Mostly lemon based

Day: May 30, 2007

  • In case you thought I’d forgotten.

    I promised dull house pics, and here, without further ado – are some dull house pics:

    The bathroom is proceeding according to the plans: the builders having removed the floor with astonishing rapidity are now working towards the point where they can put it back:

    One thing that this has revealed (apart from more, what appears to be inactive woodworm) is that, well, a professional electrician is worth his weight in faecal matter…

    And I thought *my* wiring was untidy. That is a hideous, hideous mess. At least my junction boxes are fixed to things. And what worries me is that that junction box appears to contain both the ring-main and the lighting circuit. Or I think it does. At least, the circuit, well, it’s… oh anyhow. That disaster of a box is going to have to be examined.

    And also, when he rewired, he clearly didn’t feel it was worth going to the effort of removing the old wiring:

    That’s 1940s or 50s, rubber insulated wiring. The rubber’s completely perished, when you move it it just cracks and then sheds like a moulting rabbit; but it (thankfully) doesn’t appear to be live. I shall endeavour to remove some of it :-)

    At any rate, the time is coming when I need to put the new bathroom in, which means ordering it :-)

    Woot.

    Oh, and found beneath the floorboards? A bit of 60s (?) packaging. Doesn’t beat the 1940’s Aviator cigarette packed my dad found in my parent’s house, but still :-)

    Flickr Set for the bigger versions

  • Night shift

    Sometimes I disagree with what we do; I think that as a culture we cling desperately to the last shreds of life at whatever cost. It doesn’t mean I don’t do my job, I do my job to the best of my abilities, but sometimes I disagree with what I’m asked to do.

    We, being a Care of the Older Person ward have a lot of people who’s quality of life is pretty poor. Bedbound and incontinent, with dementia; many of our patients don’t, or won’t eat; don’t or can’t walk, and I wonder how much awareness of the world they truly have anymore.

    Certainly their personality seems largely gone (or changed beyond recognition); but we fight for their lives, with interventions that are painful, strip them of their dignity, and just seem… wrong, to me.

    But – where a patient’s not stated beforehand that they don’t want these moderately extreme interventions – like for example – surgery to put a feeding tube into their stomach – so we can safely feed them when they’ve lost their swallow/gag reflexes. Well, then we tend to go ahead and do it. And I wondered, last night, as I put a feeding tube into a patient who’s confused (dementia) and immobile whether it was really the right thing to do. I know it’s what the *family* want, but is it what he’d’ve wanted?

    I can’t say, except for myself, and y’know what, I don’t want heroic interventions to keep me alive. If I’ll recover, and be independent (at least largely) – or if that is a high probability (like 80%), then sure, heroic me all you want. But if my heart stops, it stays stopped (thanks all the same) and if my life will consist of nothing more than laying in a bed, then no; thank you. It’s not what I want.