8.This week I shall be discussing mostly: understatement

The English language just doesn't have the vocabulary to cope with the extremes of emotion I experience. Consequently, some of the descriptions of the way I feel fall well short of the mark. My life is full of understatements. Here are some of the main 'culprits':
Frustration   People say to me 'You must get so frustrated ' or 'It must be so frustrating'  H'm...yes ... and some ...  Frustration is what you feel when you struggle to get a lid off that's stuck on a jar, or that feeling when the car won't start for the third morning in a row. But when you are desperately trying to make some-one understand what you are saying when it sounds perfectly clear to you ... or you're watching some-one make a hash of something you could do standing on your head ...  and furthermore, that it's always going to be that way, that takes frustration onto a higher level. 
Not for me the luxury, when having a row, of flouncing out of the room and slamming the door behind me! Any bad-temper or exasperation I feel just builds and builds - not unlike the pressure inside a pressure-cooker, as was once described to me. (And just like a pressure-cooker makes a dreadful noise as air escapes, I have been known- to my everlasting shame - to wail like a banshee when the frustration was too much to bear.)

Embarrassment I live with a level of embarrassment that I would never previously have thought possible. Before the stroke, I was very intolerant of being embarrassed, and would avoid situations where this was a risk. The stroke blew this to pieces. Everything about me now causes me embarrassment - the way I look, the way I sound, the way I eat, the way I drink; the noises I make, the fact that I dribble, and the scrapes I get into. The list is endless, but it became evident very early on that my life had to go on despite this.  
I remember, one day two or three years after the stroke, making a conscious decision not to hide myself away any more - and began (in a small way at least) participating in the local community, and getting out-and-about. It took quite a while before I would eat in front of people, and even then, I confined myself to sharing a meal with close friends.
' Do as I say and not as I do' has never been so true!  When I brought up my children, I led by example (I hope!), and I was pretty strict. Nowadays, I am far from a good example to my grandson...
The people who look after me make light of my shortcomings, and I laugh and joke a lot. All this merriment disguises a level of embarrassment that isn't comfortable to live with and is really beyond description.


... just a couple of the emotions I feel that are described totally inadequately, but with me constantly  ...

7. It's for your own good!

People who know me can probably imagine my reaction to being told this quite recently! Particularly when the speaker was a young upstart of a nurse, who can't have even been born when I did my nurse-training.

There used to be, in the bookcase at home, a volume entitled 'Meetings Between Experts'. Although a textbook used in Medical Education, and way beyond me, I was captivated by the title. The 'Experts' referred-to are, on the one hand, the doctor ...and, on the other, the patient. And is this not a very important point? We are all experts on our-selves!  Of course the Health Professionals are each experts in their own fields (and quite often just in the theory thereof), but we know how we feel, how we are affected by things, our own hopes and fears, and - to a greater or lesser extent - our own limitations and boundaries. Because of this, we can have confidence in our 'expertise'...but we should also take more responsibility for our own health, and be prepared to face any consequences of the choices we make.
I have been taking risks right from the start. That sounds very 'gung-ho', doesn't it? I can't pretend that it's the wisest behaviour; some of the risks have paid-off and some haven't. Some of the things I have done have been downright foolish!  Yet I maintain that without taking the occasional risk, I would not have made the 'progress' (such as it is), that I have made.
My point is that we should all be 'allowed' to take risky decisions if we want to - provided that we also take responsibility for those decisions. And it shows some maturity (and confidence) on the part of the Health Professional who will, from time to time, be content to 'bite his (her) tongue and see what happens'...  


It's time for me to climb down off my soap-box, I think ...