Fit As A Fiddle

January 10th

Fit As A Fiddle

This could be classified as too much information but have you heard the old joke:

A man goes to the doctor and says, “Doctor, can you help me? I have a bowel movement every morning at 7am”. The doctor asks, “What’s the problem with that?”  The man replies “I don’t get up until 8!”

I recently had a change to my medication and it’s causing havoc with my system.

As a man of a certain age, I’m used to getting up in the night to visit the toilet, but not for…well, let’s say, extended periods.

Disturbed nights are not helping with my energy levels which are running low at the moment. I’m constantly tired and I’ve found myself, on occasion, falling asleep whilst people are talking to me!

After having a short break from work, next week I need to prepare for life as usual. I’m just not sure how prepared I will be.

My confidence took a real hit this year, and I found myself wondering if I had lost the ability to do the job as effectively as I wanted.

Poor health, a lack of confidence, sorrow at home through personal loss, all combining to make me feel that it was time to do something else…but what?

The truth seems to be that I will be officiating at funerals until they put me in a box and screw the lid down.

I just hope when they do that, they’ve checked I am actually dead and not just asleep again!

Anyway, the new medication was the result of seeing a new GP, one who listened and decided that there were a number of things to be done towards finding me a diagnosis. I must admit I’d love to know why I am so fatigued, why somedays I struggle to walk,  and why I occasionally fall over. Why my memory isn’t always brilliant. Why I’m so distracted.

So I’m going to be prodded and poked and probed like never before.

I’ve already had a heart scan and can report that the ticker is doing ok. No issues other than those expected at my age.

I know some of my family members and friends are going through their own medical traumas at the moment and I know how lucky I am to be able to work and enjoy life…I’m inconvenienced, not incapacitated. You do have to retain a sense of perspective.

Our bodies don’t come with guarantees and it’s very rare that a perfect specimen rolls off the production line. We are not intelligently designed, we are a complex amalgam of vessels and nerves, muscles and synapses and at any time one little bit of us can stop working.

Evolution hasn’t created a perfect human body, just the one that was best able to survive long enough to pass on our genes…including the bits of us that are not quite functioning as they should.


Hopefully after being probed they will be able to identify which bit of me is faulty. Maybe with an oil change or a new piston, I’ll be off and running again?

Until then what can you do but keep chugging onward…