4. My other online world.

The first three entries in my blog were under "More Conversations with Myself" but this seems to be a very cluttered place in the blogosphere so I have changed location. However, this is not the other online world I will introduce you to in this blog.

Some years back, shortly after I retired, I took the training programme to become an Age Concern visitor. I was then linked up with an elderly man in Milford who I visited weekly until Sharon and I went on an overseas holiday in 2004. While we were away he died. Frank (not his real name) was a good match for me since he lived and worked for much of his life in the London area as a highly skilled toolmaker in companies that I knew of (Marconi, De Havilland) and areas where I had myself worked in the engineering and furniture industries (Southgate, High Wycombe). So once we settled down each week we found plenty to talk about around his reminiscences.

But before we settled down Frank would have an almighty whinge about all the things that had bugged him in the previous week - his hospital experiences, the confusing state of his tabletop trays of medicines, the perceived neglect of his family, little domestic disasters with his much beloved Sydney silkie, run-ins with the local council about the state of the pavements, and all the general frustrations of being old and feeling ill. I came to feel that it was having things to whinge about that kept him going. When he seemed to be about done with his introductory coda, which could be all of fifteen minutes, and I was running out of what I hope were sympathetic noises, I managed to break away and make us a cup of tea. After that he relaxed and started to talk about his life, digging through albums, photographs and old magazines to illustrate the stories he wanted to share.

I made a vow, during my time visiting Frank, that I would never become a miserable old whinger obsessed by my health and frailty. As Sharon knows, it is a vow I have been finding hard to keep this year. It is my other online life, a life with a canula up my nose and a long line of plastic tubing linked to an oxygen concentator for sixteen hours in every twenty four. I have a C.O.P.D [Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease] called bronchiectasis. Bronchiectasis is not particularly rare, though I have only ever met two other people with this condition - Tilly and Den, both brought up in England. There are internet sites on which I can share my experience dealing with the daily frustrations of my breathlessness and I intend to use them and confine my whinging to them. But if you know of anyone with bronchiectasis I would love to be put in touch with them.

So no whinging on my blog. Well, very little I hope. How I have ended up in this state is interesting, however, and involves an interlocking array of factors in my personal history - genetic, medical (mainstream and alternative), religious, environmental, political. I am still researching some of them and will share a blog with you when I am done. It will be called "A Social History of My Bronchectasis". Watch this space.