I told my GP a joke the other day. It was only a short joke, one of the few I know by heart. She pressed her hands to her cheeks and stared at me. Dr G is a broadminded, competent, compassionate doctor. She’s quite easy-going. I arrived at one appointment to find her wearing shorts…
Category: MS and life
The grinning tradie. Or, if the NDIS collapses, this is why
The tradesman was grinning. He’d brought a subcontractor with him. It took them about 30 minutes to scope out the job and jot some figures in a notebook. Of course he was grinning—my occupational therapist, who’d suggested the home modification he was quoting for, had told me that he was charging $500 for the quote,…
Us and Them? Really?
Goulburn Shopping Centre, 11 am last Tuesday. I’m waiting for someone to vacate the disabled toilet. I see a dim form approach the frosted glass door and as it slides open my suspicions are confirmed: an able-bodied person. As he steps out he looks down at me (I’m on my small electric scooter), says, ‘Sorry!’…
80 per cent curiosity, 20 per cent hope
On the highway, heading into Bega. Royal blue summer sky, black and white cows dotted across unseasonably green hills. I turn to the Mechanic. ‘I think I might be depressed.’ ‘Well, that’s fair enough,’ he says. ‘I’d be depressed if I were you, considering everything. I’m amazed you’re not depressed more often.’ As validating as…
Quaama Express
You’d laugh to see us on the street The scooter, me, my doggies dear The small one, Wookie, leads the way The big one, Rudy, in the rear. They’re both tied up, I’m sad to say, Can’t trust either not to stray, Rudy cos he hunts down chooks. That’s cost me dearly. As for Wook,…
Something to lean on
I was listening to a podcast of Richard Fidler interviewing Tim Ferguson the other day. You may remember Ferguson as one of the Doug Anthony Allstars. Long and lanky with a sweep of black hair across his brow, he was often referred to as ‘the good-looking one’—so he says, anyway. Fidler was an Allstar too,…
On the death of Gillian Mears
So, Gillian Mears is dead. Mears was an award-winning Australian writer of novels and short stories, and last year released a children’s book. She lived on her property near Grafton, NSW, with a horse she wasn’t able to ride and a cat. She had MS.
A sprinkle of charged glitter
Neuralgia again. Or is it? I’ve written about neuralgia—nerve pain—before, but this time it’s different. In the past it has started slowly—the occasional subtle ping, gaining in intensity and frequency, rising to a crescendo of penetrating stabs, seconds apart, with little relief between. Then subsiding again over hours, or a few days at most. But…
Scandi-voir
We’re on the ferry from Puttgarden, Germany, to Copenhagen. Bleak skies, choppy, grey water, the mournful cries of gulls. Grim Scandinavians frown into their shot glasses around me while I sit in the bar, reading. Then, from somewhere unseen, Wallander’s ringtone. I know it’s not Sweden—not quite—but my stomach drops. It always portends some alarming…
Notes from the Eurozone
A café at Schiphol Airport—Amsterdam. I ask for a decaf soy latte. The waiter tips his head back a little. ‘We have no soy milk,’ he says. ‘No soy at all?’ ‘No. Starbucks has soy milk.’ There’s a challenge in his expression. Am I the type to decamp for Starbucks? Or am I a sophisticated…