19 June 2012
A scary night! Sometime during the night I woke up with pain in my buttock. I reached out for the alarm button and no amount of waving my arms about could find it. So I called out, as loudly as I could, under the respirator, for my night carer. There was absolutely no response, no matter how loudly I shouted. I must have kept this up for 20 to 30 min, intermittently, locating and attempting to press the alarm on my wrist but finding I simply did not have the strength. As time went by, with no response, and I was beginning to feel more and more pain I had to talk myself into calming down. How was I to know what had happened to his carer or even if she turned up at all! Maybe she had had a heart attack, or merely died in her sleep-I gather from Alice that two of the carers, who, of course, I never see, are pretty ancient -I am asleep when they clock on at 10.00 p.m. and 5.00 a.m. In the early morning. During the night I wear an eye shade to cushion the hard respirator, so can see nothing. After an agonising period of time had passed with me getting more frantic, but attempting to keep calm, one of my flailing arms struck the alarm button, which was about 15 inches above the bed in a place where I would not expect to find it. The response from the carer was immediate. Clearly then, she had just dropped off and my shouting was not loud enough to wake her but the alarm was.
To be fair, the carer was very apologetic but despite being rather grumpy about the incident. I kept quiet, having visions of this carer taking her revenge by knocking something, or whatever and allowing me to expire through lack of air. Why on earth I should have these sort of thoughts I have no idea except that there I was, in the middle of the night, totally unable to move or see, with a carer who had badly let me down. One reads almost every day about a nurse or carer overdosing patient or bumping them off one way or the other. (I have already confessed to being frightened of the dark, so this sort of experience did nothing to improve my confidence). Anyway, I was greatly relieved to finally get a response from this carer. I’m glad to say that she confessed her sins in her daily diary she filled in before she left, and, as a result, Alice and I agreed to give her a second chance. Had I been asked in the middle of the night I would have had her peremptorily dismissed.
Whilst I had been dealing with my own personal crisis, two events which were likely to affect the international financial markets, were being decided. Firstly, there were the elections in Egypt, which left the party winning the most number of seats unable to form a government without a coalition with one or other, of the other minor parties. Secondly, there were the elections in Greece, on the day when that country was due to give its decision about accepting more financial help, on very stringent terms, to reduce its national debt. The incumbent government retained power but had with fewer seats
Pre-empting the outcome of this election, the military junta, who had been running the country the past few years, granted themselves greater powers thus virtually emasculating the incoming government and leaving the world wondering what would be the outcome concerning the Eurozone debt. No doubt all would be revealed in the days or weeks to come but the possibility of Greece, leaving the Eurozone still seems to be a live option with no one able to predict the chaos in the international financial markets, which could possibly follow. The European stock market took the outcome of these two elections in its stride, with only minimal rises or falls. However, depending upon how the Greek situation resolved itself, the financial markets will, no doubt reflect the view of the institutions, being the main investors in the stock markets, on the likely long-term effect.
As this is Tuesday, sunny and dry and for reasons I’ve already explained, I’m not at the golf club, I think this little object lesson is very appropriate. Click here to find out why you should never lie about your golf handicap.