Illness - are you ready?

2002 has been a strange one for me I have had two periods when I have had to sit back and let others take the strain. First I hurt my arm and then eleven weeks later I was in hospital recovering from severe vomiting due to a gallstone flare up.

Getting help

Things are not what they used to be when you rang the doctor and you got another number and you rang that and someone came to see you. These days you ring the surgery and you are given another number and then the instructions on where to go find the doctor, often the local hospital. The first hurdle stays as it always has been getting access to a phone that works although mercifully with more phones especially mobile phones this is not as hard as it used to be.

Staying in hospital

How many of us keep hold of the old and comfortable nightwear that we are used to? We don't notice it getting rather the worse for wear until we suddenly start wearing it in a more public place and then oh dear what do we look like. Have you looked closely at your nightwear recently and thought would I mind being seen in hospital wearing that.

I left rather unexpectedly and was not well enough to sort things before leaving home. I am signed up to a few email lists and I knew my mail box could not contain all the messages I would be sent but I could not stop them by going no mail so I had to make arrangements for them to be downloaded frequently enough so that the mail box would not get full. Once it gets full it starts sending messages back to people and they start getting rather cross about receiving bouncing messages. I could give instructions from hospital how to download the emails but I had never thought of writing out the instructions to do so for anyone else to do it on my behalf.

Now think a moment what things would cause problems if you were suddenly off the scene for a while. Would it be not taking the milk for the refreshments at that meeting you go to every week or every month? Would it be not being able to make that business meeting you were supposed to attend? Would it be not paying that bill that you were waiting to pay until you received your pay?

Once you have thought of the problems now who will pick up the slack for you and how will you get in touch with them. Yes spouses and adult children can be very good helpers in this respect but not everyone has them.