join a Bridge club; I am one of those people whom others always seem to approach on the street to ask something or other; I go to choir; I have coffee with friends and family.

I should mind my habits better: I dont smoke; I drink 1.5 bottles of wine per week; I dont sleep very well; I can wake up at 3am and that is it; I drink very little water.

I mind my head a lot: I had three falls in quick succession not long after I turned 50; I watch going up and especially down stairs; I check for railings; I watch my step.

So, there are some things in there that I can improve upon: cryptic crosswords; fish; prunes; water; sleep; yoga; faster walking; some volunteer job.

Bliss

 The cattledogue for 2009 was in the post when I arrived home this evening. Hee hee hee hee hee ...

And I still have three operas to go for 2008 (Lucia this Saturday, Pearlfishers and Billy Budd). Life is such a bitch sometimes!

There are 13 offerings plus one delicioso concert. Of the 13, there are only 2 which do not instantly appeal. I prefer to swan along on Fridays or Saturdays and I like to choose my own. I used to choose Circle but in 2008 I had Stalls and they were to die for.

As much as Opera in the Domain sounds romantic it really is a pain in the butt if you want to hear the music - so scratch that.

Now decisions, decisions. Premium with the la-di-dahs is not moi, dahling. Certainly not at $225 per seat. I have been happy with B Reserve for the last couple of years which is up the back of the stalls and only costs a mere $126 per seat. I am quite paranoid about seats in the middle - but if I get in early enough the loverly administrators seem to read my mind.

So the choice is: Butterfly, Cavalleria/Pagliacci, Magic Flute, Cheryl Baker Concert with Strauss' Last Songs, Dido, Manon, Aida, Capulets, Fidelio, Cosi, Mikado  & finish off with Peter Grimes. Now to decide which one of these is the better weekend for Di to come up from Melbourne. I go down there for the Quarters of the Aus Open and so it is only fair that she comes up here for the Opera and a trip somewhere on the harbour. Might be Aida early in August. Shall put it to her.

Life is so deliciously decadent as one ages.

Bloody hell - I made it!

Fitting together

A side-effect of a raised paraprotein is parathesia - pins and needles. I have only become aware of this link in the last two weeks or so. One is to do with blood and the other is to do with nerves. However, there onset in my case was roughly at the same time.

Today I had a bone marrow biopsy at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA) on Missenden Road. I have my third visit with the Haematologist, Scott Dunkley, in two weeks. All these folk are tres young, might I add.

I opted for a local without sedation which meant that I only had to lie still afterwards for an hour instead of 4 hours. Even one hour was a struggle. I'd had to fast all morning which was a blessed relief seeing I had spent the night vomiting all over the darned floor. Precious little petal that I be.

The young registrar, Stephanie, was very good: she read me my rights, she explained everything as she did it. I have a high tolerance for pain so what she said would hurt was actually what I know as "discomfort". She did the aspirate first and I gather it takes a fair bit of effort to stick the device through the skin and then through the bone. She was pleased that I am "slight". It is a needle plus its casing. Here is an image of one which I nicked from Wikipaedia.

Once she had extracted a needle full of this - which she referred to as more boney - she then had to insert the needle a second time to extract a segment of marrow core which is known as a trephiine - the actual biopsy. Some of this goes to the RPA lab and some to an outside lab effectively getting two opinions. Along what lines the analysis procedes, I know not.

Dunkley says there is a link. What he is trying to determine is if there are any treatments that are used for Multiple Myeloma (the end result of an increasingly raised paraprotein) that can be used to ameliorate my parathesia. Not sure that I want to travel the chemotherapy path - why exchange one set of side-effects for another set of side-effects.

I ache a bit this evening although the ache is not at the top of my right buttock which was the biopsy site. Rather, the tops of both legs ache. Probably a "hip bone's connected to the thigh bone" concept.

Big weekend coming up. I have two house-guests. I take one of them to their first opera (Don Giovanni) on Saturday night. Then on Sunday I host 26 people at my birthday bash at a pub in Paddington.

The great tallyboard in the sky

Driving anywhere in the centre of Sydney, one of the first things one sees when turning a corner is Centrepoint Tower. Yesterday was one of those days:

You know your youngest son ...

Who's that?

Ross ... your youngest son ... well he helped with Centrepoint.

I didn't know that. Why didn't I know that?

Well, Dad, I only found this out when he was down for your birthday and the conversation turned to hot-rivetting just like ours did down under the bridge a few minutes ago. You remember Ross is a metallurgist, right?

They don't hot rivet any more. What did Rossie do?

He worked out the tensile strength required of the struts that hold the tower up.

(pause)

I didn't know that. Why didn't I know that? (pause) Is that an achievement?

Yes, Dad. That is an achievement.

(pause)

Have you achieved anything?

Falling apart

This quaint procedure is called a Nerve Conduction Test. The folk at the Brain Mind Research Institute (BMRI) over at the back of the Royal Prince Alfred hospital (RPA) on the other side of the campus, are putting me through a range of tests to try to get a handle on the peripheral neuropathy which is increasingly dogging me.

Peripheral neuopathy is pins and needles in the extremities. It started around my ankes in my early 40s (let's say about 1990) and now exists in all parts of my body except my trunk - which is pretty solid and not in the least "peripheral". But I have numbness now in my eyelids. I especially have it in my neck where I often feel as though I am being choked. My brain has to tell me that I can indeed breathe - it just feels like I can't.

A nerve conduction test involves little electrodes in selected positions on the body, pushing electrical currents through the wires and measuring the speed with which the impulse travels from A to B. This is the first time I have had it done on my head. Usually they only do it on my arms and legs - sort of like electrocuting my toes! I have good reactions otherwise - he dongs my knee and my leg jerks. Often this reaction is impaired. Mine isn't. Howver, my balance is increaingly impaired. I bump into things like walls. There are times when I really struggle to change direction and have to consciously apply brain power otherwise I have a list to starboard feeling.

I've had a brain MRI which showed black spots from a couple of falls but otherwise was fine. I have had a skeletal scan - 13 x-rays of my entire body. I've had two full nerve conduction sessions - this last one took just over 2 hours. Try having electrical impusles pushed through your body for that long. Quite exhausting.

The other complicating factor is the raised para-protein, which I have known about since 1995 when it was only 2g per 100ml. This time it tipped over the 6g per 100ml. This is an indicator of multiple myeloma. The first reading is categorised as Stage 1 - just requiring a check every 6 months. Over 5.5 is where you enter Stage 2 where the possibility of developing full blown marrow cancer have increased somewhat. Nothing dramatic - it will kill me by the time I am 90 or so at this rate. You know you are in a smidge of strife if you read in the mid 30s on an upward trajectory.

Somehow these two things in me are linked. I see a haematologist next week. Then back to the neurologist, Steve Reddel,  at the BMRI. He is a pretty cool dude. I like straight-shooting. Tell me more than I need to know with no frills. In the late 90s my neurologist was Ray Garrick over at the St Vincents Clinic who is still rated as the best in Sydney. But I did not go for his style. He used me as a research statistic. Electrocuted my toes every 6 months, gave me the next you-beaut anti-depression pill and told me to come back. Talk about B for boring. The pills did f-all. I gather that whatever is in anti-depressants works a treat on the nervous system, too. Just not with this little black duck. Threw that in after a couple of years.

However, time marches on and conditions progress. So time for more poking and prodding to see what is causing all this. I reckon my chances of dying of old age are as high as anyone elses.

World Shakuhachi Festival 2008

On Wednesday evening at the AG-NSW, we were offered tempting morsels of what to expect over the life of this festival which is in Sydney for the first time mostly thanks to the indefatigible Riley Lee. I have attended many of the Wedenesday night offerings at the gallery - they ARE free! - but this is the first one where the patrons overflowed the Central Court.

However, this was nothing in comparison with the rapturous applause that exploded out of the City Recital Hall at Angel Place on Friday evening for the opening concert odf the festival, "Breath to Breath" which featured Taikoz. Words cannot do this experience justice. Meryl Tankard's "Kaidan" for the 2007 Sydney Festival was my first encounter with Taikoz and it left me speechless - not easy! Earlier this year, I was electrified by their performance at the Four Winds festival in Bermagui. This latest concert was yet another permutation of their artistry with many pieces that I have not experienced previously and with a broader range than I realised. They have a special relationship with Riley Lee and this was evidenced at the end of the programme when he forsook his shakuhachi and pounded out one of the grandfather drums. I treasured David Wheeler on the shakuhachi; his fluency in Japanese and delicacy on the instrument belying his prize-fighter appearance.

My third foray into this mind-boggling festival, was at The Conservatorium on Saturday evening for the 10pm presentation of "... in Between", meditations and illuminations on The Tibetan Book of the Dead where Riley Lee's shakuhachi took a secondary role to that of gongs (Michael Askill), voice and wind (Tensin Choegyul) and the drop-dead sonority of James Coates. I was captivated for 90 minutes as I was led through this text that accompanies the recently deceased into the next life. My only sadness was that I had to attend alone as everyone I asked regarded it as a "bridge too far".

I tried to find something genuinely Japanese for you to experience the Shakuhachi as played by Riley Lee but decided upon this lilting Western tune as it shows both Lee and the shak without the dripping syrup of a powerpoint display.

I enjoyed this festival very much - a bridge-too-far suits me.

When first the land was ours

When first the land was ours we thought
that things would never change
- there'd always be the same green hills,
clear rivers and rich range,
and east of us the sparkling beach,
the mangroves, forests tall
- in our innocence we though
we'd always have them all ...

  We cleared the land and ploughed it
and wind and flood-rains came
and stripped away the living skin
and left the bony frame.
We ring-barked, burned, and bull-dozed
the trees and scrub away,
the mulga and the brigalow,
and bared the subsoil clay.

We were so blind we thought we could
afford a meagre care
for topsoil and for timberline,
and that they'd still be there
- we did not see that what we get
must spring from what we give,
that in a land we robbed of life
we could not hope to live.

For we are part of the shimmering web
that binds the vast and small,
and what is done to a single strand
has meaning to it all
- the earth was never ours, instead
we were the earth's deaf sons
who could not hear how through our veins
the family life-blood runs ...

And still the mother waits in hope,
degraded by neglect,
for us to render what we owe
- a life-time of respect.
The world's good is our own best good,
the land's health is our own
- we were not meant to pasture sand
and harvest fields of stone.

Bruce Dawe 1990

A moment's thought for the Murray-Darling system and all Australia's rivers.

A Howard Beale moment

Yes, I am as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any more.

Somehow we now have new laws in this state policing what we can and cannot do and can and cannot say during the Catholic World Youth Day. This day goes for about two weeks and the cleanup is slated to take until the end of bloody August - August!

And guess who pays - muggins the taxpayer!

First they chuck all the horses out of Randwick Racecourse to make way for pilgrims - harumph! Then they dig channels across the usual racetrack to cater for toilets and sound equipment. This means that the horses are compromised when they return and have to tread on a track that is no longer compacted down.

Then they are putting up NO-GO areas in Hyde Park so that the pilgrims are able to congregate with each other. Then they fence off an entire swath of the Pier area down at Millers Point so that the precious petals are not compromised whilst in their ivory tower.

Now ... now ... splutter ... splutter ... we are not allowed - BY LAW ... to wear negative T-shirts. We are not allowed to use our wit and repartee upon said pilgrims. Fair crack, Morris. This is Australia. You have just ensured that that is all that we WILL do.

Saw Julian Morrow of "The Chasers" on the news. He will stick up for us. He will get up the nostril of those who think they would be God. He will do an APEC on them - all in our name. Go Jules!!

Bloody politicians. Unbelievable. And we are paying for this - we the taxpayer. Yeah. Yeah. They sell it saying it will inject x squillion dollars into the economy. Bullshit, Morris. Through the nostril. That is how we are paying.

Altogether now ... out the window ... "I'm as mad as hell ... "

Decision made

Accommodation
I am staying where I am. I do not need a larger footprint on this planet; what I have at the moment is well enough for one person. There are things that I can do here to make it work better for me. I want to be out and about doing things not paying more for a place to live in. With the extra money I don't pay in rent (about $9K) I can have a month's holiday somewhere in the world each year.

Employment
I am staying where I am. I have just completed my annual assessment and there are a number of  points that the boss and I have agreed upon to make the position more interactive with the faculties and with the academics. There are major changes coming in data management by the end of the year and this will be a challenge. I need to be more forthright and not let others in the office always take the lead just because they ARE forthright. Doesn't mean they are right. As much as I talk about it, I am not ready to reduce my working week yet.

Activities
Now that drumming has finished, my next venture is to take 10 weeks of Bridge lessons. Let's see if I can get the hang of this and join a group on a regular basis. THEN I might be ready for a 4 day week. The lessons start on 29 July - 3 hours every Tuesday night.This is my brain food. This is what my father did not do and now his brain is going and he just sits there every day. i have a great bunch of friends. I have an active family life. I have my reading, my gardening and my photography. The possibility of Bridge would complement all these quite well to my way of thinking.