rodkersh1948

The 3 R’s, My American Wife & Jesus.

Stop moaning about the Norwegians or the Norway Fisheries folk and reduce your carbon footprint.

Elephants, walruses, and forlorn carpenters

Freya probably spent her days swimming between Shetland, Norway, and Holland because of Global Warming; another shitstorm caused by us, people.

The promise of the object is more powerful than the object itself

…if I don’t have that additional jam sandwich I might be in trouble.

Healthy ego

The pressures, whether overt or not, the unreasonable demands, the pushing, pulling, bullying and intimidation inherent in many workplaces or the uncertainty of tomorrow, the zero-hours tightrope, all make us human, fragile.

Not all bad news is the same, new discoveries, deviation into politics and SUMMERTIME.

Why is it not black and white? We, that is humans don’t seem to have the same problem with gravity or air…

London’s burning. Damn those firemen.

No one in healthcare works harder than GPs.

Open water swim and the bite of the pike

I don’t know what aquatic life is in Manvers, hopefully I won’t catch elvers, velvet or whatever the disease.

Nao and Zen, Time Beings and a regret for the inevitable

The butterfly beats its wings, and we are all prisoners of time.

The heat, boiling frogs and rampaging Cossacks

And yet, it is very hot.

Well, not as hot as in Yorkshire.

And the irony?

Popularity, dopamine levels and hours in the day

I started writing around six years ago as I was convinced, I was going to die from a heart attack.

Sun, sea and outdated cultural references

(Can you hear the crickets? The Bouzouki?)

Deceased albatrosses, dog companions and other thoughts and travels.

Michael was a true rambler, born in Russia he migrated to Glasgow then fought in Egypt and Palestine in the First World War then back to Glasgow and then off to Australia via Ceylon.

Too many books, or perhaps it was the pants.

I didn’t take my pants to the charity shop.

Free-association, mind-wandering, existential worries, and Yoda’s gender

Is the recession upon us? What I think about my tortoise, what do they think about me?

Killer whales, the menopause and my colleague A.

There may be women in the Tory party, it is however a sexist juggernaut.

I, like most people have a favourite pair of pants.

He had and has inherited my dad’s bibliophilia;

Language is funny and people are odd; thoughts of Macca, Kendrick and family relations

Climate change and the Anthropocene are their lingua franca. Heck, Ukraine then Roe v Wave last week. They see further than me, and that is great, that makes it worthwhile.

Weight loss junkie (the pitfalls of too much safety)

Family-doctor-dietician and still losing weight; you must be failing the person, not meeting their needs, not creating innovative or adequately tasty food, not supporting mealtimes, not doing your job.

I move through empty space.

Although if you are my brother,

Ancient Greek scholar (he’s a Greek scholar, not ancient).

This would not be surprising,

Belly. Thank you to Denise Lewis and the theory of misattributed causes

What happens when you blame others (things) for your own failings. Look within young Padawan.

I was taken aback yesterday (Human Factors, Elaine Bromiley & your local medical school)

Yesterday, Friday, I was out and about visiting some of our patients. We have an odd or you might say unusual model of healthcare provision in the surgery, I, as a geriatrician, not a GP don’t see a significant number of the ‘regular’ patients, instead I focus on those who are older or living withContinue reading “I was taken aback yesterday (Human Factors, Elaine Bromiley & your local medical school)”

Minimally invasive medicine

They perceive the wonder of human spontaneity, the fragility of hope and fear, the layers of anxiety, of prejudice, hope, joy and deprivation spinning atomic around the patient’s sense of self.

The Sailor from Dinnington

It was a few weeks ago. I was logged-on to a meeting. Locked, stock to the computer screen, my face flickering at 60Hz, my fingers dancing over the keyboard, and, me, for the most pretending to eye-contact, whilst reading the Guardian. During these times I exist in a split reality. My focus switching between theContinue reading “The Sailor from Dinnington”

Just say no.

The doctor might say, ‘I won’t give you any more pain relief until you have a test,’ a kind of pharmacological blackmail.

The carers took my independence

Originally posted on Dr Rod’s Odd Blog (almondemotion):
Carers in the health and social care sector are a frequent soft-target for complaint. You can blame them for anything, and they often are the butt of the frustrations of those they support. You rarely hear complaints about the people running the agencies that employ the…

Person-Centred Teams & People

Originally posted on Dr Rod’s Odd Blog (almondemotion):
Before I say anything, I’d like to begin by thanking the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Programme for starting me along this journey, and, Helen Sanderson for making it meaningful. If anyone is interested in reading more, please check-out Helen’s books or Helen Sanderson Associates’ website. I have written…

Photographic evidence. A long, convoluted road.

Sorry, you are inadequately tenacious to change the world. Go to prison. Do not stop at Go. Do not collect…

A dying breed. Knock, knock, It’s the doctor.

What makes a GP special is their knowledge of a patient, their insight over months, years, even decades into a person’s life. The bond that continues after the acute illness has passed, the person recovered, perhaps passed through school, left for college and returned, married then divorced, raised children.

Psychoneuroimmunology and all that

We are the finite of our bodies and we are the infinite of our minds.

We are a walking anachronism.

Long distance relationships

It was a toughie. It took me an hour to unravel what was what, which medicines were which, what had been stopped, started, changed, what he could and couldn’t do, what he understood, what the family understood, the plans for further tests and follow-up.

Doctoring, fast and slow.

Originally posted on Dr Rod’s Odd Blog (almondemotion):
In my experience I have found three types of doctors; Those who work very fast, very slow or somewhere in the middle. This is obvious and logical as human behaviour is divided on the basis of a normal distribution, with most being average. In life, there…

My blood pressure is too high and when I get out of bed in the morning, I almost collapse. What should I do?

Thanks to Nigel for inspiring this blog. If follows-on from yesterday’s about postural hypotension. I don’t think, in fact, I am almost certain, no patient has ever asked me this specific question, although it is a thing. It is a condition that is tricky to manage and I suspect, one which is becoming moreContinue reading “My blood pressure is too high and when I get out of bed in the morning, I almost collapse. What should I do?”

Every time I stand up I fall over.

Originally posted on Dr Rod’s Odd Blog (almondemotion):
This is potentially a tricky one as it will blend medicine with an overall philosophical interpretation of what is wrong with some aspects of doctoring. Where to begin? I’ll start with the straightforward – a lesson in physiology. I will not go into the details as…

the woods

They are a nightmare.

The poop you walk past, Navalny and others on standards in society

It is more a chaotic butterfly of cause an effect, a stochastic randomness that nudges the world in a certain direction.

Free Speech, Twitter, Elon & Biko

Some people, let’s call them extraverts tend to let everything spill-out. I am not one of those.

This blog is a form of cognitive expiation.

This is Dying Matters Week.

Freud suggested that we can’t imagine our own death.

I’ve tried and I can although it isn’t a comfortable or pleasant.

Oxygen masks, paranoid androids and helping others

Not so much, ‘When in doubt, act,’ more, ‘When in doubt, care.’

The Brazil nuts from Brazil

As a consequence of not scoffing sweet-salty popcorn or Sports Mixtures I have been consuming more nuts.

Civility, Incivility and being nice

Incivility from me to you is as bad as my stabbing you with a knife, just less bloody.

Florence Nightingale, Florence Synagogue, Dali and palpitations

‘Diagnosis – Florence Syndrome’

‘Treatment – avoid visiting Florence and/or trips to art galleries. Watch more TV’

What have I learned, what have I seen?

We don’t really move or go anywhere.

In space and time, we stand still.

Hospital at home, virtual wards and turning care in the community on its head

The doctor calling the ambulance rationalises their actions, ‘I don’t know what will happen to their chest (NB not ‘Albert’, but his chest – a lapse into pathology and medical-speak

Analogy

To me it means ‘oy vey’ and ‘there you go’.

The Waterboys, Gene Kelly & Worm Moon 2022.

I thought of the residents of my care home,

Was it disturbing their mental continence?

Would it influence me?

Human, all too human.

This is the transparency I encounter when I visit patients at home, in their poorliness or vulnerability, on their death-beds, in their terminal loneliness.

Black-belt medicine

For me, the difference between the two belts and their equivalents in medicine can be described as transactional and transformational care.

Holidays

I am famously last-minute. If you know Myers-Briggs, you could guess the last letter of my type. Despite this propensity, I almost always get things done on time. The argument to myself and those around me who wonder why I am not doing anything when I should be preparing is that I am thinking (worrying)Continue reading “Holidays”

My mum – for International Women’s Day 8 March 2022

My mum Would pass thread through the eye of a tiny needle and perform what she called invisible stitches. It was what all the ladies wanted. The middle-aged women would call-in at our house Requesting alterations to aid their spread, their girth expansion from the time in-between diets. Mum would sit at her Singer sewingContinue reading “My mum – for International Women’s Day 8 March 2022”

Drowning in data, in war.

We fear crazy men who remain in power for too long, who climb to the top ensuring multiple mutually assured mechanisms of destruction for anyone who might threaten them.

The cost of loneliness (Roubles, dollars or robots?)

One patient recently attempted to resuscitate her (toy) baby when the batteries ran-out.

Ukraine and Ubuntu

I guess if he is great, Trump is great and, great is not so great.

Confusion Screen

In today’s blog Rod tried to explain what he meant when he wanted to say something was to complicated to be summarised by the word ‘screen’

Safety netting – to net or not?

Sure, some readers will think, ‘Honestly, this isn’t nannyworld, people have some responsibility, they should use their common sense.’

The week that was and was not!

Still recovering from IDLES my daughter tested positive for Covid.

A ramble through dodgy phone calls via IDLEs and back again.

You can ghost, delay, emoji respond.

Have I adapted to text or have texts adapted to me?

I was an ageist arse

Makes my think of my grandfather and his dilute Dettol baths or his pronunciation of Argos

Desperately seeking Sheffield’s spirit

Poor old Sheffield.

Lots of students but a shrinking soul.

Greek letters, a return to Leonardo, The Code, and my face

Rod talks numbers, art and the imperfection of his face.

Innovation, oranges and the impossibility of happiness (Monday imaginings)

…the shape of hills, the movement of water, muscles and the eye, the mechanism of the woodpecker’s tongue, the development of the foetus, creation, innovation, perspective and momentum.

Where did you come from, where did you go?

You are both more distant and more closely related to your next-door neighbour than you think.

Should I or he or she or they stay at home or go into care?

Locked in a room, when you are 90 and if you have dementia and significant physical and cognitive impairment is horrible. It is cruel and harmful. It is what our older folk have to do, whilst we, the rest are out and about, living it up.

Have I got dementia?

“whistle”… Rover, where are you? Oh, he must be upstairs on the bed, that old dog.

2022

The guest that over-stayed its welcome.

The Waltzer that doesn’t stop.

Nu, what about the news?

I spend too long with the news. On my phone. On the laptop. When I have an excess of spare time, I even watch it on the TV, although only Channel 4. That is, if the downtime is between seven to eight during the week. It is hard to avoid listening to updates on theContinue reading “Nu, what about the news?”

Boxing day reflection

Death – tradition – Jewishness – family – education – self-consciousness

Bob Ross, Happy and Unhappy accidents (healthcare and filler-TV)

I brought-up Bob when explaining to my colleagues the meaning of ‘happy accident’ – I was being flippant although the context was not.

Three days, 15 points and just starting to recover from the British Geriatric Society Autumn Conference

For the most, this was people showing-off their successes, how many older people they had saved from peril (mostly keeping them out of hospital), how many standard deviations from the mean their intervention had generated and so on.

Broken hearts, or why telephone consultations are less than 35% effective (homage to Heathcote)

Although doctors are being battered over the head for not enough F2F appointments, in reality, telephone reviews are much harder than seeing a person in the surgery.

Take away, facial expression, eye contact and body-language and it is far more difficult to know or understand what is going-on.

Anxious Jew

Rod reflects on the interface between anxiety and a long-line of Jewish ancestors.

Thinking mindful – geriatrician asks his followers to ‘get high’

My mind has been in a Japanese meta-reality rather than on Wong Lane

It’s worse than it’s ever been. Just kidding… Not.

‘When will I receive my Covid booster?’ Asks patient Annie, 98, unable to leave her house for the past three years.

‘We are working-our way round,’ Says the doctor.

A confrontation with the awareness of my outdateness.

I don’t even want to talk about the masks. We were at a cinema in Bristol this evening to celebrate my birthday. We saw The Harder They Fall. No, it wasn’t the movie that made me realise how far away I am from where I could or should be, nor the paper cups we wereContinue reading “A confrontation with the awareness of my outdateness.”

Tell Me Why.

At different times I feel I am closer to gaining an understanding, at others, I have never been further away.

Detour into etymology via hell and the NHS.

For all they care we could go to hell, so long as they can keep going.

It’s a bit shit.

#NHS #scapegoating #primarycare @BMA #justtryingtodoourjob

Woman vs Land Rover

I have just watched a short video clip of a woman driving a big black land rover over a woman protesting in the street. It was one of the worst things I’ve seen. The woman whose face was blurred had long fingernails. Like a witch. I don’t remember much else about her although I amContinue reading “Woman vs Land Rover”

You know the game. A cryptic clue and an unexpected answer. It came to me this evening, when I was discussing my role with colleagues. I am a hospital trained doctor who works in the community and helps older people, although sometimes young ones too. Who am I? I am a geriatrician. Although I hateContinue reading “I am long and thin by the end of the summer… Who am I?”