How to annoy Medical Personnel
1)When getting blood results back, ask for the actual results not the doctors interpretations of them.
2)Inform the doctor that the slight elevation they believe exists is in your opinion within normal parameters, and is not significant enough to require a repeat of the same test a week later.
3)Refuse to attend an additional check up
4)Repeat when pregnant
5)Insist that the hospital doctors etc only speak to your partner and have them follow steps 1-3.
Waiting
Waiting for the baby to be born is very like waiting for a train to arrive while carrying a heavy bag. You don’t want to put the bag down if you are going to step on the train in a moment, but if its going to be a while you would like to go and get a coffee and a paper. Uncertain of whether it will arrive on time, early, or late, you find yourself standing paralysed on the platform, aware that in the time you have spent making the decision as to whether to get coffee you could have actually got it, and arrived back, but that now you are not sure if this will repeat itself or whether you really still do have time for coffee.
Of course, this is a bad analogy as I am eating antacids which I am washing down with coffee and there is nothing I have to actually put off, however the sense of uncertain anticipation is really exquisitely unpleasant. I know, I know, I should be going "yippy oh its all exciting", but I am so, so bored. You have read me whinging about this once already – you will, I know, be bored by this second blog on the same topic. Well, that’s how I feel, only more.
I don’t queue. I don’t wait. If people are late for a meeting I leave. If I am early for a meeting and would need to wait I will leave 8/10 times. I rarely meet people. I don’t do waiting.
I am so, so, so annoyed and cross and fed up and want to cry.
In case it isn’t clear – I have given up smoking. Not that it's having any affect on my mood. At all. ‘They’ say "no smoke without fire" – at last I understand. Not smoking makes you want to shoot people. No smoke – you want to fire a gun. This morning someone said ‘how are you?’ to me – foolish foolish reckless person…..
Yours as impatiently,
The Broken Man
Showing posts with label smoking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smoking. Show all posts
Thursday, 4 December 2008
Friday, 27 June 2008
Oh Baby
Okay the idea about the elephant jokes was barking. Forget it. Scrap it. Ignore it. Move on. I guess I was trying to say – look its not all black, and its not. I have been know to skip down the street, sure I get funny looks, but I cant walk past a puddle, I have to jump in it. I thought putting a joke in each entry might lighten the mood, but I am already bored of the idea.
Sitting up late last night I started to think about my as yet unborn baby. Well I say started, unsurprisingly having a baby dominates my thoughts, every time I see a child in the street, I look it up and down and think, "how would I cope if that was my child" With loud ones, screaming, swearing and being obnoxious, I generally think "not well". With others I think "yes, I can do this" – I then realise that staring at passing children can be viewed not as a future parent assessing and thinking about what parenting will be like, but as someone about to abduct someone). I have a friend with four kids; while they where local I found myself more and more drawn into their lives. I can't begin to say how much I wished I was their dad, and how broken-hearted I was when they moved away, particually as at the time I thought I would never have a child of my own. With miles separating us now I still speak to them on the phone and exchange emails, but I feel gutted that they are growing up without me being able to be a part of their lives. Okay, I sound like a nutter…moving on.
The real question is…What if I lose it? Or if, wearing a sling, I pour coffee on it. Or I drop it. Teenagers I can cope with. 5 year olds I think I am okay with. But a baby???? I am not good at remembering things. I am really not, I have walked home from places before now having forgotten that I drove; my wife has got home and said to me, "where's the car gone?". With a car that’s fine..with a baby.. And what if I don’t like it? What if it hates me. I know you are not meant to think this stuff, but I have seen some people's kids and thought, "my goodness, its ugly!". It hasn’t generated in me that gush of affection that seems to be so readily displayed by women who pass babies from person to person and coo. In such situations I sit some distance away, and read a book.
I spend my spare time (what there is of it) looking at journals, exploring risks, trying to work out how to be a good dad. I know it doesn’t all come from books, but books are what I understand. I think of holding my baby in my arms for the first time and find myself crying. I feel so utterly incapable of being the father I will need to be.
My role model was not great, its true. My father was a drinker, and was a fan of “play fighting” to toughen us up. He was away at sea for long periods of time, and my parents eventually divorced when I was only nine years old, my mother feeling it was at a stage where it was to dangerous not to. Whe I had just turned 16, I decided I didn’t want my father in my life anymore, that I would stop seeing him, but before I had a chance to announce this to him, I got a call saying he had cancer. I kept seeing him, visited him as he died, and grieved when he did, yet I want to offer my child so much more.
I don’t want to imply that my father was all bad, he had so much good in him. He had eyes the colour of the ocean that sparkled when he was happy, he was a great story teller, and he had something of the eternal Peter Pan about him, which had both positives and negatives. I know the theory, we have God as our father, our role model – well, yes, all well and good, but he isn’t going to help show me how to put a nappies on a child.
So confession time yet again – I seem to be doing a lot of that – I smoke. I am appalled at myself, I have a pregnant wife, I lost my own father to cancer, and yet I smoke.I am trying to quit, have been for years though, and its not going well. I don’t smoke in the house, I don’t smoke around my wife, but I know its killing me. I know that if I still smoke by the time the baby is born that even holding it will put it in danger, and knowing this, knowing what a failure I am every time I light a cigarette, makes me feel terrible, so terrible in fact that I really want a smoke…each evening my wife asks me how I have done with kicking the habit and I look down unable to meet her gaze.
Just one more day? Just till the end of the packet..and then, dear reader, I will stub it out…I will…i am trying..but as ever, I remain,
The Broken Man.
Sitting up late last night I started to think about my as yet unborn baby. Well I say started, unsurprisingly having a baby dominates my thoughts, every time I see a child in the street, I look it up and down and think, "how would I cope if that was my child" With loud ones, screaming, swearing and being obnoxious, I generally think "not well". With others I think "yes, I can do this" – I then realise that staring at passing children can be viewed not as a future parent assessing and thinking about what parenting will be like, but as someone about to abduct someone). I have a friend with four kids; while they where local I found myself more and more drawn into their lives. I can't begin to say how much I wished I was their dad, and how broken-hearted I was when they moved away, particually as at the time I thought I would never have a child of my own. With miles separating us now I still speak to them on the phone and exchange emails, but I feel gutted that they are growing up without me being able to be a part of their lives. Okay, I sound like a nutter…moving on.
The real question is…What if I lose it? Or if, wearing a sling, I pour coffee on it. Or I drop it. Teenagers I can cope with. 5 year olds I think I am okay with. But a baby???? I am not good at remembering things. I am really not, I have walked home from places before now having forgotten that I drove; my wife has got home and said to me, "where's the car gone?". With a car that’s fine..with a baby.. And what if I don’t like it? What if it hates me. I know you are not meant to think this stuff, but I have seen some people's kids and thought, "my goodness, its ugly!". It hasn’t generated in me that gush of affection that seems to be so readily displayed by women who pass babies from person to person and coo. In such situations I sit some distance away, and read a book.
I spend my spare time (what there is of it) looking at journals, exploring risks, trying to work out how to be a good dad. I know it doesn’t all come from books, but books are what I understand. I think of holding my baby in my arms for the first time and find myself crying. I feel so utterly incapable of being the father I will need to be.
My role model was not great, its true. My father was a drinker, and was a fan of “play fighting” to toughen us up. He was away at sea for long periods of time, and my parents eventually divorced when I was only nine years old, my mother feeling it was at a stage where it was to dangerous not to. Whe I had just turned 16, I decided I didn’t want my father in my life anymore, that I would stop seeing him, but before I had a chance to announce this to him, I got a call saying he had cancer. I kept seeing him, visited him as he died, and grieved when he did, yet I want to offer my child so much more.
I don’t want to imply that my father was all bad, he had so much good in him. He had eyes the colour of the ocean that sparkled when he was happy, he was a great story teller, and he had something of the eternal Peter Pan about him, which had both positives and negatives. I know the theory, we have God as our father, our role model – well, yes, all well and good, but he isn’t going to help show me how to put a nappies on a child.
So confession time yet again – I seem to be doing a lot of that – I smoke. I am appalled at myself, I have a pregnant wife, I lost my own father to cancer, and yet I smoke.I am trying to quit, have been for years though, and its not going well. I don’t smoke in the house, I don’t smoke around my wife, but I know its killing me. I know that if I still smoke by the time the baby is born that even holding it will put it in danger, and knowing this, knowing what a failure I am every time I light a cigarette, makes me feel terrible, so terrible in fact that I really want a smoke…each evening my wife asks me how I have done with kicking the habit and I look down unable to meet her gaze.
Just one more day? Just till the end of the packet..and then, dear reader, I will stub it out…I will…i am trying..but as ever, I remain,
The Broken Man.
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